Touchstone Theatre announces 2023-24 season, along with retirement of artistic director Roy Surette
Surette closes out next season directing a somber-yet-hilarious climate chronicle, a heartfelt musical, and an Indigenous take on classical comedy
Hurricane Mona. Photo by Emily Cooper
Roy Surette, artistic director of Touchstone Theatre.
TOUCHSTONE THEATRE has unveiled its lineup heading into the 2023-24 season, which spans Pippa Mackie’s dark climate comedy Hurricane Mona and a remount of Dorothy Dittrich’s poignant chamber musical When We Were Singing.
The announcement is accompanied by bittersweet news: Roy Surette, two-time artistic director of Touchstone Theatre, is announcing his retirement at the end of next season.
Surette first began his tenure with the company in 1984, where he spearheaded the direction of works such as long-running improv sketch piece The Number 14, and the tender family-oriented Homechild by Governor General Award-winning playwright Joan MacLeod.
His directing achievements with Touchstone Theatre garnered Surette a total of nine Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards. He eventually moved on in 1997, becoming artistic director of Victoria’s Belfry Theatre and then Montreal’s Centaur Theatre before circling back to work with Touchstone again from 2017 onward.
“As an artistic director, I’ve had the privilege and challenge of shepherding, animating, and programming a season of plays and events for forty consecutive years,” says Surette in a release. “I am ending my tenure as an artistic director, not with a whimper but a bang. It’s a season of collaboration with beloved colleagues and long-time friends.”
Hurricane Mona’s world premiere launches the season, a co-production with Ruby Slippers Theatre directed by Surette that shows at The Cultch from November 18 to December 3. Mackie’s timely chronicle of an environmental activist facing the consequences of a rebellious choice made during a protest urges audiences to consider their actions and reactions in the face of an imminent climate disaster.
Christopher Morris’s The Runner takes the season into the new year, playing from January 24 to 26 at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Co-produced with the PuSh Festival and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs, the philosophical thriller follows Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a volunteer with an Orthodox Jewish Israeli victim-response force who saves the life of a Palestinian woman believed to have committed a violent attack. Themes of moral wrongdoing versus human goodness permeate this one-man show staged impressively atop a moving 24-foot treadmill.
The Runner. Photo by Lyon Smith
Father Tartuffe: An Indigenous Misadventure, written by Herbie Barnes, takes Molière’s classical comedy role and upends it in a throwback to 1967; its world premiere is on the Granville Island Stage from February 22 to March 24. Patriarchal con artist Father Tartuffe attempts to meddle with a family living peacefully on an Indigenous reservation in this hilarious Arts Club Theatre Company co-production jointly directed by Surette and Quelemia Sparrow.
Closing out a season of hits, Surette directs Dittrich’s When We Were Singing, a meld of jazzy, blues-y Broadway ballads which tell the story of four best friends in their 30s navigating real-world topics of serious changes and the pursuit of dreams. The United Players of Vancouver production with musical direction from Christopher King shows at the Jericho Arts Centre from May 30 to June 24.
More information on the season can be found at www.touchstonetheatre.com. Expect details soon on the search for Touchstone Theatre’s next artistic director, which is scheduled to begin this fall.
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