Drama Online - Playwrights Canada Press
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Playwrights Canada Press

The Playwrights Canada Press collection offers over 230 plays from notable and award-winning authors including Daniel MacIvor and Hannah Moscovitch. Plays in this collection have won prizes including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Siminovitch Prize.

A blackbird appears on a painted orange background on the front cover of It is Solved by Walking by Catherine Banks
A painting depicts bare white trees on the front cover of Bone Cage by Catherine Banks
An old photograph shows a smiling mother wiping the face of her young son against a turquoise background with a plane on it on the front cover of A Brimful of Asha by Asha and Ravi Jain
A painted fox appears on the front cover of This is How We Got Here by Keith Barker
A cartoon lion roars at at a person on a stage on the front cover of Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson
A person with their face painted white holds their hand over half of their face on the front cover of Almighty Voice and his Wife by Daniel David Moses

The collection features:

  • Works by First Nations playwrights
  • Works by diverse playwrights
  • Plays with large casts
  • Monologues
  • Classic Canadian plays
  • Contemporary Canadian plays

Key titles include:

  • It is Solved by Walking by Catherine Banks: Bold and poetic, this 2012 Governor General's Literary Award winner is an intimate portrait of a writer making her way back to poetry one step at a time
  • Indian Arm by Hiro Kanagawa: Winner of the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, this adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf powerfully explores the uneasy intersection of privilege and birthright
  • Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson: One of Judith Thompson’s most enduring plays, Lion in the Streets looks at those suffering from inner emotional turmoil
  • East of Berlin by Hannah Moscovitch: The son of a German expatriate flees his family and attempts to invent a new life, until the past catches up with him
  • The Monument by Colleen Wagner: A searing exploration of the nature of forgiveness and a profound classic that examines the paradox of the soldier today, and the ambiguities of morality and justice
  • White Biting Dog by Judith Thompson: A poetic black comedy about a divorced lawyer who prepares to kill himself by jumping off the Bloor Street Viaduct, until he encounters a small dog who sets him on a different path
  • Bone Cage by Catherine Banks: A poetic and darkly humorous portrayal of life in rural Nova Scotia, where stripping the environment means stripping your soul
  • Almighty Voice and His Wife by Daniel David Moses: A young couple woo and wed, but they’re Cree and it’s 1895, the first generation after the Riel Rebellion, and it’s suddenly hard for the people who followed the buffalo to live happily ever after. What are they going to do? It’s still a bit early to go into show business.
  • A Man A Fish by Donna Michelle St. Bernard: Characters battle with ghosts from the past and hopes for a future whilst commenting on global issues in this poetic allegory. St. Bernard is working on a 54-ology, writing a play for each country in Africa. A Man A Fish is one of these.