Following up on salacious and edgy fare like The Beard and Summit Conference, Northern Light’s upcoming season presents equally audacious and politically demanding work like the Miss Margarida’s Way and Fat Pig, says Trevor Schmidt.

In fact, some of the shows that Schmidt is programming are so controversial and challenging, it took Northern Light’s own Board of Directors a couple years to give him the go-ahead.

"The Board rejected The Beard at first, even though the play was very well received and a big success for us," Schmidt says. "We’re presenting work that is more personal and challenging instead of only serving commercial or business interests."

Northern Light gets a jump on the season with Miss Margarida’s Way.

"This play is great because its politics works on personal level and not just the theoretical," says Schmidt.

Not political per se, but also not traditional theatre fare, Northern Light is presenting its ninth edition of "Urban Tales" just in time for Halloween.

Like last year’s version of the popular weekend-long event, a group of local writers is collaborating on a single macabre storyline: four nurses are trapped in an "a mid-’50s, Nancy Drew-esque" insane asylum on a dark and stormy Halloween night.

In the first half of 2007, Northern Light rounds out its season with two contemporary new works: Craig Baxter’s Hard Sell, and Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.

The former, a huge hit at the Edinburgh Fringe, will be a North American premiere for Northern Light.

"I was intrigued with this play after reading a lot about it online, and after I sent away for a copy realized there was so much you could do with this piece and its strong, menacing characters."

As for the play by the ever-controversial LaBute, Schmidt says the work (about a young man coming into conflict with his friends and co-workers over his dating of a plus-sized woman) is guaranteed to be unsettling because of the playwright’s ability to document truthfully the "ugly parts" lurking in every human psyche.