Under the creative imagination of the current Artistic Director, Trevor Schmidt, Northern Light Theatre produces three evocative theatrical events per season. Northern Light Theatre was founded in 1975 by Scott Swan and Allan Lysell as Edmonton's first lunch-hour theatre company. Northern Light Theatre (NLT) performed in the Edmonton Art Gallery Theatre weekdays at noon - a lunch box performance for $2. In the first season, 1975/76, NLT presented eighteen one-act productions, including musical revues, classics, and Canadian plays both old and new. Throughout the 70's and 80's, the company produced an astonishing number and variety of plays every year, showcasing the work of local playwrights like Jim De Felice, alongside dramas by Shaw and Brecht, taking on musical comedy, prairie drama, children's theatre and classics with never-flagging verve. In the summer of 1980, “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night's Dream” played in repertoire under a huge tent on Connors Hill giving Edmonton its first taste of Shakespeare in the Park.
“One of Edmonton theatre’s most consistently surprising little companies...” ~ Liz Nicholls, Edmonton Journal
In 2009, after twenty-nine years occupying The Third Space (as both a theatre venue and an office), Northern Light Theatre established new space across the river in Old Strathcona. 2017/18 - our 42nd Season - sees us operating out of offices on Whyte Avenue and producing our plays at the ATB Arts Barns and with L'UniThéâtre at La Cité Francophone. After forty-five years in business, Northern Light Theatre's mandate is still to challenge both artist and audience alike by producing and developing provocative scripts – language rich texts that are dark, poetic, funny – which reflect a complex world and lead us to question our hierarchy of values.
