About Watercourse Theatre

The company stages powerful, compelling and empowering stories through the creation processes and presentation styles that most effectively convey them.

Watercourse Theatre’s work focuses in two areas: creating and staging original plays for professional productions; and community-engaged co-creations.

The company’s professional theatre has explored a wide range of topics including: homelessness and gentrification (Dead Cat Bounce), youth anxiety (Half Full), older adults and autonomy (Spend Your Kids’ Inheritance), human drug-testers for pharmaceutical companies (GuineaPigging), Ontario’s child welfare system (Thistlepatch), and domestic terrorism (Homegrown).

Our theatre productions co-created with communities are increasingly central to our mandate as we have learned the power and transformative impact of this work on participants, communities and ourselves. These co-creations also invite the opportunity to work with other groups, weaving together connections between people and organizations within communities.

Watercourse Theatre’s first community-engaged project was Our Voices, funded by a New Horizons for Seniors project grant in 2014. The organizational partner for Our Voices was Eramosa Eden, an eco-ecumenical retreat centre in rural Wellington County.

The Our Voices group of older adults has produced two stereotype-busting shows about the realities of their lives today. The script for Our Voices: Senior Selfies has now been published by Art Age Publications, and Our Voices group members share the royalties equally.

Since then, Watercourse Theatre has participated in a project on Six Nations Reserve, and been commissioned by the Suicide Awareness Council of Wellington-Dufferin to create and tour a new work about hope and resilience for people whose lives have been impacted by suicide (AfterWhys).

Our community-engaged co-creations are developed through listening to participants, rather than any pre-determined project template. Each group determines their creative process, with respectful encouragement and support from the facilitator.