The Independent Creators Cooperative is a new theatre collaboration that brings together three emerging companies supported by two veteran companies in order to present the world premieres of three physical theatre productions to open The Theatre Centres BMO Incubator space at its new permanent home at the historic Carnegie Library. These original plays will run in repertory Thursday-Sunday from April 17 to May 18 with previews from April 12-16.

This mini-season of exceptional theatre includes Ahuri Theatres Ralph Lina, Play It Again Productions Death Married My Daughter and ZOU Theatres Business As Usual.

Business As Usual, produced by ZOU Theatre Company, is a surreal glance into the seedy underbelly of big business in a post-crash world, created by the company and directed by Viktor Lukawski seen in Tarragon/TheatreRUNs The Double and Old Trout Puppet Workshops Ignorance. A once-successful corporation is flying off the rails: the employees are running wild and the execs are drowning in the turbulent waves of their own excess. To the outside world, all is as it should be; but behind closed doors, a noose is tightening, tensions are rising, and the coffee pot is overflowing as this corporate Twilight Zone reaches unsustainable heights of madness. This is PTSD for the financial class. Lukawski is joined on stage by fellow co-creators Adam Paolozza director/performer of The Double, Dora Award for Spent and Nicolas Di Gaetano seen in Ignorance.

Death Married My Daughter, produced by Play it Again Productions, is written by Danya Buonastella, Dean Gilmour, Nina Gilmour and Michele Smith the latter three are husband, daughter and wife who all performed in Theatre Smith-Gilmours Dora-nominated As I Lay Dying. This bouffon-inspired satire was a Patrons Pick and held over as Best of Fringe 2013. It resurrects Shakespeares Ophelia and Desdemona from exile in the swamps of death to expose their abusers and murderers, and to destroy with delight the established values of a Mans society. It is directed by the Dora Award winning team of Michele Smith and Dean Gilmour and performed by recent graduates of cole Philippe Gaulier: Nina Gilmour As I Lay Dying and Danya Buonastella D.L.T. Teatros site specific Midway on the Journey of Life, Summerworks 2013.

Ralph Lina, produced by Dora Award winning Ahuri Theatre, is written by Michele Smith and real life husband and wife, Dan Watson writer/director of Ahuris A Fools Life which earned six Dora nominations and won Outstanding Sound Design and Christina Serra. The rough-and-tumble romance tells the true story of Serras grandparents two Italian lovers and their struggles to stay together in the face of World War Two, forced immigration and old age. In the vein of early Fellini La Strada, the award-winning creative team dives into their own family histories to explore notions of dependence and separation in a passionate acrobatic comedy that radically reinvents the modern melodrama. The play is directed by Smith and is performed by Watson and Serra. www.ahuritheatre.com

Each production is joined by lighting designer Andr du Toit Outstanding Lighting Design Dora for The Double, stage manager Jiv Parasram and production manager Michelle Galuszka. Ken MacKenzie Kims Convenience is the set and costume designer for Business as Usual and Ralph Lina.