Photo: Forrester Toews/The Griff

The Alberta-set musical will be the third show this season, slated alongside The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Carrie: the Musical, and A Chorus Line.

Each year, the halls deep within Allard Hall rumble with the sounds of singing, tap-dancing, and set-building. It’s the sound of the fine arts departments preparing for a new season of shows to light up the stages of the Triffo Theatre and the Tim Ryan Theatre Lab. MacEwan’s theatre season commences on Oct. 29 with Rachel Sheinkin’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, followed by Carrie: The Musical, based on the Stephen King novel. March will kick off with the nationwide premiere of Monoceros, a new Canadian musical based on the Suzette Mayr novel of the same name, and the year rounds out with James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, A Chorus Line.

“Well, first of all, in terms of content and style, they’re dramatically different,” says Dawn Sadoway, who is the current interim chair of MacEwan’s department of theatre. Sadoway has worked as an associate professor at MacEwan since 2015 and is excited about the ambitious and diverse shows that have been selected for this year, as well as how they will benefit the students of MacEwan.

“This particular season, I think, really showcases how far we’re coming, or how far we’ve come, not only just as a department and as a faculty, and the fact that we are able not only to offer a four-show season, but the quality of the work continues to grow and develop in exciting ways,” she says.

Perhaps the most interesting show on the slate is Monoceros. Set in an Alberta high school, the creative team behind this all-new Canadian musical has been holding workshops since 2018, and the final version of the show will be performed for the first time by MacEwan theatre students in March. 

“It has a lot to do with diversity, in terms of gay rights, and there’s all sorts of things that it’s grappling with. It’s got some incredible new music that they’ll be learning, and they’ll have an opportunity to really, for the first time, present this particular story and this particular musical to a general public,” says Sadoway.

“This particular season, I think, really showcases how far we’re coming, or how far we’ve come, not only just as a department and as a faculty, and the fact that we are able not only to offer a four-show season, but the quality of the work continues to grow and develop in exciting ways.”

—Dawn Sadoway, interim chair of MacEwan’s department of theatre.

Kate Ryan, artistic director of the Mayfield Dinner Theatre and founder of Plain Jane Theatre Company, will be coming on as director of Monoceros. Ryan has been around the MacEwan theatre scene for decades — she’s been an instructor in the theatre department since 2014, and her father, Tim, was head of the department from 1979 to 2009. 

MacEwan will be working with the writers of Monoceros to bring the show to life. 

“We’re really hopeful that this will kickstart, potentially, the further development of this show, and we’ll see it on the main stages across the country at some point,” says Sadoway.

Monoceros is the third show on the schedule for the 2025-2026 season. Kicking off the season is The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which follows six elementary school students competing in a spelling bee and the three adults organizing it. It’s an opportunity for actors to play roles much younger than themselves while also telling an emotionally rich story.

“It’s not just about the spelling bee, it’s about the lives of these really interesting, human, young, young, young people and the challenges they face. And there’s some really, really heartfelt moments,” says Sadoway.

Spelling Bee will be performed in the Tim Ryan Theatre Lab, located within Allard Hall. With just four tiers of seating and a capacity of 100 (as opposed to the Triffo Theatre’s capacity of over 400), the Tim Ryan is an intimate space that Sadoway thinks will lend itself to the charm and earnestness of the show.

“Our dance program, since the degree has started, has really developed, and we have an exceptional group of dancers,” says Sadoway.

—Dawn Sadoway, interim chair of MacEwan’s department of theatre.

Carrie: The Musical is a dramatic switch-up from the first show. One of the “black sheep” of Broadway, the show lasted only five Broadway performances before it shuttered, garnering a reputation as one of the most expensive Broadway failures of all time thanks to its eight-million-dollar budget. The show is now a kind of cult classic within the theatre community. Based on Stephen King’s 1974 novel, it tells the story of Carrie White, a bullied teenager with telekinetic powers who is pushed to her breaking point by her abusive mother and cruel classmates.

Carrie presents both actors and technicians with unique challenges — it’s easily the darkest show of the season and has some heavy, intense material. The show is an opportunity for students to showcase their dramatic and technical range.

“I’m really, really fascinated to see what the creative team is going to do with this in terms of lighting, video, and other tech,” says Sadoway. “I can’t promise anything, but there’s talk of blood,” she says.

A Chorus Line is the final show of the season. It’s rare for this show to be performed by students. A Chorus Line is one of the longest-running Broadway productions ever, and one of the most technically challenging. It’s a very raw, emotional, and dance-heavy piece. To pull it off requires a great deal of talent. 

“Our dance program, since the degree has started, has really developed, and we have an exceptional group of dancers,” says Sadoway. “To be able to do Chorus Line is exciting, I think, for us, but it’s also exciting for the dance community.”

Producing A Chorus Line is an opportunity for MacEwan fine arts students to show off their versatility — the show is much more focused on ensemble storytelling than individual performances, and comes with a high level of difficulty. Sadoway thinks that MacEwan’s students are more than up for the challenge.

“I think it’s every dance person’s dream to do Chorus Line at some point in their life,” says Sadoway.

Sadoway says that what the theatre department is able to do in a school year is thanks to the amenities within Allard Hall and the support given to the fine arts programs by MacEwan.

“I am forever and continuously grateful every day I walk into that building and go, ‘Wow, not only is the building amazing, but we also have a university that is committed to the development of artists,’ and what more can you ask for, right?”