In-Development at Theatre Passe Muraille
Graphic Design by Emily Jung
The Buzz In-Development Series focuses on creating an artistic process that places the art and artist at the centre. We do this in various ways including: workshops, dramaturgy, public presentations as well as in ways which cannot yet be anticipated or defined. At TPM, we aspire to empower the artist throughout their development in methodologies that work for them.
The Buzz In-Development Series will continue to support the works of the future and is to be announced in full. Some of the artists that continue to be in incubation, will include Michael Caldwell, Anika Johnson, Ameer Idreis, Norman Yeung and more. From intimate stories to boundary-pushing performances, TPM‘s programming is set to offer audiences a dynamic and unforgettable experience now and into the future.
All works in the Buzz In-Development Series are being considered for future development and potential production at TPM. Buzz Artists are given access to one of our venues, dramaturgical support and in-kind services or funds as part of their development. TPM offers further commitment to artists-in-residence with more comprehensive monetary and administrative support and with longer timelines towards a production!
Ships in the Night by Ameer Idreis
Ameer Idreis is a writer, playwright, and urbanist with a passion for stories about culture, land, and self-discovery. Writing across forms and genres, he has penned novels, personal essays, poetry, and stories for the stage. His debut play won a Playwrights Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Award, the Hart House Theatre Playwriting Competition, and is currently in development at Theatre Passe Muraille. He previously participated in the Paprika Festival Playwrights Unit and Banff Centre Playwrights Retreat, is an Artist-in-Residence at First Born Theatre, and is the co-founder and Creative Director of in draft co. – an arts collective supporting emerging writers across forms.
Ameer also holds a Master of Science in Planning and works on all things urbanism as a Planning Manager. When he’s not writing, Ameer can be found enjoying a flat white, curating niche playlists, cooking his favourite Palestinian dish (maqluba), and exploring Toronto’s neighbourhoods.
Ships in the Night is an in-development play that follows a young man’s journey into Toronto’s queer dating scene. When Omar, a Palestinian editorial assistant, meets Isaac, a Jewish photographer, a romantic spark ignites — but so do difficult questions.
Over the course of their dates, their budding flirtation is complicated by the revelation of their intersecting lineages: Omar carries the trauma of the Nakba in his blood, Isaac holds an Israeli passport from his Birthright trip, and the ghosts of 1948 Haifa are playing out their own star-crossed love story against a backdrop of escalating war, displacement, and exile.
With an urgent, tender wit, Ships in the Night explores how political histories shape personal ones — and the limits of love in bridging seemingly irreconcilable divides.
Taboo by Alten Wilmot
Workshop supported by Diaspora Dialogues
Alten Wilmot is an award-winning playwright, performer, and multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto and the Waterloo Region. They create bold, witty work fueled by Queer, Caribbean, and MAD experiences. The founder of Unwrap Theatre, Alten has led over 25 premieres and collaborated with institutions across the country. Their work blends humour and heartbreak, drawing from diasporic forms, interdisciplinary practice, and comedy. Alten champions untold stories by unheard voices for underserved communities through raw emotion, joy, and truth.
When Matty, a fiercely ambitious MBA student, loses his last shot at a prestigious pitch competition after his chest wound makes a bloody mess, he’s forced to team up with his charming ex-rival, Brad. As their rivalry deepens into romance, Matty must learn to live, and love, without hiding the parts of himself that bleed. Taboo is a witty, heartful rom-com about ambition, humiliation, and learning to live authentically through the messiness of mental illness.
Instagram @altenwilmot
ཁྱིམ་ཚང་ Khimstang by Rinchen Dolma
རིན་ཆེན་སྒྲོལ་མ་|Rinchen Dolma is a director and theatre maker originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. She is primarily based in Tkarón:to (TO) but currently resides in Tiohtià:ke (MTL). She is also the founder and Artistic Director of MADE IN EXILE. She completed her Metcalf Foundation Performing Arts Program in Artistic Direction at Theatre Passe Muraille, was in the 50th edition of The Banff Playwrights Lab in 2023 and is currently the Directing artist in residence at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Sonam and Jigme meet in a registration line for a refugee transit school in Mussoorie, India where they must decide on how to make a life for themselves in exile.
