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Battle of the Birds
The Enchanted Loom
Village of Idiots
The Grandkid
Haven
Albumen
Rocko and Nakota: Tales from the Land
Sequence
Stretching Hide
Rendez-vous with Home
Espoir/Espwa (with Les Héritières de Toto B).
TRUE
Like Wolves
Léo
Wormwood
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Have you ever found the perfect part? Or read a scene that speaks to you? Or seen a play where the actor on stage matched the writing as if made-to-measure? Don’t you wish it happened more often?

Parallel Play is a tool to help smooth the search for material that really fits. Fits actors, directors, teachers, students, writers, readers and theatre enthusiasts in their quest to find parallels between cast and character.

Parallel Play draws from an extensive database of culturally diverse plays and playwrights. Its foundation is a collection curated by theatre people and designed for all. With new plays added regularly, we think you’ll find our collection unparalleled!

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DiscoverPlays and Playwrights

In our database, there are more than 1000+ plays. Search by title or playwright. Click on a playwright's name to see more of their works.

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  • Discover plays with African + Diasp Characters (including Egyptian)

    Reaching for Starlight
    Body So Fluorescent

  • Discover plays with Middle Eastern + Diasp Characters

    Interrogation
    Graceful Rebellions

  • Discover plays with European & European Descent Characters

    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Pako-shay-imoohk

  • Discover plays with characters of Unspecified Culture

    Antarctica
    Speed Dating for Sperm Donors

Discover Styles, like 'Historical'

Cyrano de Bergerac play banner

Historical

Cyrano de Bergerac

From the acclaimed author of The Last Wife and The Virgin Trial comes a new adaptation of one of the finest love stories ever told. Cyrano de Bergerac is a swashbuckling seventeenth-century swordsman who can do anything . . . except tell Roxane, the woman he loves, how he feels. He’s just too self-conscious about his unusually large nose. Roxane finds romance in words, and Cyrano is full of them, so when he sees the chance to ghostwrite love letters to her from an inarticulate, love-struck cadet, he takes it—but can he ever reveal himself? Could she ever love him for who he is? In turns funny, tender, and self-aware, this classic tale about the exquisite distress of loving from afar will find its way into the hearts of even the most skeptical.

by Kate Hennig, 2019
Characters: 31
Identity
Love
Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell play banner

Historical

Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell

It only takes one spark of love to change the world forever. Mabel Hubbard Bell was a strong, self-assured woman—bright, passionate, and a complete original. Despite a near-fatal case of childhood scarlet fever that cost her the ability to hear, she learned to talk and lip-read in multiple languages. At nineteen, she married a young inventor named Alexander Graham Bell and became the most significant influence in his life. This is Mabel's story, offering the unique perspective of a woman whose remarkable life was forever connected to her famous, distracted husband. From inspiring invention to promoting public service, Mabel and Alec challenged each other to become strong forces for good. Silence is a beautiful and true love story about how we communicate.

by Trina Davies, 2020
Characters: 6
Empowerment
Disability
Do This In Memory of Me play banner

Stylized

Do This In Memory of Me

Twelve-year-old Genevieve has been having a hard time at home, and all she really wants is to be an altar server at her church. Except it’s 1963 and Father Paul tells her that’s not allowed. After having her dreams crushed and being made fun of by her classmate and star altar boy Martin, Genevieve prays to God hoping for an exception. Instead, a fourteen-year-old martyr from the fourth century, St. Pancras, appears and promises to get her an answer from God. But with her mom missing for weeks and Martin disappearing on his way home from school the next day, she fears her prayers have been answered in dire ways. This dark comedy dives into the expansive time between childhood and adolescence, exploring questions about the realities of home life to the possibilities of unknown worlds. Do This In Memory of Me is for anyone who has ever questioned the relationship between faith and trust or wondered where they fit in the bigger picture.

by Cat Walsh, 2021
Characters: 3
Community
Discrimination
Interrogation play banner

