The only twist is that the theatre’s offerings for this season are 100 per cent Canuck.

"Our mandate at Shadow is quite broad and it just happened that all the best plays we read, the plays that spoke the clearest to us, happened to be Canadian," he says, noting that his company has grown its subscriber base by eight or nine per cent for the past several seasons.

"It just underlines the fact that our playwrights can stack up to the best of the rest of the world."

Not that his connection to his Canadian season has been passive. Always the conscientious community participant, the director has been working with playwright Doug Curtis (the author of the hit play Mesa which premiered at Workshop West Theatre a few seasons back) on the script for While My Mother Lay Dreaming" for several years. "Doug and I did a big push in late August and we feel the script is in great shape."

The world premiere of this work set in the last days of the 1970s Alberta oil boom, opening the season mid-October, features a trio of young performers (Lynly Hall, Richard Meen and Dan Perry) making their Shadow/professional debuts under Hudson’s tutelage. The seven-actor-strong-show will be one of Shadow’s biggest recent productions.

Shadow follows with two profoundly emotional two-handers early in 2007: Michele Riml’s Sexy Laundry and Michael Melski’s The Flyfisher's Companion.

The former stars Shadow favourites Coralie Cairns and John Sproule as an emotionally quagmired couple trying to spice up their quarter-century-old marriage with a sexy weekend getaway.

"This is our shamelessly commercial play for the season, but it’s also really funny," Hudson says.

As for Melski’s play, Hudson is proud to announce a spectacular cast led by accomplished director James DeFelice and starring Glenn Nelson and John Wright–"two of Edmonton’s finest character actors going toe-to-toe" in a heart-warming tale of late life friendship.

The season ends with a revival of the 1998 Sterling Award-winning play Dreamland Saturday Nights by David Belke.

"This play was not only a big hit for us, it was also a significant work in that it was a breakout success for us as a company," Hudson says.