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Here
are some of the playwrights we worked with in previous seasons:
James Fagan Tait
James Fagan Tait worked
on an adaptation of The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoefsky as part
of the Tadoussac Playwrights' Residence in September 2007.
James Fagan Tait (Jimmy) recently
adapted Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris for Boca
Del Lupo’s summer production Under the Burrard Street
Bridge. He has written the adaptations of their last two productions
in Stanley Park, The Shoes That Were Danced To Pieces and
the award-winning Vasily, The Luckless. He adapted and
directed Timon of Athens for Bard on the Beach and A
Christmas Carol for the Vancouver Playhouse, both collaborations
with composer and musical director Joelysa Pankanea. They also teamed
up for the award-winning Crime and Punishment for which The Idiot
is what they are calling the organic sequel, as it will again feature
21 actors and 3 musicians in an ensemble movement and singing piece.
The production which will be presented in 2010 in Vancouver on two
separate nights since it is seven hours long, will be produced by
NeWorld Theatre, PuSH International Theatre Festival and Vancouver
Moving Theatre. Their current collaboration is a new adaptation
of Balzac’s Pére Goriot, which will be presented in
Vancouver in January 2008. He hails from Cornwall, Ontario and was
trained at Ryerson Theatre School and École Jacques Lecoq,
he was the artistic director of Fly on the Wall in London, England.
The Idiot is one
of Dostoyevsky’s tragic comedies that follows the story of
a wise epileptic young man upon his return to St. Petersburgh, Russia
after an absence of several years. Guilessly, he quickly befriends
people of all classes, all of whom become his rather quick undoing.
John
Mighton & Maryse Warda
John Mighton's plays Half Life
and Possible Worlds were translated by Maryse Warda
as part of the Tadoussac residency in September 2007.
John Mighton is currently an Adjunct
Professor at the University of Toronto. He has twice won the Dora
Mavor Moore Award: for Scientific Americans and for A
Short History of Night. He also won the Chalmers Award for
A Short History of Night; the Governor General's Award
for the published text of Possible Worlds and A Short
History of Night, as well as for Half Life. In 2005
he won the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, presented to a
professional playwright who advances Canadian theatre through a
body of work and influences emerging theatre artists.
Maryse Warda was
born and raised in Egypt, and landed in Montreal at the age of nine.
She has been active in theatre for 15 years. She was instrumental
in bringing the works of English Canadian writers such as Brad Fraser,
George F. Walker and Daniel MacIvor to francophone audiences. Her
translation of three plays from Walker’s Suburban Motel
series earned her a Masque trophy in 2000 from the Académie
Québécoise du Théâtre and a nomination
in 2001 for the Governor General’s Literary Award. In addition
to Half Life, she is also translating John Mighton’s
Possible Worlds for a January 2008 production at Théâtre
de Quat’Sous. Ms. Warda is a graduate of Université
de Montréal in English literature.
Half Life portrays
the relationship of an elderly man and woman in a nursing home,
and the way in which this relationship affects their respective
middle-aged son and daughter.
In Possible Worlds, the play’s
protagonist believes that he lives in many worlds at the same time,
and falls in love with different incarnations of the same woman.
Marie
Cadieux
Robert Chafe's
play Tempting Providence was translated by Marie
Cadieux as part of the Tadoussac Playwrights' Residence
in September 2007.
Marie Cadieux is a playwright and
documentary film writer/director. She made her directorial debut
in 1990 at the NFB with Franchir la nuit. Her second documentary
was nominated for a Prix Gemeaux and was aired in its English version
(Twice Condemned) on Newsworld. Though working mostly as
film director and script writer for the past twenty years, she continued
writing commissioned pieces for the stage and public venues. It
was with the latter she discovered Tempting Providence
by Robert Chafe and she approched Théâtre populaire
d'Acadie in Caraquet, feeling stongly a translation of this play
would be meaningful for the francophone Maritime audience.
Tempting Providence / Tenter
le destin is a minimalist play telling the story of Myra
Bennet, an expatriate British nurse who provided medical care for
the remote coastline of Newfoundland’s northern peninsula.
Pierre-Michel
Tremblay & Micheline Chevrier
Pierre-Michel Tremblay's Coma
Unplugged was translated by Micheline Chevrier
as part of the Tadoussac Playwrights' Residence in September 2007.
Pierre-Michel Tremblay has been
a television writer for numerous series including Délirium
le Grand Blond avec un show sournois, Un gars, une fille,
la Petite Séduction, Le Fric Show, and
has written for Jean-Michel Anctil, Michel Barrette, Marie-Lise
Pilote and the duo Lévesque-Turcotte, among others. In 1996,
in collaboration with the acting company, he founded the theatre
troupe les Eternels Pigistes, which produced three of his plays,
Quelques Humains, le Rire de la mer, and Mille
feuilles to immediate and dazzling success. His latest play
Coma Unplugged, a success with critics and public alike,
was produced by the Théâtre de la Manufacture and directed
by Denis Bernard. It was recently awarded the 2007 Masque for Best
Montreal production. He is presently writing his first feature film,
Trois fins du monde et un french-kiss, and is starting
work on his next play.