Historical

Interrogation

Two youth (a boy, Naeem, and a woman, Safiya), loyal to the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, cannot stop their acts of violence even after the revolution has been won. Their stories tell a timeless truth: nothing enduring can be built on violence.

by Mohammad Rahmanian, 2008
Characters: 4
Colonialism
Cultural issues
The Death of the King play banner

Historical

The Death of the King

A retelling of Persian history. At the end of the Sassanian Empire, during the onslaught of Muslim invasions into Persia, the last king of Persia, Yazdgird III, finds death in an impoverished flourmill. Discovered red-handed by the king's army, the helpless miller, his wife, and his daughter must reenact their experience with the king to prove their innocence—or else face a horrible death.

by Bahram Beyza'ie, 2008
Characters: 7
Class
Death
Aurash play banner

Historical

Aurash

'Based on a Persian myth dating back over one thousand years, in the 1970s the fable was adapted into a dramatic narrative by Bahram Beyza'ie. In Beyza'ie's story, Aurash, a naïve and human stablehand, becomes an unwilling player in his country's post-war border treaty. He must determine his people's fate by firing an arrow from the top of a mountain." -- from the publisher

by Bahram Beyza'ie, 2008
Characters: N/A
Cultural issues
Politics
SPIN play banner

Historical

SPIN

One part documentary and another part musical activism, Spin is inspired in part by the incredible true tale of Annie Londonderry, the first woman to ride around the world on a bicycle in 1895. Parry spins a fascinating web of stories that travel from 19th-century women’s emancipation to 21st-century consumer culture, peeling back layers of history to reveal a surprising and contemporary heart to her theme of liberation. A vintage bicycle, hooked up to simple electronics and suspended in a mechanic’s stand, is played – from fenders to spokes to vinyl seat, from whirling pedals to bells – by percussionist Brad Hart, providing a captivating sonic accompaniment to parry’s songs and monologues. Staged by award-winning director Ruth Madoc-Jones, with stunning visual projections by acclaimed designer Beth Kates, this unique show has delighted audiences across the continent.

by Evalyn Parry, 2017
Characters: 1
Cultural issues
Discrimination
Hiding Words (for you) play banner

Historical

Hiding Words (for you)

The play takes us to nineteenth-century China and into the heart of the private relationship of two women that is facilitated by a secret phonetic (and feminine) adaptation of Chinese script called Nushu. Hiding, here, becomes an act of rebellion that creates new means of communicating and new ways of achieving intimacy among women. Wong's play will surprise and move you with its nuanced images and loving attention to the historical tools of feminist freedom.

by Gein Wong, 2017
Characters: 7
2SLGBTQI+
Feminism
Gertrude and Alice play banner

Historical

Gertrude and Alice

Visiting the audience in the present day, Gertrude and Alice come to find out how history has treated them. The couple recounts stories of their forty-year relationship; of meetings with iconic artists and writers; and of Alice’s overwhelming, consuming devotion to Gertrude’s genius. Before they leave, they want to find out what has become of their artistic and cultural influence, and how their lives and work are—or are not—remembered.

by Evalyn Parry, Anna Chatterton, 2018
Characters: 2
2SLGBTQI+
Death
The Murder of Isaac play banner

Historical

The Murder of Isaac

Twelve inmates in a closed ward in a mental hospital for soldiers suffering acute PTSD presenting a cabaret about the assassination of Yitzhak (Isaac) Rabin, Israel’s former prime minister following his peace negotiations with the Palestinians. In a show they can't control they explore the infrastructure of Israeli society and present the deep internal conflicts that led to this tragic assassination.

by Motti Lerner, 2006
Characters: 12
Antisemitism
Cultural issues
Masada play banner

Historical

Masada

"A one-person play about the history of Zionism. The play is told as a monologue through the character of an Israeli history professor who begins the lecture as a critic of Zionism but moves into an emphatic pro-Zionist stance, shifting from reason to passion or to put it another way from the rational to the irrational." - Arab Digest

by Arthur Milner, 2006
Characters: 1
Antisemitism
Cultural issues
Mother's Daughter play banner

