2025 Theatre for Young Audiences Award Recipient
Supported by the Estate of Rachel Wyatt
PYPER by Susanna Fournier
Through a dramatic and hilarious retelling of the Pied Piper and Pinocchio, PYPER follows the angst, humour, heartbreak, and anxiety of 10 cyborg-AI-teens trying to build a time capsule in case they’re “retired” before high school graduation. PYPER is a post-dramatic text born from the internet algorithms of Gez and Gen Alpha as they reckon with what it means to be and become in the age of AI and the disintegration of analogue world orders. Inherently theatrical, it combines story-telling, revisionist history, satire and poetry to ask wickedly funny, urgent, and existential questions: What does it mean to be human in our ever-increasing digital world? What will the future hold? And who will survive it?
The peer assessment panel said: “PYPER is an imaginative, layered piece that explores contemporary themes using a smart, original structure and theatricality.”
Susanna Fournier has been selected to receive the 2026 Banff Playwrights Lab Prize.
“Pyper captures the anxiety and wonder of a generation raised by algorithms. It brings together folklore, speculative science, and the voices of the young to create a wildly inventive exploration of identity, obsolescence, and connection in a rapidly changing world. This play is urgent, imaginative, and unflinchingly alive.” Amiel Gladstone, Director of Theatre Arts, Banff Centre
Susanna Fournier is an award-winning Canadian theatre-maker, actor/director, and performance educator. Her work straddles acting and creating in television, film, and stage. She is known in Canadian theatre for her formally provocative performance texts and interdisciplinary productions. In 2018/19, Susanna’s company, PARADIGM productions, produced her critically acclaimed trilogy, The Empire, across three Toronto venues, as a radio-drama podcast series online, and as a complete reader edition published through Playwrights Canada Press. Her theatre-making has been seen at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Canadian Stage, Luminato, Aki Studio, Theatre Centre, as well as in London UK, Munich, and Berlin. Susanna is a two-time nominee for the KM Hunter Award for theatre artist of the year. She is also a guest artist/director at Toronto Metropolitan University, Etobicoke School of the Arts, and Cawthra Park Secondary School. www.susannafournier.com
Special thanks to Theatre for Young Audiences Award Peer Assessment Panelists: Jan Taylor (Chair), Lily Falk, and Michele Riml.