Advance Theatre Festival

I Have a Dream in Chinese

January 26

Playwright: Irene (Fan) Yi

I Have a Dream In Chinese is a one-woman theatrical journey through borders, bodies, and names. Set a board a long-haul flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, a Chinese immigrant navigates the turbulence of micro aggressions, state surveillance, workplace erasure, and the haunting grief of a city left behind. As she oscillates between “Song” and “Ivy,” Mandarin and English, belonging and exile, her inner fracture deepens. Blending poetic monologue, surreal memory, and bureaucratic absurdity, the play explores what it means to carry two names, two histories, and the unbearable silence of trying to belong. Stark, intimate, and unflinching, it asks: how do you start over when you are still arriving?

Far and Free

January 27

Playwright: Abi Padilla

A coming of age romantic comedy set in the late 1980’s during the Philippine’s martial law, Filipino twins Farah and closeted gay brother Francis move to Canada and struggle to let go of their first romantic loves and their activism as they seek a safer, "better life". Questions continue to haunt them: How can they love freely if their motherland isn't fully free?

Just Like Paris

January 28

Playwright: Marcia Johnson

Just Like Paris is a World War II play set in Lethbridge, Alberta. Gwendolyn leaves her fiancé Donovan and their baby in Jamaica for Canada where she can use her newly earned nursing degree to help in the war effort. Gwen is stationed at the largest of Canada’s twenty-seven German Prisoner of War camps in Lethbridge, Alberta. It holds over 12,000 men. Also in Lethbridge is young Japanese Canadian couple Byron and Sakura. They have been displaced from Vancouver and are settling into a small outbuilding on a beet farm. They will work on the farm as cheap labour and wait out the war when people of Japanese ancestry will no longer be seen as the enemy. Their path crosses with Gwendolyn’s when Sakura has a medical emergency. Dietmar is a German private who was captured by British forces in Africa and transported to Lethbridge. He suffers a concussion and has to spend time in the Camp 133 infirmary. When he meets Gwendolyn, he spews all the hatred that he’s been indoctrinated with in Hitler’s Germany. However, Gwendolyn’s resolve and her thoughtful caregiving wins him over. They form an unexpected bond.

Bella Luz

January 29

Playwright: Alexandra Lainfiesta

Bella Luz is a magic-realist play that unfolds across three simultaneous worlds: Toronto (“Here”), Antigua Guatemala (“There”), and the surreal realm of Immigration System Game Shows (“Nowhere”), all tied to Guatemalan dancer Sumailla’s urgent quest for Canadian Permanent Residency. As she navigates a bureaucratic obstacle course staged like TV game shows, Sumailla’s choices in Toronto’s stunt industry, where she is cast to play stereotypical Latina roles, directly impact her family dynamics in Guatemala and her eligibility to remain in Canada. Torn between her mother’s and grandmother’s opposing views on migration, her love for fellow stuntwoman J, and the harsh reality that her only chance to stay lies in “proving” her value to Canada, Sumailla wrestles with moral compromises that echo her grandmother’s warning: “the rich countries change people.” Blending humour, spectacle, and sharp critique, Bella Luz exposes the contradictions of the immigrant experience in Canada, asking whether the sacrifices demanded by the so-called “immigrant’s dream” are worth the personal and cultural costs.

Roald Dahl Doesn’t Care About You

January 30

Playwright: Sewit Eden Haile

Roald Dahl Doesn't Care About You follows a self-formed, self-run writer's group of 3 young women submitting to the coveted M. Beaumont Writing Competition. When a new addition to the group throws off the dynamic, they're forced to address biases and the part they play in the commodification of identity in the arts.