There’s a strong current running through this year’s Toronto Fringe: shows about the work of becoming… who we are, who decides that, and what it costs to insist on – or discover – an answer of our own.
These ten productions approach that question from wildly different angles: a Montreal private school, a Filipinx teen’s suburban bedroom, an accent-erasing invention, a portal in a belly button. However, each one is, at heart, asking what it takes to be seen on your own terms.
QUESTING THROUGH LIFE Soulpepper’s Weyni Mengesha Theatre | Dodo Tree Productions
The premise: A tabletop Dungeons & Dragons campaign starts bleeding into reality for a group of friends, each struggling with their own version of growing up. Queer love, friendship, and a ten-foot dragon puppet collide in this original fantasy-drama, written, directed, and produced by 17-year-old Tanya Yong and built from the ground up by a mostly-teen Toronto cast and creative team.
Why we’re intrigued: There’s something genuinely interesting about watching a teenage creative team reach for fantasy as a vehicle for the real disorientation of adolescence, rather than treating the genre as pure escapism. A ten-foot dragon puppet doesn’t hurt either!
CUSP
Soulpepper’s Weyni Mengesha Theatre | TMI & Co Theatre Company
The premise: Eight twenty-somethings spend a summer at a cottage in this contemporary adaptation of Chekhov’s *Uncle Vanya* Boredom calcifies and family dynamics peak, yet nobody quite sure what comes next. It’s the industry launch for TMI & Co, a collective of George Brown Theatre School graduates at the cusp of their profession staging one more show together before scattering into the profession.
Why we’re intrigued: Adapting Chekhov for the specific anxiety of standing at the edge of adulthood is a smart conceptual move, and there’s an obvious poignancy in a graduating class choosing that particular threshold as their first outing as professionals.
GRATITUDE
Soulpepper’s RBC Finance Studio | Hyper-Allergenic Productions | Written and directed by Oren Safdie
The premise: Fifteen-year-old Dariya, a student at an elite Montreal private school, becomes infatuated with Drew, the class heartthrob in this coming-of-age drama exploring adolescence, sexuality, and cultural identity. Inspired in part by playwright-director Safdie’s own experiences growing up in Montreal, the play follows what begins as an innocent crush as it spirals into a series of events affecting four teenagers.
Why we’re intrigued: Safdie is working close to home here. First-love stories that take adolescent power dynamics seriously — rather than softening them for comfort — tend to be the ones worth sitting with.
THE IMPROPER IDENTITY
Native Earth’s Minogitoon Workspace, Giizis Studio | Mihyonvision | Written and directed by Miho Suzuki| Dramaturgy by Carly Heffernan
The premise: Ai, a Japanese immigrant actress, struggles to find work in Canada because of how she speaks — until she encounters the “Pronunciationizer,” a fictional device designed to erase accents. Based in part on Suzuki’s own lived experience, the play uses satire, physical theatre, and multimedia to ask who gets heard, who gets believed, and who decides what counts as “proper.”
Why we’re intrigued: Building a piece of speculative technology around something as unglamorous and pervasive as accent discrimination is a sharp way into a subject that rarely gets full theatrical treatment. The premise alone promises real bite.
FIRST KISS
Written by Nathalie Younglai | Directed by Damon Bradley Jang | Starring Josette Jorge
The premise: A Filipinx teen in 1980s suburbia chases her first kiss before turning sixteen, measuring her life against the John Hughes rom-coms of the era, only to realize no one on screen looks like her. Multiple Canadian Screen Award winner Josette Jorge plays all five characters in this coming-of-age musical about belonging.
Why we’re intrigued: Younglai’s own account of pitching an Asian-led ’80s teen story and still hitting walls in television gives this one an unusually pointed edge. It’s a period piece with something current to say about who gets cast as the romantic lead.
BELLY BUTTON
Soulpepper’s Michael Young Theatre | Thera Theatre
The premise: Q leaves home through the portal in their stomach and meets Hungarian-Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil on the other side, who challenges everything Q thinks they know about family, immigration, and queerness. A surreal, choral, 60-minute meditation performed by a full cast of POC immigrant artists, tracing the inheritances passed down the maternal line.
Why we’re intrigued: Pairing a real historical painter with a surreal framing device is an ambitious swing, and a full ensemble built specifically from immigrant artists’ lived experience suggests this one has been developed from the inside out.
WHAT WE SAW: Curiosity rewarded! This is a colourful and moving story (both emotionally and visually) about coming to grips with who you are and where you came from. It’s a unique fusion of dance and drama, with a wild (but clear) narrative, a sly and warmhearted sense of humour, a wonderful lead (Shriyanshi Quanoongo), a personality-packed set of dancers as her thoughts / insecurities, and exquisite choreography that tells the story AND etches itself into your memory.
SPIRITUAL BOB IS TRAPPED IN PARADISE!
Native Earth’s Giizis Studio | C & C Theatre Company| Written by Caspian Keys
The premise: Two Mormon missionaries are magically locked in a room and visited by religious figures who test their faith and friendship, in this absurdist tragicomedy drawn from playwright Caspian Keys’s own journal entries as a 21-year-old sister missionary. Keys, now a 45-year-old trans man, wrote the role of Lewis — his fictional counterpart — specifically for drag performer Nicky Nasrallah (Selena Vyle), a choice that maps his own discomfort presenting as a woman onto the stage.
Why we’re intrigued: The distance between the material’s origin — real journal entries from a young missionary — and its current, absurdist form is exactly the kind of gap that tends to produce something achingly honest. A love letter to former companions still active in the church, written by someone who left it, is a genuinely unusual angle.
YOU, ALWAYS, NEVER
Native Earth, Aki Studio
The premise: Kaushi and Krish reconnect after decades apart in this intimate two-hander, revisiting memories that blur the line between friendship and something else. Moving between past and present, the play asks what happens to connections that resist easy definition.
Why we’re intrigued: Two-handers live or die on the specificity of what’s left unsaid, and a structure built around ambiguity — is this friendship, is this more — puts real pressure on that.
ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT 2.0
Alumnae Theatre | Created and performed by Anesti Danelis
The premise: Stuck for material for a new comedy special, Anesti outsources the job to ChatGPT — which doesn’t know who he is and keeps demanding more data. An update to Danelis’s hit musical comedy special, following sold-out runs at the Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Sydney comedy festivals, the show uses songs and video to work through growing up in a loud Greek family, navigating queerness, and being pulled between two cultures, all filtered through the flattening pressure of algorithmic culture.
Why we’re intrigued: Using AI’s failure to understand a specific, textured identity as the engine of the show — rather than just a punchline — is a clever way to make a well-worn topic feel personal again. A track record of sold-out international runs suggests the songwriting holds up.
2% OF CONDOMS
Soulpepper’s Weyni Mengesha Theatre | Theatre Apochrypha | Nikki Bon and Claire Cavalheiro
The premise:Best friends Nikki Bon and Claire Cavalheiro — both born from broken condoms and raised without fathers — careen through their own accidental conceptions, Y2K excess, and the harrowing torture of parenthood in this semi-autobiographical two-woman show. A sardonic look at whether two women this badly wired for chaos can actually change.
Why we’re intrigued: Comics working from their own origin stories tend to have the sharpest material, and building the show’s premise around the specific accident of their own conception gives this one an unusually direct line to the personal.
The Toronto Fringe Festival runs until July 12, 2026. Tickets are available at fringetoronto.com.
Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
