We create the future of the past.
MEMORY BOX THEATRE is an indie arts company based in Edmonton, Alberta on Treaty 6 Territory. We recover forgotten and under-appreciated stories from Canadian history, sharing them with the public through live performance art.
The practice of making memory boxes—vessels for preserving keepsakes and mementoes—dates to the Victorian period. Like a society's archives, an individual’s memory box reveals what they value, because it reveals what they believe should be remembered.
At MBT, we value reparative and counter-histories, the neglected stories hidden behind or adjacent to mainstream and official accounts. Live theatre, as an ephemeral, communal experience, provides an ideal laboratory in which to rediscover these stories. By reconnecting communities with the social, political, and aesthetic patterns of their past, we are better able to imagine possible futures. Our memories are also our reminders.
Our debut project, The Light of Other Skies, illuminates the love story of architect Arthur Erickson and interior designer Francisco Kripacz. The play will be workshopped in 2026 at RISER Festival (Edmonton, Alberta) and will premiere in 2027.
(Picture of Erickson, photographed by Liam Monaghan in the Canadian Centre for Architecture Archives.)
Artistic director and company producer.
Memory Box Theatre is led by LIAM MONAGHAN, a writer, theatre artist, emerging scholar, and educator.
Liam’s plays have been performed in festivals and theatres across Canada and his essays have appeared in publications including Canadian Theatre Review, HowlRound Theatre Commons, and Alberta Views. His current artistic project is The Light of Other Skies, an adaptation of the lives of architect Arthur Erickson and his partner, interior designer Francisco Kripacz. Strange/Familiar, Liam’s autofictional play on the themes of adoption, family, and queer belonging, was awarded the Sharon Pollock Prize by Alberta Playwrights' Network, and his artistic work has been funded by the Edmonton Arts Council and Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Currently, Liam is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, where his proposed dissertation is an innovative history of architecture and performance in Canada from the late 19th- to mid-20th-century. More broadly, his interests include playwriting, dramaturgy, and new play creation; fin-de-siècle and modern theatre and drama; queer cultural history; critical and cultural theory; and research-creation methods. He has been awarded a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship—Doctoral by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2026—29), among other awards.
Liam also has an established career as an educator, spanning youth community teaching, sessional instruction, and over six years of full-time experience as a postsecondary writing centre specialist and instructional designer at various institutions. He holds a B.A. (Hons.) and M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Theatre Practice.
(Photograph by Zachary Ayotte.)