Micheline Chevrier
has worked across Canada as a director, artistic director and dramaturg
for the past twenty-five years. Her directorial credits include
works by several Canadian playwrights such as John Murrell, Wendy
Lill, Colleen Murphy, Ann-Marie Macdonald and Carol Shields; as
well as numerous Quebecois writers such as Michel Tremblay, Michel
Marc Bouchard, Jean-Marc Dalpé and François Archambault.
From 1995 to 2000, Micheline was the Artistic Director of the Great
Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. She has also been Associate
Artistic Director at Theatre New-Brunswick, Associate Dramaturg
at Playwrights Workshop Montreal and Associate Artist at CanStage
in Toronto. She has also directed and taught at the National Theatre
School, Concordia University, Dalhousie University and University
of Alberta among others.
Coma Unplugged
is about Daniel Martin, humour columnist for le Journal, who is
plunged into a deep coma after an accident. Or was it an accident?
Coma Unplugged will be produced next season at GCTC in
Ottawa and directed by Micheline Chevrier.
Peter
Hinton
Peter Hinton worked on an adaptation
of Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht as part of the Tadoussac
Playwrights' Residence in September 2007.
Peter Hinton is one of English Canada’s
most respected playwrights, directors, and dramaturges. His early
plays include Façade which was nominated for a Dora
Mavor Moore Award for Artistic Innovation and Excellence, and Urban
Voodoo (co-written with Jim Milan). Mr. Hinton was a writer
and dramaturge on the Canadian Stage Hour Company collective creations
i.d. and Tabu, which both received Dora Awards.
Recently, his trilogy of plays entitled The Swanne premiered
at the Stratford Festival of Canada. His play Fanny Kemble
premiered at the Stratford in 2006. He has written the librettos
for two operas with composer Peter Hannan; The Diana Cantata,
and 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade, which was awarded
the Alcan Performing Arts Award in 2002. Currently, Peter is Artistic
Director of the English Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada.
Mother Courage and Her Children
(Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder) is set during the Thirty
Years' War of 1618-1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling,
nicknamed "Mother Courage", a wily canteen woman with
the Swedish Army who is determined to make her living from the war.
Over the course of the play, she loses all three of her children,
Swiss Cheese, Eilif, and Katrin, to the same war from which she
sought to profit.
Lib
Spry
Lib
Spry’s Missing Earth received an In-House
Workshop in Aug 2007.
Lib
Spry has been working in theatre for 30 years as a director, writer,
teacher, performer, translator, and popular theatre worker. She
was co-translator for Odyssey theatre’s productions of Moliére’s
The Miser and Gozzi’s The Raven and the
writer on the team for Turandot and Kamalay. She
is also co-founder and co-artistic director of the Toronto theatre
company Straight Stitching Productions, for which she directed Shirley
Barrie’s Carrying the Calf, which won the 1993 Floyd
S. Chalmers Canadian Children’s Play Award, and the 1992 Dora
Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Theatre for Young Audiences.
She gives workshops in playwriting, popular theatre, theatre of
the oppressed, collective creation and acting.
Missing
Earth: As a middle-aged jazz singer’s life starts
to unravel, she is forced to confront the realities of her world.
Shahin
Sayadi
Shahin
Sayadi came to PWM for a residency in August 2007.
Shahin
Sayadi, Artistic Director of OneLight Theatre, will be undertaking
a two-year project, The Veil, comprising the development
and production of the original play and the development of an original
staging design as the center piece of the production. To achieve
the goals of these projects and as a means to incorporate both diverse
and expert perspectives into the work, OneLight Theatre will be
partnering with both Mermaid Theatre, Neptune Theatre and Harbourfront
Centre. OneLight Theatre will follow the guided, disciplined collaborative
working style which is the core of the company, and work with its
partners not as external advisors, but as active members of the
production team working with OneLight throughout the development
and production of The Veil.
Based
on Masoud Behnoud’s epic novel Khanoom, The
Veil is a slightly fictionalized account of the exceptional
life experiences and survival of a Persian princess. It is the story
of her changing perspective of the world, religion, politics and
relationships.
Marcia Johnson
Marcia Johnson's play
The Hateship Game received an In-House Workshop in June
2007
Marcia Johnson’s plays include
You Look Great Too for the Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies
in Bad Times Theatre and Perfect on Paper at the Toronto
Fringe Festival and a reading of Say Ginger Ale at the
AfriCanadian Playwrights Festival.She has been a member of the playwrights
units of Theatre Passe Muraille and Obsidian Theatre Company as
well as Playwright in Residence at Blyth Festival. Marcia was also
a member of the Siminovitch Prize Playwriting Master Class led by
renowned Quebec playwright (and Siminovitch Prize-recipient) Carole
Frechette. She acquired the rights for The Hateship Game in
2004 and received a commission from Blyth Festival to adapt the
work into a dialogue-based piece of theatre. Marcia Johnson will
be appearing in the remount of The Real McCoy by fellow
actor-playwright, Andrew Moodie.
