Acclaimed Portuguese Canadian playwright Elaine Ávila's new play, Fado: The Saddest Music in the World, is a tale of love and ghosts set in the back alleys and brothels of old Lisbon. Part concert, part theatre, the story of a young woman confronting her country's fascist past and her own identity is interwoven with the heartbreaking national music of Portugal known as fado, which means "fate."

Playing sold-out crowds in Vancouver and Victoria in 2018 and 2019, Fado was honoured on the Playwrights Guild of Canada's Sure Fire List (the Top Twenty-Three Most Producible Plays in Canada by Women) and selected as one of the Top Unproduced Latinx Plays in the U.S. by Fifty Playwrights. Fado won the Award for Favourite Musical in Victoria with B.C.'s own beloved Sara Marreiros playing the ghost of Amália Rodrigues, the Queen of Fado.

A young singer, Luisa, arrives home to her apartment in Surrey, BC, to find her mother, Rosida, collapsed on the floor, weeping, because the greatest fado singer of all time, Amalia Rodrigues, has died. Luisa realizes she doesn't know how to sing a single Portuguese song, because she and her mother moved outside the community after the death of Luisa's dad. Luisa embarks on a multicultural journey back to Lisbon to reclaim her heritage by learning how to sing fado and retrieve her own true song.

"[Fado] is a voyage in itself, to the fictitious alleys of a timeless society."
-Cameron Murton, International Theatre Reviews