This fall, playwright Kanika Ambrose brings two worlds to Toronto’s stages: the salt-air mythos of Moonlight Schooner and the snowy heart of The Christmas Market. Through both, she invites audiences to feel the humour, pain, and poetry of Caribbean resilience.
On a humid night in 1958, the sea around St. Kitts refuses to sleep. A group of Black sailors, stranded after a storm, step ashore to dance, argue, and dream their way through a long, restless night. In their laughter and longing lives the pulse of an entire generation — the Windrush generation — searching for freedom on the edges of empire.
That imagined night forms the heart of Moonlight Schooner, the newest play from Kanika Ambrose, whose writing turns personal memory into living history. Opening November 26 at the Berkeley Street Theatre, this Necessary Angel production (in association with Canadian Stage and Tarragon Theatre) reunites Ambrose with director Sabryn Rock for their third collaboration. Together, they’ve built a creative shorthand rooted in trust and curiosity.
“We started as two emerging artists learning together,” Ambrose recalls. “Sabryn was an actor becoming a director; I was just finding my voice as a playwright. We’ve had each other’s backs ever since.”
That bond fuels the layered world of Moonlight Schooner — a play that feels both epic and intimate. Ambrose began sketching the work's first lines while rocking her newborn son to sleep during the pandemic. “I came across a collection of poems by Derek Walcott,” she says. “They spoke about Caribbean sailors, and I thought, what if I could create something that celebrated Black men in their fullness — complex, adventurous, limitless? Something my son could one day see himself in.”
As she wrote, her grandmother’s stories from the 1950s began to echo in her mind — tales of the Windrush years and the contradictions of Caribbean life under fading colonial rule. Those stories reshaped the play, anchoring its lyrical language in lived truth.
“The people in that era weren’t far removed from slavery,” Ambrose says. “Their grandparents might have been enslaved. That kind of history doesn’t just disappear — it seeps into how we see ourselves. I wanted to explore that with honesty, but also with joy, because Caribbean people survive through laughter.”
Humour, for Ambrose, is more than relief; it’s realism. Her sailors argue, tease, and celebrate under the almond tree’s broad leaves. “Humanity is humour,” she says. “You can’t tell a Caribbean story without it.”
Although Moonlight Schooner unfolds in one night, the journey spans a lifetime. The men cross the island and their own memories, moving between past and present, dream and daylight. “There’s a poetic element,” Ambrose explains. “Even when they’re standing still, they travel through memory. It’s an epic told in a whisper.”
The production brings together a powerhouse cast including Lisa Codrington, danjelani ellis, and Daren A. Herbert. The team also honours the late Michael Blake, who helped shape the character he was originally cast to play.
“Michael was such a master of craft,” Ambrose says. “He asked deep, probing questions, worked tirelessly on a dialect that wasn’t his own. His spirit of rigour and love stays with us.”
From island heat to Canadian frost
Even as rehearsals for Moonlight Schooner begin, Ambrose is juggling another new work — a completely different kind of story but connected by heart. The Christmas Market, premiering November 4–30 at Crow’s Theatre (directed by Philip Akin and produced with b current Performing Arts and Studio 180 Theatre), follows three Caribbean migrant workers experiencing their first Canadian winter.
One worker longs to recreate the warmth of home, turning a small farm shed into an improvised holiday market. Another wrestles with loneliness; another with disillusionment. The result is part comedy, part quiet protest — a reminder that Christmas stories can belong to everyone.
“I’ve always wanted to write a holiday play that reflects the diversity of who we are,” Ambrose says. “The usual canon — A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life — doesn’t speak to so many of our communities. I wanted to ask, what does Christmas look like when you’re thousands of miles from home, working on a farm, still trying to find joy?”
Her inspiration, again, comes from life. “I have family members in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program,” she adds. “I’ve seen those farms. I’ve heard those stories. Humour became my way to hold those truths — it’s how Caribbean people survive cold winters and colder systems.”