Historical

Mother’s Daughter

"In this stunning third part to Kate Hennig’s powerful Queenmaker series, England’s first queen regnant finds herself fighting xenophobia, religious nationalism, and strained familial bonds in the power struggle that dubs her Bloody Mary. Upon the death of King Edward VI, the thirty-eight-year-old princess Mary—daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon—wrests the throne from Edward’s deemed heir. But Mary’s mother appears from the vaults of memory, and adamantly questions the motives of Mary’s cousin Jane and her half-sister Bess, despite Mary’s affection for them both. As the kingdom splits along Roman Catholic and Protestant lines, Mary walks a gauntlet of squabbling ethics and politics, and is forced to make some tough decisions. Should she execute her opponents before it’s too late, the way her father did? Should she scramble to find a husband who can give her a rightful heir? And can she trust her mother, her sister, or even herself?" - from the publisher

by Kate Hennig, 2019
Characters: 7
Class
Family
Brontë: The World Without play banner

Historical

Brontë: The World Without

What happens when a passion is turned into a means to survive? Sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë have always enjoyed writing and storytelling, but so far, it’s been for their own personal enjoyment. Now that their father is sick and their brother is an alcoholic, they have to be the ones to support the family. They’d rather focus on their careers than settling down with suitors anyway, so writing is what could save them. But is it also what could tear them apart? Jealousy, rivalry, and the strong need for self-expression threaten not only their livelihoods and relationships but also their confidence in creativity and what could be their legacy. Told over five days in the span of three years, the fascinating story of the Brontë sisters’ pioneering literary careers unfolds to show what it was like to be an ambitious woman in the 1800s, and how similar it looks to the struggles women still face today.

by Jordi Mand, 2020
Characters: 3
Cultural issues
Empowerment
Go West, Young Man play banner

Stylized

Go West, Young Man

Based on the true story of the summer in the 1960's that Craig Russell spent living with Mae West as her personal secretary, Go West, Young Man explores both the spark behind the creation of a unique Canadian superstar, and the long slow fading of an equally unique American Movie Goddess. Russell Edie is a 15-year-old teenage boy that leaves behind his drab Ontario life and gets on a Greyhound to Hollywood, where he seeks out the faded 70-year-old legend Mae West, carrying hundreds of forged fan letters that he uses to leverage a summer position as her personal secretary. Ambition collides with faded grandeur when Mae learns that Russell has been studying her every move in order to become the world's leading Mae West impersonator.

by Darrin Hagen, 2015
Characters: N/A
Ageing
Empathy
The Auden Test play banner

Solo Show

The Auden Test

"A play about a poem about a painting about a myth - and what it means to be human. A queer tale, interweaving the lives and works of the poet W.H. Auden and the mathematician Alan Turing." - fromt the publisher.

by Lawrence Aronovitch, 2016
Characters: 1
2SLGBTQ2I+
Death

Discover Tags, like 'Violence'

Interrogation play banner

Historical

Interrogation

Two youth (a boy, Naeem, and a woman, Safiya), loyal to the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria, cannot stop their acts of violence even after the revolution has been won. Their stories tell a timeless truth: nothing enduring can be built on violence.

by Mohammad Rahmanian, 2008
Characters: 4
Colonialism
Cultural issues
Aurash play banner

Historical

Aurash

'Based on a Persian myth dating back over one thousand years, in the 1970s the fable was adapted into a dramatic narrative by Bahram Beyza'ie. In Beyza'ie's story, Aurash, a naïve and human stablehand, becomes an unwilling player in his country's post-war border treaty. He must determine his people's fate by firing an arrow from the top of a mountain." -- from the publisher

by Bahram Beyza'ie, 2008
Characters: N/A
Cultural issues
Politics
The Crackwalker play banner

