What Kind of Parents
Writers/Performers: Ali Joy Richardson & Neil Silcox
Director/Dramaturg: Ann-Marie Kerr
“Do I want to be a parent? Can we even be parents? What kind of parents do you hope we’d be? What kind of parents do I fear we’d be? What’s going to happen to us?”
Written as a series of searing confessions and vows to each other, this is a play created and performed by two married artists/therapists as they teeter on the edge of the unknown together.
(90 minutes, 2 actors, minimal set)
Development History:
Workshop Presentation, The Bus Stop Theatre, March 2025
Mall Santa
It’s Christmas eve. Stu, an unlikely shopping mall Santa, collapses while changing in the mall’s loading bay. Suddenly, he finds himself suspended between life and death and bargaining with the real Saint Nick for a second shot at making things right with his daughter. This is a dark comedy about masculinity and redemption.
(60 minutes, 1 actor, minimal set)
The Stupid Hope
Jo, a disillusioned teacher, faces off with her student who’s brought a gun to school. What follows is a game of psychological cat and mouse as Jo tries to talk her student out of doing the unthinkable.
In Act II, Jo meets with a therapist for a series of increasingly tense sessions. As their work together crosses ethical boundaries, unexpected ties are revealed between all three characters.
The Stupid Hope tests the outer reaches of our empathy, our capacity to forgive, and our potential to transform.
(90 minutes, 3 actors – 1F, 2M)
Resistance: An Oratorio
Librettist: Ali Joy Richardson
Composer: Ryan Henwood
A large-scale choral work about psychological partner abuse and resilience.
Believers
Book & Lyrics: Ali Joy Richardson
Music & Lyrics: Kevin Wong
Tess is the best Catholic in her Youth Group. When a rebellious new girl joins, Tess discovers unexpected feelings stirring inside herself. When their Youth Group attends PRAISE ABLAZE, an electrifying teen worship conference, Tess finds herself torn between how to love her church and herself at the same time.
Believers combines the comedy of righteous teens and the truth of religious trauma to tell the story of a queer woman reclaiming her relationship with god.
(9 actors , 4-piece band)
Development History:
Randolph College’s Musical Theatre Incubator 2019
Sheridan College’s First Drafts 2024
Semifinalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2025 National Music Theater Conference
Cowboy Tempest Cabaret
Book & Lyrics: Niall McNeil
Book: Lucy McNulty
Music & Lyrics: Anton Lipovetsky
Director: Ali Joy Richardson
Guns and magic. Love and hurt. When gunslinger Prospero conjures a storm in the desert, he begins a chain of events that forces every cowboy and spirit into a fight for freedom. Created by an artist with Down Syndrome and his longtime collaborators, Cowboy Tempest Cabaret is a totally lawless adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest musicalized in the styles of rock, folk and country, and western music.
Development History:
Workshops with Bard on the Beach (Vancouver) and The Musical Stage Company (Toronto)
The Musical Stage Company’s Canadian Festival of New Musicals 2024