Announcing the 2025-26 Prize Winners – Marita Michaelis with Lauren Han and Alexandra (Ali) McDougall

We are doubly excited to announce the following news! Interdisciplinary performing artist Marita Michaelis, with producing team Lauren Han and Ali McDougall, will join PTC and the Vancouver Fringe Festival in 13 months of intensive play development, resulting in a premiere of the show at the 2026 Vancouver Fringe Festival.

LIVE IN HELL will receive dramaturgy and production mentorship from Davey Samuel Calderon, and in-kind venue and festival costs from the Vancouver Fringe Festival. The prize is an unprecedented opportunity that supports the work of emerging theatre artists creating emergent work that embodies the spirit of Fringe presentations.The team joins a community of playwrights and theatre creators whose projects have gone on to impact audiences in Canada and beyond. Speaking of Fringe spirit, check out Marita and the gang’s campy awards acceptance speech via this video below.

We are pleased to transform the Fringe New Play Prize into the Kathleen Flaherty Prize, in honour of a foundational dramaturg and a leader of PTC from 2012-2020. Kathleen was an early steward of the prize, setting the precedent for the dramaturgy and development of artists entering their theatre and performing arts careers. With great love and gratitude, we are proud to name this prize as a memorial to her legacy. To learn more about Kathleen, read more here.

“We are thrilled to be supporting LIVE IN HELL in the 2026 Festival.” said Duncan Watts-Grant, Executive Director of the Vancouver Fringe Festival. He continued, “We are also deeply moved by the opportunity to honour Kathleen’s legacy with this prize.”

“For over 8 years, PTC has led a prize for an emerging theatre artist to create a new and bold Fringe piece.” said Joanna Garfinkel, the Artistic Director and Dramaturg at Playwrights Theatre Centre. She explained, “The prospective show receives extensive dramaturgy, production mentorship, and a guaranteed spot at the Vancouver Fringe Festival.”

About LIVE IN HELL

In a solo performance, a she-devil offers accountability for all the abject horrors of the world, taking credit for her many terrible, sinful, and undeniably cool inventions. She pulls us into a makeshift hellscape full of pointing fingers, vulgar gestures, and self-obsession. LIVE IN HELL asks: how can we grapple with the evil of the everyday in a world where “bad” things are good and the status quo is a death machine?

Learn more about LIVE IN HELL and the creatives behind it here.