In a 2025-26 Toronto theatre season that saw more than 100 new productions debut across the city, Theatre Passe Muraille’s world premiere of Anusree Roy’s Through the Eyes of God emerged as the standout top winner of the 2026 Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards (TTCAs), claiming three major prizes: Best Production of a Play, Best Solo Performance for Gabriella Sundar Singh, and Best Director of a Play for Thomas Morgan Jones.
Crow’s Theatre was the most-feted organization of the year. Productions that the company produced and/or presented collectively received eight TTCAs, headlined by Dave Malloy’s a cappella musical Octet — a Crow’s co-production with Soulpepper Theatre and the Musical Stage Company — which won Best Production of a Musical and Best Ensemble Performance in a Musical.
This year’s edition of the awards, announced Thursday, May 14, featured 24 winners across 20 categories. It also marked the first year prizes were handed out for Best Choreography (shared by Alyssa Martin for Dance Nation and Christopher Wheeldon for MJ), Best Digital Design (Nathan Bruce for Rogers v. Rogers), and Best Puppetry (Ronnie Burkett for Little Willy).
Meanwhile, Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day, produced in Toronto by Coal Mine Theatre, was named Best International Work.
The awards were decided by a jury of 15 professional theatre critics, which included Sesaya Arts’ Arpita Ghosal and Scott Sneddon.
Several categories resulted in shared honours, reflecting the breadth of theatrical excellence across the city. The complete list of 2026 TTCA Award Winners is as follows:
Best New Canadian Work
The Neighbours by Nicolas Billon (Green Light Arts in association with Tarragon Theatre), a slow-burn study of complicity that asks how much a couple may have missed about the gruesome crime next door
Best International Work
Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector (Coal Mine Theatre), a sharply observant and eerily prescient pre-COVID comedy about a Berkeley elementary school board trying to do the right thing during a mumps outbreak
Best Production of a Play
Through the Eyes of God by Anusree Roy (Theatre Passe Muraille), 45 unstoppable minutes of shattering theatre: with script, conception, performance and design all coming together as one
Best Production of a Musical
Octet by Dave Malloy, directed by Chris Abraham (Crow’s Theatre, Soulpepper and the Musical Stage Company), an a cappella chamber musical about Internet addiction that set the bar for Toronto musical theatre this season
Best Lead Performance in a Play
Sophia Walker in Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris (Canadian Stage), for a wrenching and multitudinous portrayal of Kaneisha that culminated in a guttural scream that ripped through the Berkeley Street Theatre
Nicholas Eddie in Bug by Tracy Letts (King Black Box Theatre in partnership with Elkabong Theatre Projects), for a chameleonic descent from gentle, socially awkward drifter to paranoia-consumed incendiary.
Best Supporting Performance in a Play
Matthew G. Brown in The Christmas Market by Kanika Ambrose (b current Performing Arts, in association with Crow’s Theatre and Studio 180 Theatre), for a sensitive, complicated portrayal of Joe, the tragic hero of an exploitative Ontario farm
Kristen Thomson in Fulfillment Centre by Abe Koogler (Coal Mine Theatre), for a devastating, deeply attuned turn as Suzan, a 60-ish former folk singer working a shipping-centre shift opposite an irritated manager half her age
Best Ensemble Performance in a Play
Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Mariya Khomutova, Daniel Maslany and Alon Nashman in The Division by Andrew Kushnir (Project: Humanity and Pyretic Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre), for grounding a multi-country quest into one family’s wartime past with both delicate stillness and gleeful satire
Dean Gilmour, John Ng, Diana Tso, Steven Hao and Madelaine Hodges in Pu Songling: Strange Tales by Theatre Smith-Gilmour and the ensemble (Theatre Smith-Gilmour in association with Crow’s Theatre), for conjuring an entire 17th-century bestiary of foxes, ghosts, judges and fools with their bodies, voices and a few sheets of paper
Best Lead Performance in a Musical
Martin Julien in The Drowsy Chaperone by Lambert, Morrison, Martin and McKellar (Shifting Ground Collective), for an affable, vulnerability-tinged Man in Chair … who won Best Lead in a Musical without singing or dancing a single note
