Torontos Workman Theatre Project is a non-profit, performing arts company that integrates people who receive mental health services with the professional arts community. Fundamentally, the company seeks to imagine a reconstructed representation of mental illness on stage. Since its incorporation in 1991, the WTP has created over twenty theatrical productions, toured inter-provincially, provided performing arts training to hundreds of people, supported a playwrights circle and acted as a centre for the exchange of professional and experiential perspectives on mental illness in the community. Over the years, company productions have used theatre to explore a wide range of issues related to mental illness. These include, for example, schizophrenia and the use of police force, cross-cultural conceptions of mental illness and Japanese-Canadian immigrant experience, the role of the asylum in local history, and depression in view of the decision to use or not use antidepressants.By examining the WTPs history, practice and several important productions, it is possible to elucidate emerging strategies in the companys work for representing mental illness. Broadly, these strategies have tended to privilege voices of particular experiences of mental illness and emphasize infinite variety rather than stability within these experiences. The companys representations have also challenged traditional aesthetic stereotypes about madness and disrupted the historical patterns for mental illness representation outlined by such cultural theorists as Sander Gilman, Lillian Feder and Roy Porter. This thesis seeks to understand these representational strategies, compare them one with another, and examine their place within the theatres history.Research for this thesis is based on materials from the companys archives, critical press, related theoretical material and interviews with WTP members, staff and associated artists.