We have always found comfort and warmth in the winter in compelling storytelling.

The ferocity of the elements brings us inside, and we appeal to the gift of language and our maps of meaning to escape into shared imagined realities. Rebecca Gibian, programmer of the 2026 Centaur WinterWorks Festival, an evolution of what was formerly known as the Wildside Festival, described this year’s slate of theatre as emphasizing the value of experimentation.

Gibian wants WinterWorks to showcase bold theatre that expands traditional formal constraints.

“The Wildside was about taking an interesting idea offered by emerging artists through the Fringe Festival,” says Gibian, “and giving them a new platform to be experienced by more of a ‘Centaurian’ audience, and potentially welcoming new audiences into the Centaur. WinterWorks is more about evolving that idea towards supporting ambition in the form.”

Bringing experimental works to this stage in the dead of winter puts Montreal’s English-language theatre scene on the front burner. “One could extrapolate a connection between a state of hibernation of an idea and fostering the spirit of experimentation around that idea,” she muses. “That winter is a time to take an idea, keep it warm, turn it over, and then at some point share that idea, while it may be ambitious or in progress, and explode it into the warm space of a theatre.”

The Centaur Theatre is nestled on Saint-François-Xavier, a cobblestoned Old Montreal street, its neo-classical revival architecture giving the appearance of traditional theatrical goings-on. But the Centaur’s regulars know better. There is a wealth of dramatic innovation taking place behind those columns.

“We’re encouraging audiences to discover WinterWorks in order to know it,” Gibian says, coaxing all and sundry to come familiarize themselves with the festival, now in its second year. You have to be there to understand the intent. “I think people who work in theatre can have an appreciation and understanding for formal experimentation, as in how we tell a story,” Gibian continues, “and that’s what I look for — a chance to explore the ‘how.’”

Gibian lives her life as a director and actor of theatre year-round and says it doesn’t necessarily feel seasonal to her. “Calling it the WinterWorks comes more from an ownership of winter, as Montrealers,” she says. Indeed it is a fitting response to Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, which has come into its own by similarly championing theatre that challenges conventions and engages with form in imaginative and daring ways. Montreal is a multi-disciplinary city where every artist wears a stack of hats. With so many distinct disciplines and varied skills coming together, Montreal theatre can be so much more than the sum of its parts, with platforms that champion this plurality.

A multihyphenate theatre artist herself, Gibian reflects on the role she plays at the Centaur Theatre. “As someone who has worked both as a director and an artistic director [for Persephone Productions, since 2022], it feels closer to the work of Artistic Direction,” Gibian explains, saying that her role as festival programmer lets her share her excitement for new works, setting these artists up for success in the Centaur, separate from her own artistic storytelling sensibilities.

Gibian’s curatorial eye for the festival is not conscripted by any overall theme; she is interested in daring new forms of theatre coming together in their myriad modes under one festival. This is another way the wild spirit of the WinterWorks festival is preserved. Anything goes.

“It would feel so limiting to aim at a theme,” says Gibian. “But themes which have emerged in this year’s WinterWorks would be connection, the impact of family members, especially of family members who are no longer with us.”

Theatre exploring such themes as these while also playing with new modes of storytelling promises to warm audiences right through the dead of winter.◼︎

The WinterWorks Festival runs until 22 February 2026 at the Centaur Theatre and at La Chapelle | Scenes Contemporaines.

_{Cover image: Rebecca Gibian photographed by Amelia Hellman.}