Khimtsang is a story that explores the lives of Tibetan refugee children who came into exile after the invasion of Tibet in 1949.
Instagram @callmerewa
Through The Eyes of God by Anusree Roy
Anusree is a Governor General’s Award-nominated and four-time Dora Award-winning writer, actor, and director. For theatre, Anusree’s plays include: Through the Eyes of God, Sisters, Trident Moon, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, Sultans of the Street, Brothel #9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, and Pyaasa. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, the RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Carol Bolt Award and the Siminovitch Protégé Prize. She was the 2018 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (the largest and oldest playwriting prize for women writing for English-speaking theatre). Currently, she is the commissioned playwright at Tarragon Theatre, writing her new play, 147, 8th Street. Anusree‘s playwright residencies include: Nightwood Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Factory Theatre, The Blyth Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Canadian Stage Company and Tarragon Theatre. Anusree spent two seasons as an actor at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Anusree is currently the Co-Executive Producer and writer for the Allegiance S3 (CBC) television series. She has also worked on Interview With The Vampire S3 (AMC), Allegiance S2 (CBC), Transplant S2 (NBC/Netflix/CTV), I Woke Up a Vampire (Netflix), SkyMed (Paramount+/CBC), Remedy (Global TV), Killjoys (SyFy), and Nurses S1 & S2 (NBC/Global TV).
When her son is kidnapped, an uneducated Kolkata housemaid must embark on a mission to find her only boy, but in her quest for revenge, will she become just like the man who took her child? What happens when we become the monsters we want to destroy?
The Brotherhood by Lauren Welchner + Monica Bradford-Lea
Lauren Welchner (she/her) is an award-winning playwright, actor, and producer. Lauren’s work with Spicy Day, which she has co-created, performed, and produced, has won ‘Best Of Fringe’ in the Toronto Fringe Festival, been awarded ‘Critic’s Pick’ by Mooney On Theatre, and been nominated for a Prix Rideau Award (Ottawa’s professional theatre awards) for ‘Outstanding New Work’.
In 2024, Lauren received a Harold award in Toronto “in recognition of an outstanding and often under-recognized dedication on or off the stage”.
Monica Bradford-Lea (she/her) is a playwright, actor, producer, and co-Artistic Director of Spicy Day theatre company. With Spicy Day, she has created, performed, and toured award-winning original plays across Canada since 2016. The company is known for creating new, interactive work that unites audiences in laughter, while opening honest and complex conversation on current social issues.
Monica is also an arts marketing specialist and project manager with 12 years experience working for organizations including Canada’s National Arts Centre, Tarragon Theatre, SummerWorks, What the Festival, Toronto Fringe, and others.
What does it take to become a Brother?
Two magicians seek to become the first women members of the prestigious Worldwide
Brotherhood of Wizardry, which promises to catapult them into success. You’re attending the performance that is their audition to join the boy’s club.
Presented as a live-in-real-time magic show, The Brotherhood provides a feminist commentary on the performance industry, and the expectations placed upon performers and audiences alike.
Spicy Day is an award-winning theatre company founded by Lauren Welchner and Monica Bradford-Lea. Since 2016, we’ve created and performed critically-acclaimed productions, touring them across the country.
We’re committed to creating new, interactive work that unites audiences in laughter, while opening honest and complex conversation on current social issues. The themes of our work largely stem from our experiences as women, and societal expectations based on gender.
How The Gremlin Ruined Game Night by Kendelle Parks
Workshop supported by Diaspora Dialogues
Kendelle Parks is an actor, playwright, and director, based in the GTA. She holds a BFA in Acting from Toronto Metropolitan University, and loves theatre that uses stylized or heightened language, portrays morally grey characters, and subverts expectations. She approaches her writing through a lens of humour, often embracing the silly and absurd. Recent writing and directing credits include INSERT CLOWN HERE (Parlous Theatre), which was a recipient of Toronto Fringe’s The Spirit of The Fringe award, and received a 2025 Dora nomination.
