Tarragon Sets 45th Anniversary Season: THE TROUBLE WITH MR. ADAMS, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE & More

Artistic Director Richard Rose and Managing Director Susan Moffat proudly rolled out Tarragon Theatre's 45th Anniversary Season today, filled with bold theatrical adventures and reaffirming Tarragon's reputation as a home for Canadian theatre.

The 2015-16 season introduces seven contemporary Canadian playwrights new to Tarragon, and welcomes back an acclaimed hit show from last season.

It features five world premieres of new Canadian plays (three from Tarragon Playwrights-in-Residence), a home-grown international comedic sensation, the Toronto English-language premiere of a Quebecois drama and a remount of a cutting-edge German adaptation of a timeless classic.

In outlining the season, Rose said, "This year we are celebrating 45 years of storytelling at Tarragon, 45 years of fostering the creation and development of new Canadian plays and 45 years of embracing our personal, collective and political struggles. Significantly, in year 45, we are proud to introduce audiences to seven writers - ranging from emerging voices to established artists - whose works have never before been seen on Tarragon's stages; as well as bring back a contemporized classic that audiences loved.

"The shows in our 2015-16 season explore history, memory and the nature of progress - and ask: what place does the past hold for us when the future has already arrived? Audiences will meet doctors, teachers, scientists, tech visionaries, parents, lovers, travellers and imaginary friends. They will visit worlds both near and far: a small European spa town, Ukraine mired in turmoil, a Francophone community, an airport hotel in Toronto and the safe haven of a child's bedroom.

"In addition to featuring Canadian artists and boundary-pushing work, with our new big accessible doors, new bright lobby and new 'build-your-own' subscription packages, we continue to welcome Toronto theatre-goers into our home - and, metaphorically, theirs. Our doors are open."

Canadian Comedy award-winner Rebecca Northan's international sensation Blind Date returns to Toronto to launch Tarragon's 45th anniversary season after playing off-Broadway, in London's West End and across Canada. Fall in love with "Mimi" and her date for the evening, as they explore the ups and downs of a different blind date every performance in this "utterly enchanting" (Time Out New York) production.

And in what promises to again be one of the most exciting events of the entire theatre season, Tarragon remounts Florian Borchmeyer's revolutionary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, in a rendition staged by Richard Rose. This contemporary mirror for our times, originally adapted for Berlin's Schaubühne, took Toronto audiences and critics by storm and was on the 2014 Top Ten lists of The Globe and Mail, National Post and NOW Magazine, among others.

In a home-grown offering, Tarragon welcomes acclaimed actor/Tarragon Playwright-in-Residence Gord Rand in his Tarragon playwriting debut as he premieres the darkly funny The Trouble with Mr. Adams, a bold new work that exposes the male mid-life crisis in all its awkward and ruinous glory.

In his first play ever for Tarragon, Project: Humanity Creative Director and Tarragon Playwright-in-Residence Andrew Kushnir premieres Wormwood, a powerful new play directed by Richard Rose about a young Canadian man who travels to Ukraine following the Orange Revolution, only to become an unexpected player in its fractured politics and tumultuous history. Next, also making her Tarragon debut is librettist, Tarragon Playwright-in-Residence and performer Anna Chatterton who premieres Within the Glass, a new comedic drama directed by Tarragon Assistant Artistic Director Andrea Donaldson that tackles a dilemma faced by two very different couples after an implant mistake at a fertility clinic. One of Toronto's hottest young writers, Kat Sandler, Artistic Director of Theatre Brouhaha, makes her Tarragon playwriting debut with the premiere of Mustard, an off-centre comic fairy tale about a mother and daughter navigating life after divorce with their imaginary friend.

The 45th anniversary season continues with You Will Remember Me, a vivid and beautifully moving drama about aging, family and memory from one of Quebec's most dynamic voices, Governor General's award-winning playwright François Archambault (15 seconds, The Leisure Society). Translated by Bobby Theodore, this co-production with Studio 180 is directed by its Artistic Director Joel Greenberg and is the first time Tarragon is presenting an Archambault work.

The 2015-16 season closes with a premiere from celebrated Canadian screenwriter and actor Fabrizio Filippo. Best known for his television roles that include Scott Hope in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and violinist Ethan Gold in Queer as Folk, as well as starring in macIDeas' storied This is Our Youth directed by Woody Harrelson, Filippo now makes his Tarragon playwriting debut with a technological drama that speaks to the nature of mortality in The Summoned, directed by Richard Rose.

In addition to its work on the stage, Tarragon continues with its extensive youth programs and the country's most successful new play development program as well as its Tarragon Village program which includes Preview Feedback Sessions, Talk Back Weeks, Lecture-Conversations and improved hospitality and concessions. This year Tarragon is also introducing new initiatives to welcome underserved communities into the theatre, including partnerships with local organizations and special pay-what-you-can ticket prices. More details of these initiatives will be released in the coming months.

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