Laura Mullin and Chris Tolley are reimagining how theatre can reach audiences. Through their award-winning PlayME podcast, they’ve spent the last decade transforming live Canadian plays into compelling audio dramas – in the process creating a platform that not only amplifies diverse voices but transcends borders. Produced in partnership with CBC Podcasts, PlayME has become an international success, earning the 2020 New York Festival Gold Medal for Audio Drama and a 2016 Webby Award Honourable Mention.
The new season launching on March 12, features a diverse slate of new plays:
- Hypothetical Baby by Rachel Cairns (profiled here)
- In Seven Days by Jordi Mand
- Greenline by Makram Ayache,
- The Wrong Bashir by Zahia Rahmatulla
- The Bidding War by Michael Ross Albert (reviewed here)
With their Toronto-based company Expect Theatre, Mullin and Tolley have long explored innovative ways to tell stories. But PlayME has so far proven to be their most transformative and transcendent project.
The PlayME origin story
As theatre creators, Mullin and Tolley know that one of the most beautiful things about theatre is its impermanence. “It’s a communal experience…Everybody’s in one room at one time. And when that event is done, it’s done,” notes Tolley. But at the exact same time, “the tough thing is that ephemeral side – because it means you have to be where the show is.”
This limitation, they saw, was an opportunity to reimagine theatre in a more inclusive way. “A lot of people across Canada don’t have access, and this makes theatre very siloed. People in the north don’t see what’s happening out east, and people in Toronto don’t know what’s happening elsewhere. It becomes very limiting. And expense also makes it very limiting for people.”
Their original “lightbulb moment” occurred during a collaboration with CBC’s once-thriving radio drama department, which culminated in 2012’s one-hour radio drama Tunnel Runners. As someone who grew up listening to CBC Radio, Mullin knews that “audio drama is a lovely way to tell a story because it engages your imagination in a way that other mediums don’t. You visualize the characters and settings and tailor them for yourself.”
Their work on Tunnel Runners “was magic, and gave us a bit of the bug for radio drama,” recalls Tolley. So they asked themselves, “What if we bridge those two ideas and turn theatre into podcasts? That way, Canadian playwrights and plays could be available to the entire world.”
A new business model
Still, launching PlayME was a leap of faith. “We had a small grant from the Toronto Arts Council. And at first, we didn’t know if playwrights would embrace the idea,” Mullin reflects. “Would they think this might diminish ticket sales if people could listen for free?” But it turned out that “playwrights were really game, and theatre companies were wonderful.” Mullin and Tolley conceived of the model like the music industry, where free exposure like radio airplay drives interest in live concerts. Bottom line: “the artistic community realized that more exposure was good.”
The breakthrough came when CBC partnered with them to license the podcast. “It gave us a very large platform to reach people beyond the theatre community,” explains Mullin. And to their surprise and delight, their work resonated globally. Despite it being “unabashedly Canadian,” many people outside Canada tuned in. This “showed us there’s a hunger for Canadian stories. There’s something about Canadian storytellers that makes their work relatable globally. And that was one of the most exciting things for us,” nods Tolley.
Looking back in 2025, Mullin is delighted with just how far-reaching their work has become. “We were at the Playwrights Guild Conference in October, and I was meeting people that live in Alberta and Vancouver.” They said things like “Oh, it’s nice to meet you. I know your voice, but I don’t know you”. He smiles, “People are listening across this really big country we have!”
And playwrights with plays on PlayME have experienced unexpected benefits, such as producers from abroad reaching out to them with offers to produce their plays . . . and an artistic director who wanted to turn one play into a film. Mullin shakes his head. “Those kinds of opportunities we didn’t immediately think about when we were starting off.”
Curating Stories for PlayME
For Tolley, the most consequential feature of this business model is the permanence of audio drama: “The choices we’re making in 2025 are going to be looked at through the lens of somebody in 2035 or 2045. And if you’re not giving voice to Indigenous stories, it’s just going to look weird.” So the mission of the podcast is “about defining the Canadian story and how it’s going to be perceived down the line.” This ambitious mission is not for the faint of heart: “There’s a responsibility here, and a duty to really look at who we give voice to. How do we make sure that the people we give voice to will be relevant in the future?”
