Ken Gass, the former Factory Theatre artistic director fired from his longtime post earlier this year, plans to revive his Canadian Rep Theatre project by taking on a series of major works by Canadian writers.

Ken Gass is relaunching his Canadian Rep Theatre by tackling a series of new Canadian plays. (Facebook)

New work by leading Canadian playwrights Wajdi Mouawad, George F. Walker and Judith Thompson are lined up for the resurrected production company Gass first created in the mid-1980s and which he hopes to turn into a new permanent theatre company.

Past Canadian Rep Theatre projects include Circulations, the first Robert Lepage work staged outside of Quebec, A Day At The Beach by John Palmer, Agiluk by Herschel Hardin and productions of Claudius and Amazon Dream by Gass in the 1990s.

Gass said it was a long-held ambition to create a season and permanent life for the theatre company.

"Given my sudden and unexpected departure from Factory this summer, I now see a golden opportunity to fast-track that ambition and to re-build Canadian Rep project-by-project before attempting to launch a full repertory season in the near future," he said in a statement released Monday.

"Key to this work will be creating a strong resident company of artists committed to risk and to continual, renewed training and experimentation, and who — as an ensemble — reflect the face of our richly diverse country."

The company will be dedicated to new and classical Canadian plays. Three major projects already lined up are:

• April/May 2013: The English-language premiere of Mouawad's Pacomambo, a powerful play for children about death.
• Fall 2013: The Canadian premiere of Dead Metaphor. Written and directed by Walker, the dark comedy follows a former sniper just back from Afghanistan and the way he is regarded at home.
• Spring 2014: The world premiere of Thompson's Watching Glory Die, about a chronically disturbed young woman in the prison system.

Gass’s firing at Factory Theatre, a company he helped found in 1970 and revive in the 1990s, sparked outrage in the Canadian theatre community.

Some playwrights withdrew their works from the Toronto company's lineup. Among them was Walker, whose Dead Metaphor was slated to be part of Factory’s upcoming season.

Gass is working with Andre du Toit, a former Factory Theatre production manager, and a team of volunteers to launch his new company.