A musical rooted in Indigenous joy and community, created by Alderville First Nation singer-songwriter Cale Crowe and Cobourg playwright Genevieve Adam, has been shortlisted for a national playwriting award.
Rez Gas is one of three finalists for the 2026 Carol Bolt Award, part of the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s annual Tom Hendry Awards recognizing excellence in new writing for the stage.
The recognition comes just over a year after the musical had its world premiere at Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre. Named for a founding member of the Guild, the Carol Bolt Award honours outstanding scripts of recently premiered plays.
“It’s very exciting that Rez Gas is receiving national recognition,” writes Guild executive director Nancy Morgan in an email to kawarthaNOW. “The award for which they are shortlisted is for the writing not the production itself. However, to be eligible, the work must have had a recent premiere.”
Crowe and Adam are shortlisted alongside Ontario playwright Nicolas Billon for The Neighbours and Quebec playwright Scout Rexe for Cult Play. The winner will be announced during an awards ceremony from 7 to 10 p.m. on Monday, October 26 at the Elgin Lounge in Toronto’s Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres.
Featuring a hip-hop-infused score, Rez Gas follows Destin, a musician who left his home reservation to pursue a career and unexpectedly returns because of car trouble. At the Wide Wigwam diner, he reconnects with people he left behind who remind him of his history and his place in the community.
Described as “Corner Gas meets Come From Away,” the musical explores belonging and homecoming through humour, music, and the relationships that connect a community.
The project grew out of a 2021 performance by Crowe at the Capitol attended by artistic director Rob Kempson. Kempson subsequently invited him to join the theatre’s Creators’ Unit and proposed that he develop an Indigenous musical.
Kempson paired Crowe with Adam, with Crowe composing the music, Adam writing much of the script, and the two developing the characters and plot together. Directed by Herbie Barnes, the musical premiered at the Capitol for an 18-performance run from August 22 to September 7, 2025.
Speaking with kawarthaNOW before the premiere, Crowe explained that he wanted the work to reflect contemporary Indigenous life beyond the traumatic histories that often dominate its representation in mainstream media.
“One of the things I prioritized was that this be a reflection of Indigenous joy and Indigenous humour,” Crowe said.
Born and raised in Alderville First Nation, Crowe began playing his father’s guitar at 12 and performing publicly at 14. His music blends folk with modern pop and rock, and he performs using an acoustic guitar, an electronic drum pad, and a loop station.
Crowe appears regularly at local venues in Cobourg and Port Hope, and he has also performed at festivals from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Adam is a graduate of the George Brown Theatre School and holds a master of fine arts from East15 Acting School in the United Kingdom. Her work spans theatre, television, and audio performance, with screen credits including The Handmaid’s Tale, Mrs. America, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Her plays have received nominations from the Dora Awards, SummerWorks, and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. In 2025, she received an ACTRA Outstanding Performer Award for her work in the audio version of her New France trilogy, available through the Stratford Festival’s Stratfest@Home platform.
The other two Carol Bolt Award finalists include Billon for The Neighbours, which follows a couple forced to reconsider their past after discovering a disturbing secret about their next-door neighbour, and Rexe for Cult Play, which combines solo performance and multimedia in a story about attraction, coercion, and the desire to belong.
The Carol Bolt Award finalists were announced by Calgary’s Inside Out Theatre and assessed by a peer panel chaired by Pâmela Mala Sinha, alongside Len Falkenstein and Donna-Michelle St. Bernard.
Along with the Carol Bolt Award, the Tom Hendry Awards recognize writing in drama, comedy, musicals, and theatre for young audiences, as well as emerging playwrights.
Tickets for the October 26 ceremony are available for $30 plus fee at universe.com/events/2026-tom-hendry-awards-tickets-8WYHF2. The venue is physically accessible, and American Sign Language interpretation will be provided.
With files by Paul Rellinger.
