A long-awaited musical from playwright Tomson Highway, a '90s take on "Macbeth" and skateboarding stunts are among the spectacles bound for the National Arts Centre.
Canada's multidisciplinary home for the performing arts released a 2025-26 lineup Thursday that includes the return of holiday favourites including Handel’s "Messiah" by the NAC Orchestra and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's “Nutcracker” in December.
In between are dance, orchestral, pop music and drama productions from new voices and established veterans. Here’s a look at some of the highlights.
THEATRE
Highway brings the third instalment of his "Rez Cycle" to NAC's Indigenous Theatre program, with the world première of his musical “Rose.” The 2003 play is set on the Wasaychigan Hill Reserve in 1992, and revisits several characters from "The Rez Sisters" and "Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing." The story here centres on Emily Dictionary and her biker pals "as they fight to reclaim their community." NAC says the musical has never been staged "due to its scale and ambition.”
In the English Theatre lineup, artistic director Nina Lee Aquino directs two world premières: “Copperbelt” by Natasha Mumba, a co-production with Soulpepper Theatre about the daughter of a powerful African family caught between ambition and the cost of success; and the eco-thriller “cicadas,” created by David Yee and Chris Thornborrow and co-produced by Tarragon Theatre, in which a very strange house sinks into the earth.
The English Theatre lineup also includes Marie Farsi’s stage adaptation of “Fifteen Dogs,” André Alexis’s Giller Prize-winning novel about a group of dogs suddenly granted human consciousness.
The French Theatre season closes with Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” directed by Quebec visionary Robert Lepage. The original Stratford Festival production, created in collaboration with Lepage's company Ex Machina, set the action amid the biker wars of the 1990s.
ORCHESTRA
Music director Alexander Shelley’s final season with the NAC Orchestra opens with Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca” and boasts an all-Canadian edition of the Great Performers series, including Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Quebec City-based chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy and recitals by Calgary-born pianist Jan Lisiecki and Grammy Award-winning violinist James Ehnes.
Soloists include violinists Hilary Hahn and Joshua Bell, cellist Bryan Cheng, and pianists Lang Lang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Hélène Grimaud.
DANCE
Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen unleashes what NAC describes as a “zany” production dubbed “Skatepark,” in which skateboarding thrill-seekers encounter a group of dancers.
Also, Guillaume Côté and Lepage present a dance version of "Hamlet," the Royal Winnipeg Ballet offers up a surreal “Hansel & Gretel” and the National Ballet of Canada presents a new work, "Procession," from choreographers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber.
POPULAR MUSIC AND VARIETY
The Pops lineup will see singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright hit the stage Oct. 15, followed by Ariane Moffatt on Oct. 16 and Choir! Choir! Choir! on Nov. 23.
There's also a tribute to Aretha Franklin featuring Broadway star Capathia Jenkins and soul singer Ryan Shaw, Troupe Vertigo fuses acrobatics and symphonic music, and live concerts of film scores from "The Muppet Christmas Carol" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."
International artists include the Manchester-based instrumental trio Gogo Penguin on Oct. 17, the Soweto Gospel Choir on Nov. 29 and an onstage conversation and food demonstration with British chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi on March 1, 2026.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2025.
Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
