Alderville First Nation singer-songwriter Cale Crowe and Cobourg playwright and actor Genevieve Adam have won the 2026 Carol Bolt Award for Rez Gas, the original musical they wrote together for Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre.
The Playwrights Guild of Canada presented the award on Monday (October 26) at its annual Tom Hendry Awards in Toronto. Named for a founding member of the Guild, the Carol Bolt Award recognizes an outstanding script for a recently premiered play and comes with a $5,000 prize and the option of publication.
The win comes just over a year after Rez Gas had its world premiere at the Capitol, where it will return to the mainstage from August 20 to September 5 as part of the theatre’s 2027 season. Following the Capitol’s remount, the musical will move on to Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre that fall for a two-week run.
“We are so thrilled and honoured to be recognized with this award,” Adam and Crowe said in a joint statement issued by the Capitol. “We’re deeply grateful to the Capitol for bringing us together, for making this show a reality, and for championing the work at every turn.”
As Crowe told kawarthaNOW ahead of the musical’s 2025 premiere, he happened to be performing at the Capitol in 2021 on Rob Kempson’s first night working as artistic director. Kempson later invited Crowe to join the theatre’s Creators’ Unit and asked him to write an Indigenous musical.
Kempson paired Crowe with Adam, who wrote much of the script. Crowe composed the music, and the two developed the characters and plot together.
Described by its creators as Come From Away meets Corner Gas, the musical follows Destin, a young man who left his home reservation to pursue a music career. When car trouble brings him back to town, he finds himself at the Wide Wigwam diner, where the people he left behind have a few things to say about his place in the community.
Featuring a hip-hop-infused score, the play borrows from Crowe’s own experience of moving back to Alderville to start a family. In his interview with kawarthaNOW, Crowe spoke about what he wanted audiences to see in the characters whose voices he was writing for the first time.
“One of the things I prioritized was that this be a reflection of Indigenous joy and Indigenous humour,” he said.
Rez Gas was one of three scripts shortlisted for the Carol Bolt Award, alongside Ontario playwright Nicolas Billon’s The Neighbours and Quebec playwright Scout Rexe’s Cult Play.
“This is such a well-deserved honour because this piece is a uniquely Canadian, uniquely contemporary musical that our world needs right now,” Kempson said of the award. “As an organization, we are very proud to have been the catalyst behind this beautiful production, and even more excited to share it with audiences once again in 2027.”
Kemspon founded the Capitol’s Creators’ Unit in 2023 to support Canadian creators, with an emphasis on local and regional voices. The unit also helped develop two works staged at the theatre for its 2026 season: Dave Carley’s adaptation of Farley Mowat’s And No Birds Sang and Taylor Lovelace’s musical tribute to Whitney Houston, I’m Every Woman.
For the 2027 remount of Rez Gas, Herbie Barnes will return as director, as will Jeff Newberry with orchestrations and music supervision, Sarah Richardson with music direction, and Monica Dottor with choreography. The cast has yet to be announced.
“There’s more we want to share with people,” Kempson recently told kawarthaNOW of the reason for the restaging, noting that audiences who saw the 2025 premiere will find something new in the 2027 version.
“It’s going look and feel a little bit different. You’re going to notice some changes to it, which is really exciting because that’s how good new work is developed.”
Subscriptions for the Capitol’s 2027 season are on sale now, with tickets for the general public available in early 2027. For more information, visit capitoltheatre.com.