So naturally, Mullin and Tolley take a thoughtful approach when selecting the plays to feature. To Tolley, it’s a puzzle: “I like to think of it like a sudoku, where you have all these stories put in a place that works all together — as one piece. We always make sure that a season has a variety of genres, including comedy and drama. We also want to make sure that we represent across the country.”
And “aside from representation,” notes Mullin, “I think we’re really trying to tap into the zeitgeist of the moment. What’s in the conversation? We have a play coming up – Hypothetical Baby, which is about abortion. And The Bidding War is about the housing market. In the podcast world, it’s wonderful to tap into what’s on people’s minds because it gives a snapshot of what’s happening in the world at this moment in Canada.” He smiles broadly. “I love when art can do that!”
In the end, Mullin and Tolley’s most fundamental aim to “put the best stuff out there” – something which, according to Tolley, is actually “really hard because there’s so much great material. We’ve always been on the other side of the ‘No’s’, and now we’re saying ‘No’ a lot – which is hard, because we know that a ‘Yes’ can change somebody’s life.”
Evolving Tunnel Runners
One of PlayME’s most ambitious projects is Tunnel Runners, a seven-part audio drama series directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, which is based – that’s right – on the duo’s formative 2012 radio drama. “Way back . . . we were commissioned to write a one-off, one-hour radio drama for something that CBC Radio was doing about urban myths,” Mullin recalls.
The story followed Cam, a gifted Toronto teen battling anxiety and depression. He escapes into the city’s subway tunnels, only to discover a shadowy world and hidden subculture. During the pandemic, Mullin and Tolley expanded the concept, keeping the core ideas: people living in subway and sewer tunnels, the history of underground Toronto, and urban infiltration (people going into spaces they’re not supposed to) – but tying the story more tightly to contemporary themes of mental health, youth isolation, and the housing crisis.
“We wanted to create something cinematic and immersive that maybe wouldn’t live anywhere else, and would be hard to put on the stage,” Mullin explains. “What I love about audio drama is that it really pushes the limits of storytelling. You can live in a liminal space and really use your imagination. You’re not burdened with making sets or costumes convincing – which gives a lot more leeway. It’s a really exciting playground for writers and audio creators.”
Translating theatre to audio
Although adapting stage plays into audio dramas requires creativity, the duo find translating stage productions to a sonic medium surprisingly straightforward. “At the core of really good writing, it’s about conflict, relationships and dialogue – which stay true whether you have visuals or not,” Tolley explains. “Then you start to look at how audio tells the story that movement, blocking, and lights would.” What you realize is that “every sound matters—like the sound of someone running to a door, or the hum of a fridge.” So by design, the fridge in Leaving Home sounds completely different from the one in Prodigal, and those choices helped to shape the worlds of the stories.
“You also look at the essence of the scene”, he notes. The question to ask is, “’What makes this moment work?’ Then you use audio to lean into that essence.” And in a sense, it’s just that simple. “Sometimes people think we get the playwrights to rewrite the script. But we don’t,” Mullin adds. “We just remove the stage directions, and Chris translates those with Foley sound design, music and other audio tools.“ Only on occasion are small details tweaked to ensure clarity for listeners. For example, in The Orange Dot, a knife that was crucial to the story was never mentioned in the original dialogue, so they had the playwright add that detail.
“Otherwise, we stay true to the original script.”
Creating new opportunities
Looking ahead, Mullin and Tolley are focused on creating new opportunities for Canadian artists. “We’ve started a new series of workshops called PlayPEN. We’re bringing in some of the top Canadian artists, like Jill Keiley from the NAC and Mark Crawford,” Mullin shares. “It’s really exciting.”
In the meantime, the PlayME podcast continues to redefine how Canadian stories are shared, celebrated . . . and made permanent. And through the podcast, the workshop and innovative series like Tunnel Runners, Mullin and Tolley remain committed to amplifying voices, sparking imaginations, and expanding the possibilities of theatre for audiences near and far.
To discover their work – and to listen to PlayME – go to cbc.ca/playme
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
