Firehall Arts Centre announces 2025-26 season of Canadian works, including world premieres of Tracey Power’s House of Folk and Marlene Ginader’s Canadian Psycho
More offerings include Hiromoto Ida’s Vacant Lot and Between Breaths, a play about a whale conservationist
Myokine. Photo by Steven Berruyer
Marlene Ginader’s Canadian Psycho.
Between Breaths. Photo by Steelcut Media
THE FIREHALL ARTS CENTRE has just announced its 2025-26 season, and distinctly Canadian stories are at the heart of the programming.
Launching the offerings from October 22 to 25 is Hiromoto Ida’s Vacant Lot, a dance-theatre production based on Japanese contemporary artist Shogo Ota’s play Sarachi. It revolves around a long-married couple who visit the now-vacant site of their old home, sharing memories of what once was while reflecting on the fragility of life. Performed by Ida and Lindsay Clague, Vacant Lot is at once existential and comedic.
Anne Plamondon Dance’s Myokine is on from October 30 to November 1. Montreal-based choreographer Plamondon was inspired by myokines, also known as “hope molecules”, which our muscles secrete when the body is in motion; they are known to produce a feeling of wellbeing or optimism. In her energetic seven-dancer production, Plamondon focuses on the importance of dance in releasing tension and anxiety.
From November 12 to 23, the Firehall presents the Western Canadian premiere of the Artistic Fraud production Between Breaths. Written by Robert Chafe, the play draws on the true story of Newfoundland conservationist Dr. Jon Lien, who saved more than 500 whales trapped in fishing nets over the course of his life. Set to a live indie-folk score by The Once, the profound story details Lien’s accomplishments and shows how dementia affected him in his later years.
Lindsay Clague (left) and Hiromoto Ida in Vacant Lot.
Programming picks back up in the new year with Blackout Art Society’s production English from January 23 to February 1, 2026. The powerful play by Sanaz Toosi is set in a classroom near Tehran; it follows four Iranian adults as they study for an English proficiency exam. Here, language symbolizes both the excitement of new opportunities and the painful detachment from identity.
From February 14 to March 8, 2026, the world premiere of the Firehall production House of Folk: A Lost Canadian Folk Show hits the stage. Written by Tracey Power—creator of the popular Firehall show Chelsea Hotel: The Songs of Leonard Cohen—with musical arrangements by Van Wilmott, the story zooms in on 1960s coffeehouses across the country, where folk artists like Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot found a place for conversation, community, and early-career performances.
Another world premiere, the ITSAZOO and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre production Canadian Psycho, is on from April 1 to 12, 2026. Created and performed by Marlene Ginader, the hilarious one-woman show expands on Marlene’s own lived experience as a half-Asian woman who’s obsessed with true crime, but doesn’t see her identity represented when it comes to serial killer stories, news, and media. With movement, videography, and an original electronic-music score, she aims to fight back against the model minority myth.
Enemy Lines. Photo by Marlowe Porter
Widely published Ojibway author Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light hits the stage from April 18 to May 3, 2026. The paint shade Red Cadmium Light was created in 1982—which means that if a work by Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau that featured the colour was dated earlier than that, it had to be a fake. But when a reporter starts investigating counterfeit Indigenous art in close detail, what’s discovered could jeopardize the careers of an Otter Lake First Nation art gallery director and her daughter.
The Firehall’s 43rd season wraps from May 6 to 9 with Enemy Lines, copresented with the Powell Street Festival. Choreographer Mayumi Lashbrook, whose family was among over 22,000 Japanese Canadians that were forcibly removed from B.C.’s coastline during the Second World War, addresses the fractures caused by that past in her impactful dance production.
The Great Canadian Play-Reading Mini-Series, a special offering that pays tribute to Canada’s rich theatre legacy, will run throughout the 2025-26 season. It will pay homage to local playwrights whose works landed on stages across the country between 1920 and 2020.
A variety of early-bird ticket passes are now on sale. Single tickets will be up for grabs starting August 22. 
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