Building bridges through art and mentorship
Ambrose’s dual premieres reflect the range of her artistry. A two-time Dora Mavor Moore Award winner, she’s equally at ease writing librettos for opera (Of the Sea, Tak-Tak-Shoo) and scripts for television. Yet her focus remains on building space — literal and figurative — for Black and diasporic voices in Canadian theatre.
As Associate Artistic Director at Necessary Anger and Playwright-in-Residence at Tarragon, she’s committed to mentorship and experimentation. “At Necessary Angel, we have the Lab, which lets artists play without the pressure of a production deadline,” she says. “That kind of space is vital — it’s where new ideas can breathe.”
She mentors two or three younger writers every year, inviting them into rehearsals to demystify the process. “Someone once did that for me,” she says. “Now it’s my turn.”
The recognition she’s earned — those Doras, the critical acclaim — has changed how she navigates the industry. “It’s given me visibility, which brings more opportunities,” she acknowledges. “But it also helps me advocate for myself, to be clear about what I need as an artist.”
The heart that binds two worlds
Viewed together, Moonlight Schooner and The Christmas Market form a diptych about movement — across oceans, eras, and emotions. One unfolds under Caribbean moonlight, the other under a Canadian snowfall. Both are anchored in Ambrose’s signature blend of lyricism, humour, and social insight.
Her plays remind us that migration is never only about leaving; it’s also about remembering — and rebuilding. Whether she’s conjuring stranded sailors or snow-swept farm workers, Ambrose writes with an eye toward connection: between generations, between cultures, between the laughter and the wound.
And as Toronto prepares to welcome both premieres, she remains grounded in gratitude. “My hope,” she says, “is that audiences see themselves somewhere in these stories — in the love, the struggle, the resilience. Because that’s all of us.”
Epilogue: A night that never ends
When Moonlight Schooner opens, the lights will dim to reveal a few men beneath an almond tree, the sea whispering in the distance. It’s only one night, but in their laughter and silences, you can hear centuries of survival — the echo of sailors, ancestors, and dreamers who refused to vanish. For playwright Kanika Ambrose, this night is more than a story; it’s a conversation with history itself.
Through Moonlight Schooner, Ambrose gives shape to the invisible — the untold lives behind the Windrush era, the inherited weight of empire, and the joy that keeps Caribbean people afloat even in the storm. It’s a work that doesn’t simply revisit the past; it reimagines it through the lens of humour, tenderness, and poetic truth.
Running alongside it, The Christmas Market shines a light on another form of migration — one rooted in the present. Its three Caribbean farm workers navigate homesickness and hardship in a cold new country, carving out belonging with laughter and makeshift traditions. Together, the two plays reveal Ambrose’s sweeping artistic vision: to map the fullness of Black diasporic life, from the islands to the north, from history’s silence to the stage’s bright light.
As both productions prepare to welcome audiences, Ambrose’s voice rings clear — funny, fierce, and deeply human. She writes to heal, to connect, and to remind us that joy and justice can share the same stage. Her plays are acts of remembrance and resistance, but they’re also invitations: to sit together in the dark, to feel seen, and to imagine what freedom sounds like under moonlight or falling snow.
Where to experience Kanika Ambrose’s 2025 premieres
MOONLIGHT SCHOONER
- Dates: November 21 – December 14, 2025
- Opening Night: Wednesday, November 26 at 7:30 p.m.
- Venue: Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley Street, Toronto
- Presented by: Necessary Angel Theatre Company, in association with Canadian Stage and Tarragon Theatre
- Tickets & info: necessaryangel.com/moonlight-schooner
THE CHRISTMAS MARKET
- Dates: November 4 – 30, 2025
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre – Studio Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto
- Presented by: b current Performing Arts in association with Crow’s Theatre and Studio 180 Theatre
- Directed by: Philip Akin
- Tickets & info: crowstheatre.com
