news | Friday March 27, 2026

World Theatre Day 2026

March 27 is World Theatre Day! Plays are a significant part of Talonbooks’s publishing program. We love the mastery of dialogue, the depth of character, and (of course) the drama of it all. Comedy, heartbreak, commentary, satire, education, romance … theatre has been a place to explores and present all of these fundamental human experiences throughout history. Happy World Theatre Day, Talonites. To us, this is very much something to celebrate. Here are a handful of amazing plays from recent years we’d love to beam a fresnel light at for World Theatre Day.

1. Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show/Le Wild West Show de Gabriel Dumont by Jean Marc Dalpé, David Granger, Laura Lussier, Alexis Martin, Andrea Menard, Yvette Nolan, Gilles Poulin Denis, Paula-Jean Prudat, Mansel Robinson, and Kenneth T. Williams

Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show is a flamboyant epic, constructed as a series of tableaux, about the struggles of the Métis in the Canadian West. The creative team behind Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show – including ten authors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, French- and English-speaking men and women – brings Dumont’s dream to life in a captivating, joyously anachronistic saga. Order your copy here.

2. Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor’s Life by Caroline Russell-King and Maria Crooks

Check out the winner of the Theatre BC Canadian Playwriting Competition, two Betty Mitchell Awards, and two Calgary Theatre Critics’ Awards, Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor’s Life! This play is a flight of fancy based on the incredible life of African American sculptor Dr. Selma Hortense Burke. Burke chronicled many of the extraordinary and devastating events of the past century in her outstanding work: lynchings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Holocaust, the assassination of Martin Luther King. Burke persisted in artmaking in the face of a society that didn’t always recognize her talents, a husband who demolished her work, and a government who stole it. Get your copy here.

3. Heartlines: A Love Story by Sarah Waisvisz

If you haven’t yet, check out finalist for the 2026 LGBTQ+ Drama LAMBDA Award Heartlines: A Love Story! Heartlines imagines the extraordinary love, art, resistance, and lives of gender pioneers Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Waisvisz takes the audience through the dizzying romance of their early life together in the Parisian avant-garde – and the subsequent fracturing of that life with the rise of nazism. Identities of all kinds are explored, suppressed, and liberated as their love withstands oppression, violence, and time itself. Pick up your copy here.

4. Fado: The Saddest Music in the World by Elaine Ávila

Fado: The Saddest Music in the World, is a tale of love and ghosts set in the back alleys and brothels of old Lisbon. Part concert, part theatre, the story of a young woman confronting her country’s fascist past and her own identity is interwoven with the heartbreaking national music of Portugal, fado. Fado won the Award for Favourite Musical in Victoria. Secure your copy here.

5. Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer by Kevin Loring

Little Red Warrior is the last remaining member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation. He discovers a development company has begun construction on his ancestral lands. Little Red attacks one of the engineers and is arrested for assault and trespassing on his own lands. In jail he meets his court-appointed lawyer, Larry, who agrees to help Little Red get his lands back. Larry convinces his wife, Desdemona, to allow Little Red to move into their basement while they sort out Red’s case. Desdemona and Red strike up an uneasy relationship. As sparks begin to fly between them Larry prepares to fight for Little Red’s Land Rights. An unexpected intervention by a greater power occurs in the court case, and nothing will ever be the same. Order your copy here.

6. White Noise by Taran Kootenhayoo

Hilarious, incisive, and potent, new play White Noise by the late, great Taran Kootenhayoo is available to read this month. In this blistering comedy, two neighbouring families, one Indigenous and one white, dine together during Truth and Reconciliation Week. As cultural misunderstanding, colonial violence, and racism both covert and overt surface, White Noise asks, “How do we deal with internalized racism? Do we keep pushing it away … or do we make a change?” Pick up your copy White Noise here.

7. Kuroko by Tetsuro Shigematsu

Maya is a hikikomori (引きこもり), an extreme recluse who hasn’t left her bedroom in five years, spending all her time in Virtual Reality. So her father hires an actor to befriend her online and entice her back into the real world. How? By visiting the scariest place on earth, Aokigahara, the “Suicide Forest.” When we lose what gives our lives purpose, when the distance between us and those closest to us seems impossible to bridge, where do we turn? Can virtual worlds offer real solutions? Is an honourable death better than a meaningless life? Get your copy of Kuroko here.

8. Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project by Carmen Aguirre

Forthcoming this spring comes Fire Never Dies by award-winning, best-selling author Carmen Aguirre. Aguirre explores the intersection of art and revolution through the life of Italian photographer and activist Tina Modotti. Modotti’s story unfolds in 1920s Mexico City, where her art flourished and she engaged with icons like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, after seven years, she abandoned photography to join the antifascist cause, ultimately running the Red Aid Hospital during the Spanish Civil War. Modotti’s journey from working-class roots to revolutionary martyrdom raises urgent questions: What is the purpose of art in the face of fascism? Pre-order your copy here.

9. Asking for It and What I Call Her by Ellie Moon

Written in the wake of the Jian Ghomeshi scandal, Asking for It considers gender roles and the various ways sexual consent is understood personally, culturally, and legally. What I Call Her explores female generational rage, the loneliness of holding on to one’s own truth, and the gaps in how people perceive and understand the world they inhabit. Pick up your copy here.

Whether you’re taking in a matinee or simply keeping the dramatic spirit alive in your heart, we hope you have a wonderful World Theatre Day.