Tarragon Theatre’s Artistic Director, Mike Payette and Executive Director Lisa Li have announced the return of the Greenhouse Festival, a showcase of new and in-progress works that expand the boundaries of performance genres. The line-up includes everything from shadow puppetry to magic shows, dance, and a confessional concert.
The work of three artistic collectives will be featured in the Festival, which runs from January 27 to 31, 2026 in Tarragon’s Extraspace, with other performances and installations located throughout the Tarragon’s theatre.
Greenhouse Festival is a process-led residency program that emphasizes works that involve an exchange between artists and audience. Audience members are encouraged to explore Tarragon’s various spaces between Extraspace performances to discover new works.
Tarragon’s Artistic Director, Mike Payette, notes in a statement, “We are thrilled to usher in the new year with the vibrant and highly celebrated festival of new ideas and creation. Now in its 3rd edition, the Greenhouse Festival warms the winter with residency artists and building activations from exciting Ontario-based talent, and with a new introduction that bridges artists from across the country and showcases them to Toronto audiences. Dive into the world of new work exploration that will help shape the future of Canadian art-making.”
Works featured in the previous two iterations of the Greenhouse Festival have gone on to full productions, including Kevin Matthew Wong’s Benevolence, and Adam Proulx’s Emilio’s A Million Chameleons. Both previously featured works in progress have since toured across the Canada and the US.
Greenhouse Festival 2026
The 2026 Greenhouse Festival offers three new works that revolve around storytelling, and incorporate music and movement. It will also include a special presentation of Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! and in between performances, Festival goers can explore Love Me Back and Planter Box Cabaret.
Greenhouse Festival producer jonnie lombard comments, “Greenhouses are defined by their brightness, the walls of windows that let in warmth and light, and allow us peek into the growth taking place. The Greenhouse Festival imagines Tarragon Theatre as such a space, a cozy, bright incubator where everyone inside is a gardener of new theatrical works.
“Each Greenhouse Artists-in-Residence entered their process with an exciting question of theatrical form and process, with a need for audiences to help answer them. The Festival offers a rare opportunity for artists and audiences to experiment together in the soil of creativity, before a project has reached its final stages, and be equal parts of the photosynthesizing of innovative Canadian theatre. I encourage folks frolicking in the Greenhouse flowerbed to stop and stay a while at the Festival’s offerings and activations, share thoughts with an audience neighbour and make a friend along the way, and take every opportunity to try something new. We can’t wait to grow with you!”
Storytelling
Apology Show
Apology Show is an exploration of accountability and repair. The work is monologue, concert, and research project all at once, where selected members of the audience will be invited to role-play the apology they’ve always dreamed of making.
Artist: Tiny Bear Jaws
Tiny Bear Jaws is a queer and femme-run cross-Canadian theatre company with a mandate of creating works that create both empathy and the kind of discomforting feelings that produce positive change. The company is dedicated to incorporating digital media as a means of examining the infinite ways that technology influences our world, and creates thoughtful design elements for all their shows.
Pulse
Pulse uses improvisation, hip hop, and collaborative creation as the basis for a theatrical story that is, at its heart, an exploration of belonging, identity, and community.
Artists
Multidisciplinary artist Eric Miracle blends storytelling and movement in his experimental works. He’s joined by award-winning multidisciplinary creator Riel Reddick-Stevens (she/her), an artist who is dedicated to making theatre more accessible. Reddick-Stevens studied acting and musical theatre at Randolph College and the National Theatre School of Canada. Her works mixes natural sounds and movement with choral vocals and beats.
Ramla and the Desert
This shadow puppetry/live animation project brings to life a tale of desert disappearances. It was written and produced by Nehal El-Hadi and directed by Mabel Wonnacott, with puppet design and animation by Heather Piper, music by Waleed Abdulhamid.
Artists
Writer, researcher, and editor Nehal El-Hadi trained as an environmental journalist and urban planning scholar. Her work explores the relationships with the materials, technologies, and spaces that define our humanity. She also holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, where she is developing The Observer Effect, a public space performance that examines the impacts of surveillance.
Tkaronto-based opera director, arts educator, and puppeteer Mabel Wonnacott has directed and assisted productions across Canada, including organizations such as The Banff Centre, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Toronto City Opera, and the Canadian Children’s Opera Company.
Interdisciplinary artist and local 829 scenic painting union member Heather Piper studied screenwriting and puppet theatre at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works in puppetry has been performed for a broad range of audiences, including performances at public gardens, on Broadway, and in both TV commercials and independent film.
Canadian multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, music and film producer Waleed Abdulhamid is known as an innovative vocalist, bass player, and virtuosic percussionist. He has become a busy and respected member of Toronto’s music scene since his arrival in 1991 from Sudan, where he was a child star from the age of six. He counts two Dora Awards among the multiple accolades for his work.
Free Performances
Love Me Back [FREE performance]
Somewhere between a magic show and a play, Love Me Back explores the murky realm of love, heartbreak, and connection, along with the secrets hidden in a deck of playing cards.
Festival goers can enjoy this performance each night between shows at 8:30 p.m. in the Near Studio on a first-come, first-served basis.
Artist
Hamilton-based playwright, director, and magic designer Michael Kras (he/him) is probably best known for his Voaden Prize-winning play The Team (Essential Collective Theatre/Theatre Aquarius); No Big Deal (Roseneath Theatre); and The Year and Two of Us Back Here (Broken Soil Theatre). His credits include magic direction and design for international shows such as the Canadian Premiere and North American Tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, among many others.
Planter Box Cabaret [FREE]
The Planter Box Cabaret is a space where audience members can hang out and connect between the Extraspace presentations on each night of the Festival from 8:30 till 9:00 p.m. Activations feature local artists such as:
- Dance Party with DJ Switch B (Tuesday and Saturday)
- Almost Jeopardy: Greenhouse Edition with Nam Nguyen (Wednesday)
- Loop Pedal Poetry with Elizabeth Staples (Thursday)
- Craft and Chill with Labour in the Arts (Amanda Lin and Emily Jung) (Friday)
- Closing Night Karaoke with Asher Rose (Saturday)
Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop!
If you can imagine Judy Garland in performance at Carnegie Hall on acid, you’re close to award-winning Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! Pearle’s performance is characterized by a razor sharp wit and demented sense of storytelling ripped from the most anxiety-inducing headlines. Along the way, Pearle reimagines big hits of the 20th century (musical director Stella Conway), including songs by David Bowie, Britney Spears, the Beach Boys, and more.
Agit-Pop! has toured to every coast of Canada in venues from 1,00-seat vaudeville theatres to concert halls to defunct sex clubs.
Artist
Pearle Harbour is an award-winning drag performance artist and theatre maker whose work puts the audience at the centre of a celebration of the radically transformative potential of collective experience.
Details
- Find performance times and details for the Greenhouse Festival [HERE].
Discounts are available for students, seniors, groups and arts workers. Contact the box office for more information.
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