Realistic

The Crackwalker

Teresa is sexy, seductive, and mentally challenged. Worshipped by her boyfriend, she turns tricks at $5, is addicted to Tim Hortons' doughnuts, lies without thinking, and overflows with endless kindness, but she continues to hold on to her limitless innocence. The Crackwalker captures the music, the dialect, and the unpretty realities of the inner city. First produced thirty years ago, Thompson's striking portrayal of the discarded class in Canada continues to move audiences today.

by Judith Thompson, 2010
Characters: 5
Class
Cultural issues
Shooting Magda (The Palestinian Girl) play banner

Realistic

Shooting Magda (The Palestinian Girl)

Love between a Palestinian girl and an Israeli man is born and then ruined in a violent reality.

by Joshua Sobol, 2006
Characters: 11
Cultural issues
Grief
The Murder of Isaac play banner

Historical

The Murder of Isaac

Twelve inmates in a closed ward in a mental hospital for soldiers suffering acute PTSD presenting a cabaret about the assassination of Yitzhak (Isaac) Rabin, Israel’s former prime minister following his peace negotiations with the Palestinians. In a show they can't control they explore the infrastructure of Israeli society and present the deep internal conflicts that led to this tragic assassination.

by Motti Lerner, 2006
Characters: 12
Antisemitism
Cultural issues
Reading Hebron play banner

Docudrama

Reading Hebron

A Toronto Jew named Nathan Abramowitz investigates the Hebron Massacre—in which a Jewish settler murdered 29 Muslims at prayer—as a way of questioning his own responsibility for the oppression of Palestinians.

by Jason Sherman, 1997
Characters: 5
Cultural issues
Crime
House of Many Tongues play banner

Realistic

House of Many Tongues

During the Six Day War, an Israeli general found an abandoned house and made it his home. Forty years later, the general, along with his imaginative and distant son Alex, live in peaceful solitude. When a Palestinian writer shows up with is daughter and lays claim to the house he left decades ago, an internal house war ensues. The bathroom is seized, a fig tree is destroyed, and the basement becomes a shrine in the resulting chaos. Relenting, both men strike a deal to share the house. Somehow these two families are going to have to live together—if they don't kill each other first.

by Jonathan Garfinkel, 2011
Characters: 10
Cultural issues
Family
Reasonable Doubt play banner

Docudrama

Reasonable Doubt

"A significant moment in Canadian history is portrayed in this documentary musical about race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Weaving hundreds of real interviews conducted with Saskatchewan residents and the court transcripts surrounding the killing of Colten Boushie and trial of Gerald Stanley, a kaleidoscopic picture is formed of the views of the incident, the province, and relationships between all people in Canada. A verbatim play with music created by Joel Bernbaum, Lancelot Knight, and Yvette Nolan, Reasonable Doubt provides a space to honestly talk to each other about what has happened on this land and how we can live together." - from the publisher "In 2015, playwright and journalist Joel Bernbaum was commissioned by Persephone Theatre to gather interviews with local citizens for the purposes of writing a documentary play on race relations in our province. Then, in 2016, Colten Boushie, was fatally shot on Gerald Stanley’s farm near Biggar, SK. and the interviews changed dramatically." - persephonetheatre.org

by Joel Bernbaum, Lancelot Knight, Yvette Nolan, 2022
Characters: 6
Cultural issues
Discrimination
Trans-Bacchanalia Express play banner

Stylized

Trans-Bacchanalia Express

This happy-ending colloquial take on the ancient Greek tragedy “The Bacchae” loosely follows the confrontation of the young god Dionysus with Pentheus, the young king of Thebes. Pentheus, a heroic athlete, adored by all, has recently become king and is called upon to halt the cult of Dionysus from spreading to Thebes. However, Pentheus has serious issues—although a family man, he is ill-at-ease with his new role, with what the public and his family expect of him, and—more importantly—his own body and gender. He seeks advice from his grandfather and the blind seer Tyresias, but they are not much help. Pentheus unsuccessfully imprisons Dionysus, who easily escapes. Dionysus causes the destruction of the palace and manipulates Pentheus to further his own agenda. Pentheus is torn apart by the followers of the young god—including his own mother and members of the Royal Court. Dionysus—who has his own issues—ultimately brings Pentheus back to life, to live again—this time as a woman.

