2026 culture lookahead: Five Canadian (and Canadian-ish) plays and musicals in Ontario and beyond

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What started as a perfectly normal year for Canadian theatre quickly became a fight for cultural sovereignty by the time U.S. President Donald Trump stepped into office at the end of January.

Almost overnight, Canadians found themselves forced to think differently about the work programmed in their local theatres – what is Canadian theatre, anyway? Is it plays written by Canadian playwrights? What about big-budget musicals, even those licensed by American monolith Disney, which feature large Canadian casts and design teams? Or international tours from places that aren’t the U.S. – should those productions receive Canadian box-office dollars?

The best theatre of 2025 from Toronto, Stratford and Shaw

As we head into 2026, debates about what constitutes Canadian work, and what sorts of programming audiences should support, show no signs of stopping soon.

With that in mind, here’s what I’m looking forward to, theatre-wise, in the new year:

Wait, did something just slither in my ears?

In June, Soulpepper Theatre Company will partner with Outside the March, the Toronto-based collective known for creating inventive, immersive theatre experiences, on a new adaptation of Medusa – with a twist.

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Mitchell Cushman’s production will feature a new text by playwright Erin Shields, and a sound design that will ask audience members to wear headsets that play a reptilian inner monologue directly into their ears.

Ambitious? For sure. But if I trust any company to turn the myth of Medusa into a “modern-day rage room,” as the show’s marketing materials promise, it’s Outside the March.

Kimberly Akimbo, finally

I’ve been salivating to see Kimberly Akimbo since the show, written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, premiered on Broadway in 2022. The musical, about a rapidly aging teenage girl, boasts a killer score and a soul-hugging story – the Canadian production which just closed at the Segal Centre in Montreal will make its way to Toronto in January, starring Louise Pitre in the title role.

Across the country, the show will also be staged at Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre in April, steered by artistic director Ashlie Corcoran.

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A classic musical with a funny title role

This coming summer, the Shaw Festival will produce Funny Girl, the 1964 musical about the life and times of Broadway starlet Fanny Brice.

Funny Girl is a long time coming for the Greater Toronto Area – the touring version of the recent Broadway production skipped any Canadian stops, with its closest performances to Toronto taking place at Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo.

Fanny is a role that might as well have been written for Canadian musical theatre mainstay Sara Farb. It’s good news, then, that she’ll be stepping into the part right after premiering her musical Way Out There, co-written with Anton Lipovetsky, at Yes Theatre in Sudbury, Ont.

Yes, 2026 might be the year when Farb asserts to Canadian musical theatre that she is, in fact, the greatest star.

A world premiere with roots in Zambia

The National Arts Centre in Ottawa will present the world premiere of Copperbelt, written by Natasha Mumba, in January, before the show travels to Toronto for a run at Soulpepper.

Copperbelt promises to trace connections between Canada and Zambia, with a cast featuring performers from both countries. A writing debut for Mumba, I’m looking forward to hearing this text – and seeing how NAC English Theatre artistic director Nina Lee Aquino chooses to stage it.

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Two new plays at the Stratford Festival

While I’m looking forward to the explosion of Donna Feore-helmed musicals set to take over Stratford Festival’s most spacious theatre, I’m perhaps even more jazzed for the new plays that will premiere at North America’s largest repertory theatre company: The Tao of the World, written and directed by Salesman in China’s Jovanni Sy, and The King James Bible Play, written by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman and directed by Aquino.

Since the pandemic, the festival’s new works have regularly outshined its more canonical programming, with monster hits including Nick Green’s Casey and Diana and Kat Sandler’s Anne of Green Gables. Will that happen again this season, as Antoni Cimolino prepares to hand over the reins to incoming artistic director Jonathan Church? I look forward to finding out.