About the Play:

The Watershed is a full-length drama by Annabel Soutar. How much do we value clean water? Enough to stop our industrialized way of life from degrading it? The documentary play The Watershed follows an artist and her family in the struggle to chart a sustainable course between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship.

The Watershed is a documentary play about a seminal moment in Canadian history; the attack on the future of fresh water. Inspired from private conversations in homes and current event stories in the media, The Watershed brings to the stage a multiplicity of ideological perspectives and conflicting visions for Canada's natural resources, and its characters speak the words of real Canadians from all across the political spectrum. As the play reaches its boiling point, one thing becomes abundantly clear: a contemporary play about water in Canada must also be about oil. And so the playwright and family travel to Alberta's tar sands, encountering along the way some of the world's great freshwater scientists, some of Canada's fiercest environmental activists, and impassioned individuals at work in the country's burgeoning oil sector. Policy is anything but dry in The Watershed; in fact, it holds startling implications for our national identity and future.

The Watershed premiered in 2015 at Berkeley Street Theatre as a commissioned work during PANAMANIA, the arts and culture festival that was part of the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games. Since then the play has been produced at professional theatres across Canada.

Cast: 5 female, 3 male

What people say:

"The Watershed asks us to resist our ideological impulses, start listening to one another, and have some long, hard conversations about what kind of country we want our kids to inherit." — Globe and Mail

"Documentary theatre at a very high level... We need more political drama like this. We need more politics like this." — National Post

"Humour... plays a crucial role in diluting the potentially hard-to-swallow muesli of facts and figures... an enjoyable, often thoughtfully stimulating trip." — Montreal Gazette

About the Playwright:

Annabel Soutar is a Canadian playwright, director and theatre producer. She is the artistic director of Porte Parole, a Montreal-based theatre company dedicated to creating and producing original documentary plays about contemporary social and political issues. Born and raised in Montreal, She studied English and Theatre at Princeton University in New Jersey where she completed her degree in 1994. While at Princeton, under the tutelage of renowned American playwright Emily Mann, Annabel learned about the documentary approach to theatre and since 1998 she has been applying it to plays she produces in Montreal.