Featured Member — Michael Ross Albert
Each month we interview member playwrights to share their work, stories and inspiration with the community. We recently spoke with Michael Ross Albert, described by the Toronto Star as “one of Toronto’s most exciting playwrights”. Michael is a writer and indie theatre producer whose work has been staged across Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
Recent writing credits include The Bidding War (Crow’s Theatre; finalist, Carol Bolt Award), The Village It Takes (finalist, Tom Hendry Drama Award), A Little Closer (workshop production — The Vault Creation Lab, directed by Diana Bentley) Beautiful Renegades, (Peggy Baker Dance Projects, directed by Eda Holmes), and Two Minutes to Midnight (The Assembly Theatre, directed by Janelle Cooper).
Michael’s work has been presented in multiple Fringe festivals, including Edinburgh, Brighton, Halifax, and FringeNYC. Five of his plays were staged in the Toronto Fringe Festival, including The Huns, directed by Marie Farsi, Anywhere, directed by David Lafontaine (both: Patron’s Pick and Best of Fringe), and Good Old Days, directed by Jill Harper.
In association with the Storefront Theatre, Michael produced the world premiere of his play Tough Jews. The production was nominated for six Dora Awards including Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Production.
Tell us how you got your start writing plays.
At the end of my first year of high school, my drama teacher put together a showcase of scenes and monologues written and performed by the students. I wrote a monologue about a teenager who locks himself in the bathroom and strikes up a conversation with the toilet to try and momentarily escape his family. After the performance, my teacher took me aside and said, “You’re a writer.” I guess I really took that to heart. The monologue I wrote and performed became the basis of my first play, which was produced in the Paprika Festival when I was sixteen, with a real toilet onstage and everything! I’ve been writing plays ever since.
What does your writing process look like, and where do you find inspiration for your work?
My writing process involves a lot of walking. I tend to make playlists for each play I’m working on. I’ll listen to that playlist on long, meandering walks through the city. During those walks, I’ll sort of daydream about the play, which helps me plot out the action before I start writing. I tend to complain a lot about how I should be writing but can’t bring myself to do it. And then, when I’ve gotten good and mad at myself, I hunker down, I hide from the world as best I can, and I power through the first draft as quickly as possible.
Inspiration comes from all sorts of different, improbable places. I’ll hear a story or read a news item or meet a person or have a conversation and something inside me will say, “That could be a play.” And if that idea sticks around for long enough, eventually it might turn into one.
Your play Anywhere will be staged at The Assembly Theatre in Toronto, ON this month. Can you tell us about the creation of this piece, and what it’s like to bring it to the stage?
Cass Van Wyck had gotten a spot in the Toronto Fringe Festival and asked me if I had something she could produce and act in. I’d been thinking about the premise of Anywhere for a little while and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally write it.
Essentially, I wanted to write a two-character play that was tonally similar to something like True West or The Dumb Waiter, except for female actors. I wanted to create a tense, sort of murky but highly charged situation that two knockout actors could really sink their teeth into. And I wanted to capture a sense of dread that I was feeling during the first year of the first Trump administration. Thematically, the play is about mistrust of The Other. It’s about two people grasping for meaning in a post-truth world. It’s about class disparities, and how people in an unfair system are pitted against one another. It’s about strangers who are forced to confront one another for the first time and see in each other a reflection of something that scares them: themselves.
The play’s first run in the Fringe was a whirlwind. We managed to sell out the entire run and pack the house with vocal, enthusiastic audiences who gasped and squirmed at all the right moments.
Eight years after its world premiere, I worried the play would feel its age, but it’s almost more relatable now (sadly). This time around, Cass Van Wyck will be directing the production, and the actors will be alternating roles from performance to performance. I am thoroughly excited to see their different interpretations of each character’s lived reality.
You have said that you try to write plays for actors. Can you share what that means to you, and how it shows up in your work? Is there a difference between writing a large cast play like The Bidding War (for which you were a finalist for the 2025 Carol Bolt Award), and a small cast play like Anywhere?
Actors are magicians. I have so much respect for their craft, for their instincts and insights, and for the athleticism that’s required of them to perform onstage. I want to write roles that are worthy of our best actors’ time and talents. Whether the play has a large ensemble cast or just two or three people in conflict with one another, I want to make sure that each character is a flawed, messy person whose psychological reality is depicted truthfully within the heightened circumstances of the drama. And in both scenarios, it helps if I give each of them a couple of jokes.
You are facilitating the First Draft Initiative through The Vault Creation Lab, developing new works to be shared in a public showcase in April. What do you believe are the benefits of a program like this, and what impact does it have on you as a facilitator?
The Vault Creation Lab is filling a gap in the city’s new play development landscape and I’m honoured to work with them. Writing a first draft is really hard. Every time I sit down to do it myself, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do it. Like I’ve never done it before, ever. There are so many things that can get in the way of a solitary creative process. But First Draft at The Vault offers participants accountability, encouragement, constructive feedback, and the opportunity for co-regulation by earmarking time for quiet writing at the end of each session. Our motto is: “Just get to the end.” And the writers who have been attending these monthly sessions are well on their way to doing just that.
The writers are all doing the hard work of figuring out how to translate their brilliant ideas into exciting, dramatic structures. They’re openly, vulnerably sharing their works in progress at the earliest stages of their plays’ development. I’m very heartened by that bravery.
It’s also been very validating to talk through issues that can arise at this earliest stage of the writing process and offer suggestions for overcoming creative roadblocks. Playwrights primarily work in a vacuum, especially early on in a play’s life cycle. It can be easy to lose sight of the fact that we all face similar creative challenges, regardless of experience level. So, as a facilitator, First Draft has been both very inspiring and very grounding.
What are you working on next?
A few things at once! Including… a murder mystery… that will be produced in Calgary next season… and will be announced later this month.
Do you have any favourite Canadian plays, and/or which artists are currently inspiring you?
So much of my taste has been shaped by Canadian plays that debuted in Toronto when I was first learning about theatre. I may have been the only high school student to see Michael Healey’s Rune Arlidge three times, so I have a real soft spot for that script. Other writers that shaped my early tastes are Daniel MacIvor, Claudia Dey, Adam Pettle, Wajdi Mouawad, Kristin Thomson. They all continue to inspire me, as do so many Canadian playwrights who have made names for themselves more recently, like Cliff Cardinal, Rose Napoli, Kanika Ambrose, Amy Lee Lavoie, and Omari Newton, to name just a few.
Keep up with Michael at his website, www.michaelrossalbert.com or through Instagram & Bluesky @michaelralbert
Find out more about The Assembly Theatre’s March 2026 production of Anywhere here!
Check out The Vault Creation Lab’s initiatives for writers here!
And purchase Michael’s plays at the Canadian Play Outlet here!
Disclaimer: Playwrights Guild of Canada (“PGC”) is a national arts service mandated to engage and grow an active Canadian writing community. We promote Canadian plays around the world to advance the creative rights and interests of professional Canadian playwrights for the stage. The views of our members are their own. The opinions of PGC as an association remain neutral.
