Creative Connector Updated on Sep 29, 2026 2 min read

Happy Valley

Tour-ready project by Debbie Patterson.

Keywords: solo show, theatre

Happy Valley is a monodrama or solo show, highly autobiographical in nature, written and performed by Debbie Patterson.

This play is about our bodies and the land. Debbie explores this through her family history and her lived experience of disability. The play unpacks how disability has changed the way she lives in the world, giving her a new perspective and a freedom she never could’ve imagined.

This play is about mining towns, and punk rock, and colonization, and Christianity, and climate change, and a meteor that hit the earth almost 2 billion years ago. It’s about disasters that become gifts. It’s about the growth that follows destruction.

The central event in the story is an act of sexual violence that occurred over 30 years ago, and how that moment has subtly shaped her life since. Ultimately, this play is about the land we live on, which was stolen, and how our bodies are inextricably linked to this land and thence to the task of reconciliation. It asks what we will give of our bodies in order to reconcile the harms of the past.

Happy Valley is currently under development. An early iteration was presented at the Fringe Festival in Winnipeg in July 2026. Debbie anticipates a new iteration of this production will be complete by June 2027.

It will be available to program in the 2027/2028 season and beyond.

About the Artist

Debbie Patterson is a Winnipeg-based actor, playwright, director, dramaturge and mother. She is a proud advocate for disability justice through her work as the founding and current Artistic Director of Sick + Twisted Theatre.

She is a founder of Shakespeare in the Ruins, served as Artistic Associate at Prairie Theatre Exchange, Writer in Residence at University of Winnipeg and was a member of the 2023 Acting Company at the Stratford Festival.

She is passionate about supporting other disabled theatre makers and bringing the lived experience of disability into mainstream theatre spaces. She is on the board of Playwrights Guild of Canada, the National Creation Fund Advisory Committee, and on Professional Advisory Committees at Sheridan University and at TMU.

She is a recipient of the Harry Rintoul Award (2026), Gina Wilkinson Prize (2026), King Charles III’s Coronation Medal (2024), the Douglas Campbell Award (2023) the United Nations Platform for Action Committees Activist of the Year Award (2016) and the City of Winnipeg’s Making a Mark Award (2016). She lives a wheelchair-enabled life in Winnipeg (Treaty 1) and in a cabin on the shore of Lake Winnipeg (Treaty 2) with her longtime partner Arne MacPherson.