A theatre founded on the radical idea of staging only Canadian plays
Factory Theatre
Founded in 1970 with a mandate to produce Canadian plays exclusively, Factory Theatre helped launch a generation of homegrown playwriting at a time when Canadian stages leaned almost entirely on imported work.
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Factory Theatre was founded in Toronto in 1970 with an unusually specific mandate: to produce exclusively Canadian plays, at a time when Canadian professional theatres relied overwhelmingly on British and American scripts and homegrown playwriting had little institutional support. The name itself was a deliberate statement of purpose, framing the theatre as a factory for producing new Canadian work rather than another venue importing established foreign hits.
Part of a wider nationalist theatre wave
Factory Theatre emerged alongside similar Canadian-content-focused companies including Tarragon Theatre, part of a broader nationalist push in Canadian arts during the early 1970s that also touched literature, film and music. The theatre staged early and career-launching work by numerous Canadian playwrights over subsequent decades, maintaining its founding mandate as a small but influential part of Toronto's theatre ecosystem focused specifically on developing homegrown writing talent.
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