Garnhum will stage the American classic (with Ashley Wright as Lennie) for his audience in Canada's Calgary (population 1 million). Theatre Calgary, in the province of Alberta, has about 9,000 subscribers, and growing, a spokesman told Playbill.com.

The 2006-07 season at Theatre Calgary's 750-seat Max Bell Theatre will also include the North American premiere of Peter Quilter's Glorious!, the award-winning London play about shoddy socialite soprano Florence Foster Jenkins (who is also the subject of Broadway's Souvenir). The staging is a co-production of Theatre Calgary and CanStage. Christopher Newton, Theatre Calgary's first artistic director, and the former artistic director of the Shaw Festival, directs. The acclaimed Nicola Cavendish stars.

Also coming are a Garnhum-directed A Christmas Carol, adapted by Jerry Patch with Stephen Hair as Scrooge (and a fresh design by Alexander Dodge); William Nicholson's The Retreat From Moscow, directed by Diana Leblanc and starring Martha Henry; Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, directed by Ben Barnes and featuring Rod Beattie; and the CanStage production of the wordless international sensation, The Overcoat (a co-production with CanStage and the Citadel Theatre).

Dennis Garnhum, the 10th artistic director in Theatre Calgary's 37-year history, was appointed in September 2005. He has directed plays and musicals at most of the major theatre companies in Canada. In Calgary he was part of ATP's playRites '04, directing Down the Main Drag. He was dramaturg and director of Maureen Hunter's play Vinci for the National Arts Centre, Manitoba Theatre Centre and remounted it at CanStage in Toronto. At the Tarragon Theatre, he directed Skylight and Slavs, for which he received two Dora Award nominations for directing. For the Manitoba Theatre Centre he has directed To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men (both co-productions with Edmonton's Citadel Theatre), Closer and Three Tall Women. He has directed Blue/Orange for the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, B.C. and at the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg. He also directed Of Mice and Men at Neptune Theatre.

For the Stratford Festival of Canada, Garnhum directed The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Scarlet Pimpernel and premieres of Timothy Findley's plays Shadows and The Trials of Ezra Pound. He also directed for six seasons at the Shaw Festival, and his productions there include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Still Life, Sorry, Wrong Number and S.S. Tenacity. Garnhum is attached to the new musical, This Could Be Love, which will be seen in the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2006.

For more information, visit www.theatrecalgary.com.