National Network for Equitable Library Service

As a condition of his parole, Darren has been ordered by the court to live with his father, Wally, on the rez. The two have always had a contentious relationship: Wally is a problem drinker, and Darren's got a short fuse. But Wally tells his son that he's stopped drinking and started going to ceremony, and urges Darren to do the same. As old family secrets start to be revealed, the father and son grapple with complex issues.

Growing up on the Six Nations native Reserve, Salt Baby never quite fit in -- her fair skin and curly hair made her more of a Shirley Temple type than a Pocohontas type. As a young woman, Salt Baby begins to explore her identity. Blood quantum, DNA tests, family trees ... What does it mean on the Rez? In the city? Will Alligator ever understand? Will she? With affection and humour, Salt Baby tackles the question of First Nations identity in the 21st centjury. As Salt Baby says, "It's always different for Indians."

In 1964, a white man walks into a public restroom in a Washington, DC park looking for sex. The next man who enters is a black man. In what seems at first to be a simple encounter, The Seat Next to the King explores the lives of two men from the pages of history who literally sat next to the most powerful men in America--Bayard Rustin, a friend to Martin Luther King Jr. who organized the March on Washington, and Walter Jenkins, top aide and friend to President Lyndon Johnson.

Canadian World War Two veteran Jake returns to Normandy on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. He meets and is totally disarmed by a ten year old French girl. This leads him to confront the ghosts of his brother's death in the War.

You are the love of my life, you asshole. When Carey performs at Simon's fortieth birthday celebration, she is forced to come to terms with the greatest lie her husband ever told. A comedy about marriage, music, migraines. . .and swearing.

When it Rains is the story of four people, two marriages, and one increasingly improbable series of events. As misfortune mounts, communication fractures, relationships crumble, behaviour becomes absurd. People sing, get naked, give up, lose control, have sex with strangers. Some kind of God intervenes. Or observes. Or something. Or nothing. When it Rains is by turns blackly funny social satire, heartbreaking drama, existentialist graphic novel, and post-modern Job story.

When the "Kirkland Lake gals of 1941" begin to share their story with a present-day audience, a siren sounds and they soon find themselves pulled right back into the fateful winter of 1941-42. There, they gather again at the mine-head, waiting for word on the men trapped underground, as their fear and rage builds. When the husband of one of the women is badly injured, their desire to help her quickly leads them into a much larger campaign to help all the families they can.

Colours in the Storm is a muscial about the life - and mysterious death - of iconic Canadian painter, Tom Thomson. A play with songs, rather than a traditional muscial, the show follows Thomson's development as a painter from his arrival in Algonquin Park in 1912 to his death there in Canoe Lake in 1917. Increasingly possessed by his artistic vision, Thomson struggles to realize his potential and to come to terms with the passions in his life.

Janet Wilson Meets the Queen begins in Vancouver, 1969, as society is undergoing profound change. Janet, a woman who places great faith in the British monarchy and its traditions, is valiantly trying to hold together her dysfunctional family: her teenaged daughter, Lilibet; her aging mother, "Granny," and her husband, Jim. When Janet's nephew from San Francisco arrives on her doorstep looking for refuge from the Vietnam War draft, the family grapples with what to do.

These two plays by renowned playwright Catherine Banks explore the stories of strong women as they work through their pasts. In Bitter Rose, after a morning of racing around the small liberal arts town where she lives in her bloodied wedding dress, Rose barricades herself in the basement family room to examine her life. For sixteen years she has made small choices (she thought), but on the morning her husband leaves to meet with his female graduate student, she realizes the betrayal destroying her is that of the girl artist inside of her.