by Bill Zaget
Characters: 12
Class
Death
Queen Goneril play banner

Historical

Queen Goneril

Set seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear’s daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world. Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts—shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story’s narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority—how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling—the way we all struggle—to find their place in this world.

by Erin Shields, 2023
Characters: 11
Cultural issues
Empowerment
I Am For You play banner

Realistic

I Am For You

Fighting words . . . Lainie and Mariam have it out for each other, so it’s no surprise when they finally come to violent blows in the middle of their high school’s drama room. That’s when Caddell Morris, an ex-professional actor and newly minted student teacher, steps in. By teaching the girls the art of stage combat, he hopes to help them understand more about the roots and costs of violence. But when he convinces the drama teacher to let them play Mercutio and Tybalt in their school production of Romeo and Juliet, swords, words, and egos battle and clash. Can they find a way to work together?

by Mieko Ouchi, 2016
Characters: 3
Friendships
Violence
Forgiveness play banner

Historical

Forgiveness

Mitsue Sakamoto and Ralph MacLean both suffered tremendous loss during WWII: Mitsue as a survivor of a Japanese Canadian internment camp, and Ralph as a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. In order to rebuild their lives and their families after the war, Ralph and Mitsue must find the grace and generosity necessary to forgive those who have wronged them. Their paths eventually cross in 1968 when Mitsue’s son and Ralph’s daughter begin dating, and Ralph is invited to Mitsue’s home for dinner. This soaring adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s award-winning memoir affirms the power of forgiveness and shows us that in our challenging times characterized by political divisiveness, xenophobia, and race hatred, the story of Mitsue and Ralph’s personal triumphs over hatred, injustice, violence, and bigotry remains vitally relevant and urgently necessary.

by Hiro Kanagawa, Mark Sakamoto, 2023
Characters: 30
Empathy
Family
Winter of Eighty-Eight/”Winter of 88″ play banner

Realistic

Winter of Eighty-Eight/”Winter of 88″

A new apartment should be a warm and welcoming signal to a fresh chapter of life. It shouldn’t be where a family waits in the dark, surrounded by unpacked boxes, as missiles rain down around them. Already eight years into the Iran–Iraq war, Nasrin and her two adult children—daughter Nahid and son Mahyar—just want to feel safe and settled. Tensions are already high, from bickering over who gets what room and what goes where to why Nahid’s husband left her. Mahyar leaves the apartment in a heated moment, leaving Nasrin wracked with fear. As the missiles start to strike and the power goes out, Nahid tries to hold everything together. From that moment on, it’s about survival. This heart-wrenching meta-autobiographical play, presented in both English and Farsi, is a window into days when death was practically a neighbour in war-torn Tehran. It’s a dedication to those who are left behind with the trauma of war and survivors’ guilt. Author Mohammad Yaghoubi survived it, so he had to write about it.

by Mohammad Yaghoubi, 2023
Characters: 8
Cultural issues
Family
Peter Fechter: Fifty-Nine Minutes/”Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes” play banner

Historical

Peter Fechter: Fifty-Nine Minutes/”Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes”

Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes chronicles the last hour of Peter Fechter’s life, a teenager in East Berlin shot while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall in 1962 with his companion.

by Jordan Tannahill, 2013
Characters: 1
Cultural issues
Death
Zahgidiwin/love play banner

Stylized

Zahgidiwin/love

Zahgidiwin/love follows Namid through multiple generations: as a survivor of abuse in a residential school in the 1960s, as a missing woman held in a suburban basement in the 1990s, and as the rebellious daughter of a tyrannical queen in a post-apocalyptic, matriarchal society. A comedy about loss in the era of truth and reconciliation

by Frances Koncan, 2022
Characters: N/A
Cultural issues
Feminism