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.

Largely constructed from original interviews conducted by the playwright, 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.

Cast of eight women and men.

Annabel Soutar is a Montreal-based playwright and theatre producer. In 2000 she co-founded the theatre company Porte Parole Productions with actor Alex Ivanovici, and she has acted as artistic director of the company since its inception. Annabel takes a documentary approach to theatre and since 1998 has applied it to her original plays, Novembre, 2000 Questions, Santé!, Seeds, Import/Export, and Sexy béton.In 2012 Seeds was published in both English (Talonbooks) and French (Les Editions ecosociété) and presented across Canada in Montreal (Centaur Theatre), Calgary (Theatre Junction), Vancouver (push Festival for the Performing Arts), and in Ottawa (National Arts Centre canada) in a production directed by Chris Abraham.Also in 2012, Annabel was commissioned with Chris Abraham of Crow’s Theatre to write a new documentary play about fresh water for the 2015 Toronto Pan American/Para Pan American Games cultural program, PANAMANIA. That play, The Watershed, premiered to great acclaim at the Berkeley Street Theatre (Canadian Stage) in Toronto during the games from July 12 to 19, 2015.Soutar lives in Montreal with Ivanovici and their two daughters Ella and Beatrice.

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“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

“Exhaustively researched and performed with verbatim dialogue that’s been edited from dozens of hours of interviews … The Watershed is must-see theatre.”
– NOW Toronto

“documentary theatre at a very high level … We need more political drama like this. We need more politics like this.”
– National Post