Four siblings work together as they figure out what to do in the wake of a shocking family secret. In this absurd comedy, where morals, familial duties and childhood grudges all come to play, these siblings’ game nights may never be the same.
Crushing Cans by Michael Caldwell and Anika Johnson
Michael Caldwell (he/him) is an artistic director, curator, producer, choreographer, dancer/actor, and arts advocate, based in Toronto (Tkaronto) Canada.
Michael serves as Artistic Director at SummerWorks in Tkaronto, and as a Co-Curator for Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal, in Nova Scotia. In addition, he is a Guest Curator in various national and international contexts, acts as a consultant with various arts organizations, and is a mentor to many emerging artists/curators in the Canadian arts community.
Garnering critical acclaim, his choreography has been commissioned and presented throughout Canada and abroad at major festivals, in traditional venues and in site-responsive and community-engaged contexts.
Michael has performed and collaborated with over 55 of Canada’s esteemed performance creators and companies, working internationally and performing across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. His performances have earned him two (2) Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding performance in dance.
With a bachelor’s degree in film/art history from Syracuse University in upstate New York, and professional dance training at Dance Arts Institute, Michael now serves as President of the Board of Directors at The CanDance Network and also, at Toffan Rhythm Productions Inc.
Anika Johnson is a Dora-winning composer, performer, sound designer and music director whose work has been presented across Asia, Europe and North America. Collaborations include The Last Timbit (the Tim Hortons Musical), Dr. Silver (MSC/Outside the March) and Summerland (Edge of the Sky). She serves as dramaturg for her sister Britta’s show Life After and is developing new work for the Stratford Festival and California’s South Coast Repertory. Anika tours internationally with Corpus DanceProjects and Wannabe: A Spice Girls Tribute.
Crushing Cans (working title) is an autobiographical musical exploring Michael Caldwell’s existence as the son of a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier. Through the skillful embodiment of multiple characters and personas, each with their own distinct musical and physical vocabulary, Michael tests the limits of his own identity and searches for connection with a mother who took her secrets to the grave and a father who hates talking. Anika Johnson, Michael’s long-time friend and collaborator, serves as his accompanist and musical voice, creating an original pop mix-tape of Michael’s memories.
Instagram
Michael Caldwell @mahkemahke
Anika Joshnson @anikarosej
Aging Youth Gang by Norman Yeung
Norman is currently writing “Aging Youth Gang” (development from Theatre Passe Muraille, fu-GEN, Crow’s) and “Eunuch X Pirate” (Playwright in Residence at Outside the March). Other plays include “Theory” (premieres at Tarragon Theatre and Mosaic Theater Company of Washington, D.C., Voaden Prize recipient, Carol Bolt Award nomination, published by Playwrights Canada Press) and “Pu-Erh” (Dora Award nomination for Outstanding New Play, Voaden Prize finalist). He was a Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize finalist. He recently performed in his third season at Stratford Festival.
A trio of senior citizens are none too pleased with yet another hipster coffee shop gentrifying their Chinatown, so they deal with the business the best way they know how: Sabotage! Things take a turn when a certain someone joins forces with the coffee shop to make it more successful. Betrayal? Perhaps. Sabotage? More.
“Aging Youth Gang” dives into the dilemma of new people moving into old places. An often uneasy, sometimes symbiotic relationship grows. As cherished neighbourhoods like Chinatowns teeter on disappearing, can cool bars and artists’ spaces contribute to their revival… or hasten their demise? Yet we risk losing them all at the hands of billion-dollar developments. With a warm heart and rowdy energy, “Aging Youth Gang” reckons with the legacies of family and community facing challenging change. With lots of bao.
Aging Youth Gang was originally commissioned and developed by Crow’s Theatre, 2023, Chris Abraham, Artistic Director and Sherrie Johnson, Executive Director. And is supported by funding from the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council
Instagram @normanyeung
Since 1968, Theatre Passe Muraille has created over 700 new Canadian plays. Supporting works in development is at the heart of our operations.
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