Soulpepper Theatre’s 2023 spring slate includes Sanaz Toossi’s new play English

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If you want to see Sanaz Toossi’s new play English, Soulpepper Theatre Company is speaking your language. The Toronto not-for-profit will kick off its 2023 mainstage season in February with the Canadian premiere of the contemplative comedy about four Iranian students learning to communicate in a second tongue.

The play from the Iranian-American playwright made its world premiere with a well-received off-Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater this year. This Soulpepper co-production with the Segal Centre for Performing Arts moves from Toronto to Montreal in March, 2023.

Soulpepper’s other two spring mainstage productions were originally programmed for the 2020 season but were pushed back because of COVID-19 lockdowns. Anton Chekhov’s masterpiece The Seagull gets new wings with a version from Simon Stephens, directed by Siminovitch Prize winner Daniel Brooks. Soulpepper presented The Seagull as an audio drama a year ago.

The third production is the Tony-nominated Sizwe Banzi is Dead, directed by Obsidian Theatre’s Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu. Written by Athol Fugard in collaboration with South African actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, the good-humoured, anti-apartheid play made its debut in Cape Town in 1972.

“In programming our first selection of plays, I wanted to celebrate global voices and perspectives and explore what it means to be part of a community, to find your place, a home,” said Soulpepper artistic director Weyni Mengesha.

In addition to the plays, a concert celebrating singers Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald will be presented. Billie, Sarah and Ella: The Revolutionary Women of Jazz was written by Divine Brown, who also stars in the newly created show.

Soulpepper’s spring schedule is the first of four programming chunks for 2023. Details are still to come on a summer series that mixes mainstage plays with a series of music shows presented in the cobblestoned alleys of the historic Distillery District the company calls home.

The female-centric Her Words Festival will take over in the fall, followed by a schedule of holiday programming.

The start of this year’s Soulpepper season was delayed because of health and safety concerns. The company will continue to present a number of “COVID-conscious” performances for each of the mainstage plays in 2023. On select dates, capacity is limited to half-capacity and all guests are asked to wear a mask.

Currently up and running at Soulpepper is The Golden Record, a storytelling concert inspired by a phonograph message sent by NASA into outer space in 1977. Scheduled next month are a 20th-anniversary remount of Trey Anthony’s ‘da Kink in My Hair (co-presented with TO Live at Bluma Appel Theatre) and a musical retelling of Alice in Wonderland.

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