2025 THA Comedy Award Finalists
Supported by an Anonymous Donor
Koan by Damien Atkins (ON)
A playwright has a terrible idea: he wants to write a play about trees. His director has a different suggestion: write a play about the playwright’s father’s journey with Alzheimer’s. The playwright decides – stupidly – to try and do both. A koan is a centuries-old Zen Buddhist riddle that can’t be solved. This “Koan” is a funny, hallucinatory journey through memory, sex, trees, drugs, theatre, panic, Buddhism, and the desperate search for an answer to the riddle of life.
Playwright and actor Damien Atkins has performed on most of the major stages across the country. Recent credits include: De Profundis (Soulpepper), Here Lies Henry (Factory), Sherlock Holmes & The Mystery of the Human Heart, Candida, Blithe Spirit, The Shadow of a Doubt (Shaw), The Sound of Music (Arts Club), Caroline, or Change (Obsidian/Musical Stage); Angels in America (Arts Club). He has spent four seasons as actor and playwright at the Stratford Festival, and seven at the Shaw Festival in the same capacities. His plays include Real Live Girl, miss chatelaine, Lucy, Good Mother, The Mill, Part Four: Ash, The Gay Heritage Project (with Andrew Kushnir and Paul Dunn), We Are Not Alone, Prince Caspian, and Sherlock Holmes & The Mystery of the Human Heart (under the pen name of Reginald Candy). Damien has been a guest instructor at the National Theatre School, and playwright-in-residence at Necessary Angel, Crow’s Theatre, Canadian Stage and Factory Theatre. He has received a Jessie Award, two Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards and twelve Dora Mavor Award Nominations, winning five.
Home Deliveries by Catherine Léger, translated by Leanna Brodie (QC)
Adapted from the screenplay by Marie-José Raymond and Claude Fournier
Two housebound neighbours – one on mat leave, one on anti-depressants – strike up an unlikely friendship. Since their husbands barely notice they exist, they realize they are free to take their pleasure into their own hands… and why go out shopping for sexual satisfaction, when you can get it delivered? This witty, raucous, and irreverent exploration of female desire is feminist comedy like you’ve never seen it before: juicy, fearless, and full of joie de vivre. You’ll never wait for the cable guy quite the same way again!
Catherine Léger writes for film, TV and theatre. Charlotte a du fun won Best Original Screenplay at the 2019 Canadian Screen Awards. The film, directed by Sophie Lorain, played at several festivals, including Tribeca, Tokyo and Angoulême. She also co-wrote La petite reine (2014), directed by Alexis Durand Brault, and adapted Geneviève Pettersen’s novel La déesse des mouches à feu, directed by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and officially selected for the 70th Berlin International Film Festival 2020. Television: Les invisibles (TVA, 2019), Marche à l’ombre (Super Écran, 2017). Theatre: Princesses (Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, 2011), J’ai perdu mon mari (Quai des arts, Carleton-sur-mer, 2014), Filles en liberté (Théâtre La Licorne, 2018). Baby-sitter, presented at Théâtre La Licorne in April 2017, has been performed in Ohio, Limoges and Munich. The film, directed by Monia Chokri, opened in France and Canada in spring 2022, and was selected for Sundance and Tribeca. She recently premiered Changer de vie. A film adaptation of her play Deux femmes en or will be released in May 2025.
Leanna Brodie is an award-winning performer and writer as well as a leading translator of Québécois and Franco-Canadian playwrights. Recent premieres: David Paquet’s Wildfire (Factory Theatre, Toronto); Anaïs Pellin’s Clementine (Kleine Compagnie/Carousel Theatre/PHT, Vancouver); Fanny Britt’s Benevolence (Ruby Slippers Theatre/Pacific Theatre, Vancouver); Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska (Belfry Theatre, Victoria); Rébecca Déraspe’s I Am William (Stratford Festival, Théâtre le Clou). Her own plays include Salesman in China, written in colloboration with Jovanni Sy, which just premiered at the Stratford Festival and National Arts Centre to great acclaim. Awards: Dora Mavor Moore Award, QWF Award, Flourish Prize, PGC (Tom Hendry) Award. www.leannabrodie.com
Aging Youth Gang by Norman Yeung (ON)
A trio of senior citizens are none too pleased with yet another hipster coffee shop gentrifying their Chinatown, so they deal with the business the best way they know how: Sabotage! Things take a turn when a certain someone joins forces with the coffee shop to make it more successful. Betrayal? Perhaps. Sabotage? More.
Norman Yeung is a writer, actor, and visual artist. He has written Aging Youth Gang (development from Crow’s Theatre and fu-GEN Theatre Company) and is writing Eunuch X Pirate (Playwright in Residence at Outside the March). His play Theory premiered at Tarragon Theatre and had an American premiere by Mosaic Theater Company of Washington, D.C. Theory received The Voaden Prize, was nominated for the Carol Bolt Award, and is published by Playwrights Canada Press. Pu-Erh received four Dora Award nominations, including Outstanding New Play, and was a finalist for The Voaden Prize. Shorter plays include The Zoonotic Story (Stratford Festival/National Arts Centre), I Know I’m Supposed to Love You (Touchstone Theatre), and more. He was a Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize finalist. He is performing in Stratford Festival’s 2025 season. Norman was born in Guangzhou, grew up in East Vancouver, and lives in Toronto, a few blocks from Chinatown.
Special thanks to Comedy Award Peer Assessment Panelists: Kevin Loring (Chair), Natasha MacLellan, and Zahida Rahemtulla.