Tarragon Theatre’s Creative Director, Mike Payette and Government Director Lisa Li have introduced the return of the Greenhouse Pageant, a showcase of recent and in-progress works that increase the boundaries of efficiency genres. The road-up contains every part from shadow puppetry to magic exhibits, dance, and a confessional live performance.
The work of three creative collectives will probably be featured within the Pageant, which runs from January 27 to 31, 2026 in Tarragon’s Extraspace, with different performances and installations positioned all through the Tarragon’s theatre.
Greenhouse Pageant is a process-led residency program that emphasizes works that contain an alternate between artists and viewers. Viewers members are inspired to discover Tarragon’s varied areas between Extraspace performances to find new works.
Tarragon’s Creative Director, Mike Payette, notes in a press release, “We’re thrilled to usher within the new yr with the colourful and extremely celebrated pageant of recent concepts and creation. Now in its third version, the Greenhouse Pageant warms the winter with residency artists and constructing activations from thrilling Ontario-based expertise, and with a brand new introduction that bridges artists from throughout the nation and showcases them to Toronto audiences. Dive into the world of recent work exploration that can assist form the way forward for Canadian art-making.”
Works featured within the earlier two iterations of the Greenhouse Pageant have gone on to full productions, together with Kevin Matthew Wong’s Benevolence, and Adam Proulx’s Emilio’s A Million Chameleons. Each beforehand featured works in progress have since toured throughout the Canada and the US.
Greenhouse Pageant 2026
The 2026 Greenhouse Pageant affords three new works that revolve round storytelling, and incorporate music and motion. It would additionally embody a particular presentation of Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! and in between performances, Pageant goers can discover Love Me Again and Planter Field Cabaret.
Greenhouse Pageant producer jonnie lombard feedback, “Greenhouses are outlined by their brightness, the partitions of home windows that permit in heat and light, and permit us peek into the expansion going down. The Greenhouse Pageant imagines Tarragon Theatre as such an area, a comfy, vivid incubator the place everybody inside is a gardener of recent theatrical works.
“Every Greenhouse Artists-in-Residence entered their course of with an thrilling query of theatrical kind and course of, with a necessity for audiences to assist reply them. The Pageant affords a uncommon alternative for artists and audiences to experiment collectively within the soil of creativity, earlier than a undertaking has reached its ultimate levels, and be equal elements of the photosynthesizing of modern Canadian theatre. I encourage of us frolicking within the Greenhouse flowerbed to cease and keep some time on the Pageant’s choices and activations, share ideas with an viewers neighbour and make a pal alongside the way in which, and take each alternative to attempt one thing new. We are able to’t wait to develop with you!”
Storytelling
Apology Present
Apology Present is an exploration of accountability and restore. The work is monologue, live performance, and analysis undertaking suddenly, the place chosen members of the viewers will probably be invited to role-play the apology they’ve at all times dreamed of creating.
Artist: Tiny Bear Jaws
Tiny Bear Jaws is a queer and femme-run cross-Canadian theatre firm with a mandate of making works that create each empathy and the sort of discomforting emotions that produce constructive change. The corporate is devoted to incorporating digital media as a method of inspecting the infinite ways in which expertise influences our world, and creates considerate design components for all their exhibits.
Pulse
Pulse makes use of improvisation, hip hop, and collaborative creation as the idea for a theatrical story that’s, at its coronary heart, an exploration of belonging, identification, and neighborhood.
Artists
Multidisciplinary artist Eric Miracle blends storytelling and motion in his experimental works. He’s joined by award-winning multidisciplinary creator Riel Reddick-Stevens (she/her), an artist who is devoted to creating theatre extra accessible. Reddick-Stevens studied performing and musical theatre at Randolph Faculty and the Nationwide Theatre College of Canada. Her works mixes pure sounds and motion with choral vocals and beats.
Ramla and the Desert
This shadow puppetry/dwell animation undertaking brings to life a story of desert disappearances. It was written and produced by Nehal El-Hadi and directed by Mabel Wonnacott, with puppet design and animation by Heather Piper, music by Waleed Abdulhamid.
Artists
Author, researcher, and editor Nehal El-Hadi educated as an environmental journalist and concrete planning scholar. Her work explores the relationships with the supplies, applied sciences, and areas that outline our humanity. She additionally holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, the place she is growing The Observer Impact, a public house efficiency that examines the impacts of surveillance.
Tkaronto-based opera director, arts educator, and puppeteer Mabel Wonnacott has directed and assisted productions throughout Canada, together with organizations similar to The Banff Centre, the Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra, Toronto Metropolis Opera, and the Canadian Kids’s Opera Firm.
Interdisciplinary artist and native 829 scenic portray union member Heather Piper studied screenwriting and puppet theatre at The College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago. Her works in puppetry has been carried out for a broad vary of audiences, together with performances at public gardens, on Broadway, and in each TV commercials and unbiased movie.
Canadian multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, music and movie producer Waleed Abdulhamid is named an modern vocalist, bass participant, and virtuosic percussionist. He has develop into a busy and revered member of Toronto’s music scene since his arrival in 1991 from Sudan, the place he was a baby star from the age of six. He counts two Dora Awards among the many a number of accolades for his work.
Free Performances
Love Me Again [FREE performance]
Someplace between a magic present and a play, Love Me Again explores the murky realm of affection, heartbreak, and connection, together with the secrets and techniques hidden in a deck of taking part in playing cards.
Pageant goers can take pleasure in this efficiency every evening between exhibits at 8:30 p.m. within the Close to Studio on a first-come, first-served foundation.
Artist
Hamilton-based playwright, director, and magic designer Michael Kras (he/him) might be greatest identified for his Voaden Prize-winning play The Workforce (Important Collective Theatre/Theatre Aquarius); No Large Deal (Roseneath Theatre); and The Yr and Two of Us Again Right here (Damaged Soil Theatre). His credit embody magic course and design for worldwide exhibits such because the Canadian Premiere and North American Tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Little one, amongst many others.
Planter Field Cabaret [FREE]
The Planter Field Cabaret is an area the place viewers members can hang around and join between the Extraspace displays on every evening of the Pageant from 8:30 until 9:00 p.m. Activations function native artists similar to:
- Dance Occasion with DJ Change B (Tuesday and Saturday)
- Virtually Jeopardy: Greenhouse Version with Nam Nguyen (Wednesday)
- Loop Pedal Poetry with Elizabeth Staples (Thursday)
- Craft and Chill with Labour within the Arts (Amanda Lin and Emily Jung) (Friday)
- Closing Night time Karaoke with Asher Rose (Saturday)
Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop!
In the event you can think about Judy Garland in efficiency at Carnegie Corridor on acid, you’re near award-winning Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! Pearle’s efficiency is characterised by a razor sharp wit and demented sense of storytelling ripped from essentially the most anxiety-inducing headlines. Alongside the way in which, Pearle reimagines huge hits of the twentieth century (musical director Stella Conway), together with songs by David Bowie, Britney Spears, the Seashore Boys, and extra.
Agit-Pop! has toured to each coast of Canada in venues from 1,00-seat vaudeville theatres to live performance halls to defunct intercourse golf equipment.
Artist
Pearle Harbour is an award-winning drag efficiency artist and theatre maker whose work places the viewers on the centre of a celebration of the radically transformative potential of collective expertise.
Particulars
- Discover efficiency instances and particulars for the Greenhouse Pageant [HERE].
Reductions can be found for college kids, seniors, teams and humanities staff. Contact the field workplace for extra data.
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