Vanessa Sears in & Juliet by Max Martin and David West Read (Mirvish), for a dazzling, long-awaited turn in the notoriously difficult title role
Best Supporting Performance in a Musical
Damien Atkins in Robin Hood: A Very Merry Family Musical by Matt Murray (Canadian Stage in association with the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres), for an over-the-top, yet achingly human Prince John, who radiated contagious panto glee
Thomas Winiker in Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori (Mirvish and the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts), for an unapologetically awkward, big-hearted Seth, who held his own opposite legend Louise Pitre
Best Ensemble Performance in a Musical
The cast of Octet: Damien Atkins, Alicia Ault, Andrew Broderick, Ben Carlson, Hailey Gillis, Zorana Sadiq, Jacqueline Thair and Giles Tomkins (Crow’s Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre and the Musical Stage Company), for tight a cappella harmonies and impeccable timing across eight dynamic confessions
Best Solo Performance in a Play or Musical
Gabriella Sundar Singh in Through the Eyes of God, for a virtuosic solo performed on a 4’ × 4’ pedestal, which distinguished every character Chaya meets in her desperate search from Kolkata to Delhi for her abducted daughter
Best Director of a Play
Thomas Morgan Jones, Through the Eyes of God (Theatre Passe Muraille), for an orchestration of script, performance and design that exemplifies what theatre direction, at its best, exists to do
Best Director of a Musical
Meredith Shedden, Tick, Tick… Boom! by Jonathan Larson (Bowtie Productions), for finding the soul and scrappy spirit of Larson’s musical on an indie budget
Best Scenic Design
Sophie Ann Rooney, Bug (King Black Box Theatre in partnership with Elkabong Theatre Projects), for a claustrophobic motel room so lived-in that audiences had to physically endure it
Best Lighting Design
Bonnie Beecher, The Welkin (Soulpepper Theatre, the Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre), for sculpting each moment as a shifting period painting, and ensuring no character was lost to darkness
Best Costume Design
Melanie McNeill, Night at the Grand Guignol (Eldritch Theatre), for masks, prosthetics and lightning-fast changes that defined dozens of characters — from burlesque coquettes to a flesh-eating gorilla — on a miniscule budget
Best Sound Design and Music
Ashley Naomi, The Veil (Thought for Food Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre and Guild Festival Theatre), for sound design as predation: restrained, incorporeal and astonishingly precise in its capacity to erode the membrane between the play and the world outside it
Best Choreography
Alyssa Martin, Dance Nation (Coal Mine Theatre and Outside the March in association with Rock Bottom Movement), for movement that placed adult sexuality awkwardly on adolescent bodies, played with overcommitted intensity and emotional vulnerability
Christopher Wheeldon, MJ (Mirvish), for expanding Michael Jackson’s hyper-individual solo style into a large-scale theatrical ensemble vocabulary that also reimagined his Astaire, Nicholas Brothers and Fosse influences
Best Digital Design
Nathan Bruce, Rogers v. Rogers (Crow’s Theatre), for jaw-dropping screens-in-the-floor design, helpful infographics, a Brian Cox cameo, and the world’s most theatrical Zoom call — all anchoring a solo show
Best Puppetry
Ronnie Burkett, Little Willy (Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, presented by Canadian Stage), for the Daisy Theatre’s intricate marionettes and their vaguely Shakespeare-inspired confection, which was the perfect antidote to Toronto’s winter doldrums
Special Citation:
Eldritch Theatre, for its biggest, spookiest season yet — recognized for the company’s expanded scale and exceptional work in the horror genre. Night at the Grand Guignol opened the season with a cast of three (none of them artistic director Eric Woolfe), and Zombocalypse! closed it with five performers squeezed onto the Red Sandcastle Theatre stage, all without compromising Woolfe’s unique style and vision.
Winners will receive a certificate and a personalized written tribute from a member of the jury. Congratulations to all of the laureates.
© Arpita Ghosal and Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine, 2026
