Joe Slabe honoured with 2025 Harry and Martha Cohen Award for shaping Calgary’s musical theatre scene

“525,600 minutes — how do you measure a year in the life?”
How do you measure a life in musical theatre?

This past theatre season, Calgary’s Joe Slabe has been involved in Twelve Days, Austentatious, and his four-time Betty Mitchell Award-winning autobiographical show Buy Me a Drink, Joe.

Those are just the most recent lines on a resume that spans decades of original songs, celebrated productions, and the creative community he helped build from the ground up.

Now, that work is being formally recognized: Slabe is the 2025 recipient of the Harry and Martha Cohen Award — one of Calgary theatre’s most prestigious distinctions.

The Harry and Martha Cohen Award has been part of Calgary’s creative fabric for decades, established shortly after Arts Commons opened in the mid-1980s.

Named for two of the city’s earliest arts champions, it honours those who have made Calgary their home base and chosen to pour their time, energy, and talent into local theatre. That legacy resonates deeply with Slabe, who grew up in the city and has repeatedly turned down offers elsewhere to continue creating here.

The award celebrates a significant and sustained contribution to Calgary’s theatre landscape.

Past recipients include legendary playwright Sharon Pollock, actor and director Stephen Hair, arts advocate Patti Pon, and Alberta Theatre Projects’ own Haysam Kadri.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” Slabe says. “The people who have won it before are all pretty major players in the theatre scene. So it’s a huge honour.”

But few contemporary Calgarians have left deeper fingerprints than Slabe. A musical theatre lifer, he’s the founding artistic director of Forte Musical Theatre Guild and has written or co-created more than two dozen shows — including Crossing Swords and The Urban Jungle Book, both award-winners in their own right.

Slabe has been behind the music of more than 60 productions, and his work has helped usher in a new era of original musicals in Calgary.

“Joe’s contributions go far beyond the stage,” says Haysam Kadri, artistic director of Alberta Theatre Projects and last year’s Harry and Martha Cohen Award recipient. “Whether he’s at the piano, in rehearsal, or creating something brand new, Joe is a generous and fearless artist. This award couldn’t be more deserved.”

Slabe says the theatre scene — particularly for musicals — has grown dramatically over the course of his career.

“When I started, the reason why I started Forte Musical Theatre was because no one was doing new musicals in Calgary,” he recalls. “As a writer, it was frustrating to have these shows that I was hoping to get produced, and just no one was touching new musical theatre at all.”

That’s changed; he points to collaborations with Lunchbox Theatre and a growing appetite for homegrown musicals across the city.

“Even in the first five years of running the company, a bunch of other companies started doing new musicals as well,” he says. “Now Theatre Calgary is working on new musicals. Lunchbox, of course, is doing lots of new musicals. So I think Forte isn’t the only game in town anymore, and that’s really great.”

Beyond his writing, composing, and directing credits, Slabe has helped cultivate a theatre culture that values collaboration over competition — a quality he says is unique to Calgary.

“I just feel really connected and really supported,” he says. “A lot of people, when they come from out of town to work here, say, ‘Wow, this community is so supportive.’ It’s not like some of the other theatre centres where there’s maybe more competition. It’s a really collaborative place to be here in Calgary.”

And while he’s worked across Canada and beyond, the city has always pulled him back.

“I’ve had the opportunity to go and do shows in other places, and those have been great,” he says. “But I do find myself always coming back here. And to have a musical theatre company is a great sandbox to work on new material in.”

This moment of recognition, he says, arrives at just the right time.

“It’s been really overwhelming,” Slabe says. “I just had like a big birthday. So this all sort of came together at the same time. It’s been great to look back on the past, say, 25 years, but also to look forward to the next 30. And what’s that going to look like?”

For Joe Slabe — and for the Calgary musical theatre scene he’s helped shape — it looks like a future still full of possibility.

Or, as Rent puts it: “There’s only now, there’s only here. Give in to love, or live in fear.”