It's 1970s Winnipeg--a time of revolution and radical possibilities--and an apartment building of Indian immigrant friends is about to be transformed by their latest arrival. A young Bengali Muslim woman, Nuzha, has just married Qasim over the phone at his mother's insistence, and can't wait to start her new life with him. But Qasim struggles to let go of his true love, a Canadian nurse named Abby, making him an emotionally and physically distant husband. Broken-hearted but full of pluck, Nuzha finds comfort and adventures on her own terms by exploring everything her new community has to offer. From braving the bus schedule to building close relationships with Qasim's friends, Nuzha's discoveries are thrilling, enriching, and crack open new possibilities for everyone.
From the creator of the powerful solo show Crash, Pamela Sinha's New is an evocative, emotionally-astute comedy about the complex nature of love and sacrifice, joyful togetherness and piercing loneliness, and what it means to create entirely new ways of life through our willingness to tread uncharted territory.
Pamela Mala Sinha is an award-winning Canadian actress/writer working internationally in theatre, television, and film. Pamela was the recipient of Canada's prestigious Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play (playwright) and Outstanding Lead Actress for her solo debut play, CRASH. Published by Scirocco Drama, CRASH was also included in Bloomsbury Publishing's (UK) Audition Speeches and Love, Loss and Longing (Playwrights Canada). Her second play, Happy Place, premiered in Toronto in 2015 at Soulpepper, followed by Vancouver's Touchstone Theatre in October 2017 and Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange in 2018. CRASH's US debut was at New York's Signature Theatre in 2017. As one of few artists selected nationally to receive a prestigious Project Imagination commission from Soulpepper, Pamela wrote her third play, New. Following its world premiere at Royal MTC, it will have a second production at Toronto's Canadian Stage Theatre (co-produced by Necessary Angel Theatre). Pamela's film adaptation of Happy Place (Sienna Films, dir. Helen Shaver) premiered at VIFF in 2020. She has completed development with CBC and Sienna on her original television drama series Nirvana and production has just wrapped on the filming of CRASH (dir. Alan Dilworth), starring Pamela.
Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) works in Tkaron: to with many Indigenous artists to support the development of new works and to disseminate artistic objectives, process, and outcomes through community-driven research projects. Her scholarly research, creative projects, and activism are built upon ongoing relationships with Elders, scholars, youth, artists, and activists positioning her as witness to, participant in, and disseminator of oral histories that speak to the application of Indigenous aesthetic principles and traditional knowledge systems to contemporary performance.
