A Brief History

Our Mandate, Vision & Values

Theatre is essential to the health and growth of communities, offering insight into the human spirit. Theatre informs, educates, entertains, challenges, shocks, questions, and illuminates. Prairie Theatre Exchange (PTE) was born with these ideals in 1972, and has become a centre of excellence for contemporary theatre and drama education.

While nationally recognized, PTE is deeply rooted in community and has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Winnipeg and throughout Manitoba. Manitobans trust PTE to ensure that full voice is given to the finest artistic talent our region and our country have to offer.


Our Mandate
• To produce and present professional live and digital productions
• To be a centre for new play development and production in the Prairies
• To be a centre for artistic professional development
• To share our productions with a local, provincial, national and international audience
• To be a home and resource to artists, supporting experimentation, and opportunity
• To embrace and integrate principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization,
anti-racism, anti-oppression, accessibility, and social justice into operations
both artistic and administrative


Our Vision
The vision for Prairie Theatre Exchange is to be vital, relevant, and responsive. We strive to be a centre for innovation in theatre and performance practice: a home for interdisciplinary and diverse works. We are a home for artists from the Prairies (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) and beyond. We prioritize professional development for artists in the Prairies. We are a contemporary professional theatre company which reflects the ever-evolving communities and audiences we serve with artistry, confidence and heart.


    Our Values

    The plays we produce and the work we do are expressions of our priorities. The way we create and present these plays exemplifies the ethics, philosophy and guiding principles of the company.

    It is essential that our theatre be:
    • Safe
    • Accountable
    • Equitable
    • Accessible
    • Respectful
    • Truthful
    • Inspired
    • Provocative
    • Artistically rich
    • Generous
    • Responsible
    • Inter-cultural
    • Inter-sectional
    • Inter-disciplinary