The Hateship Game
is based on the title story of the Alice Munro collection Hateship,
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. It is a
story of malaise and isolation that drives two teenage girls to
commit a cruel prank and the lonely housekeeper who falls for it
wholeheartedly. It will be produced at the Blyth Festival in August
2008.
“When I introduced myself to Alice Munro,
it was with the intention of sharing how much I loved her work.
I told her that I identified with all the female characters in Hateship,
Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. She, impulsively, gave
me permission to adapt it. PWM helped me on the path to doing the
story and its author justice.”
Michael
Mackenzie
Michael
Mackenzie's play The Baroness and the Pig was
given a two-day In-House Workshop in June, 2007.
Since
2000 Michael Mackenzie’s plays have been produced professionally
in Budapest (Barka, 2000-2005 ), Toronto (Factory Theatre, Oct-Nov.
2000), Prague (Divadlo Na zabradli, 2002-2005), Stuttgart (Tri-Buhne,
Oct 2001- Jan 2002), Ottawa (Theatre Trillium, Apr. 2006), Avignon
(The International Theatre Festival in Avignon, 2005) and Szekesfehervar,
Hungary (Sorosmarty Szinha, Dec 2006 on). His plays have also been
translated into Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, Czech, Portuguese and
Chinese (Mandarin) and are currently published in French, Hungarian
and German. The Baroness and the Pig, Michael Mackenzie’s
first feature film as writer/director (producer Media Principia),
was selected for the Toronto International Film Festival (2002),
Festival de nouveau cinema et media (Montreal 2002) where it was
the closing film, Sundance Film Festival (2003) and San Francisco
Film Festival (2003). It starred Patricia Clarkson and Colin Feore,
with music by Phillip Glass, and was nominated for Best Direction,
Best Cinematography and Best Editing for the Quebec Jutra Awards
(2003). He is currently editing his 2nd feature film as director
and co-writer - Adam’s Wall (story/co-writer Dana
Schoel) produced by Couzin Films. He has worked extensively as a
dramaturge and script editor/consultant notably for the Cirque de
Soleil show Ka at the MGM Grand in Los Vegas, and for Robert
Lepage’s ex machina company in Quebec City. Michael Mackenzie
lives in Montreal with his wife and son.
The
Baroness and the Pig - The Baroness is a baroness and Emily
is a Pig. How will they ever get along?
Linda
Gaboriau and Wajdi Mouawad
Linda Gaboriau's
translation of Wajdi Mouawad's play Rêves (Dreams)
received an In-House Workshop in June, 2007.
Linda Gaboriau has translated some
eighty plays, including the works of some of Québec's most
prominent playwrights. Her translations of plays by Michel Marc
Bouchard, René-Daniel Dubois, Normand Chaurette, Daniel Danis,
Michel Garneau, Gratien Gélinas, Jovette Marchessault, Wajdi
Mouawad and Michel Tremblay have been published and widely produced
across Canada and abroad. She has won the Governor General's Award
for Translation (in 1996, for her translation of Stone and Ashes
by Daniel Danis) and three Chalmers Awards for her translations
of Normand Chaurette's Les Reines (The Queens), Michel
Marc Bouchard's Les Feluettes (Lilies) which also won the
Dora Mavor Moore Award (Toronto) and Jesse Richardson Awards (Vancouver),
and for Bouchard's Les Muses Orphelines (The Orphan Muses).
For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, her translation of
Michel Tremblay's widely acclaimed play, was seen in theatres across
Canada, in the United States, and most recently in Singapore. Ms.
Gaboriau has also worked as a free-lance journalist and broadcaster.
She has a longstanding association with Montreal's Centre des auteurs
dramatiques (CEAD) where she directed the play development programme
and coordinated numerous translation and international exchange
activities. For several years, she was an associate director of
the Banff playRites Colony (in charge of translation projects) and
was the founding director (2003- 2007) of the Banff International
Literary Translation Centre.
A
voice that speaks for memory, in the past dozen years, Wajdi Mouawad
has established himself as a powerful and uniquely original player
on the contemporary theatre scene. Born in Lebanon in 1968, he fled
the war-torn country with his family; they settled in Montreal after
spending a few years in Paris. He obtained his acting diploma in
1991 from the National Theatre School, where he also studied stage
writing and directing. After graduating he embarked on a quadruple
career as an actor, writer, director and producer. In all his work,
from his own plays and adaptations to the productions he has directed,
Wajdi Mouawad initiates a dialogue that investigates the tension
between the importance of personal freedom and the no less essential
renunciation of the self.
Dreams
- A young man passes a sleepless night at a hotel while
trying to write a novel, during the evening, his writing comes to
life before his eyes. While in a fantastical delirium, the hotel
keeper appears and confides to him the most important events of
her life.
Julie
Tamiko Manning and Adrienne Wong
Julie
Tamiko Manning and Adrienne Wong were at PWM for three
weeks in May & June 2007, working on a new play, as yet untitled.
Julie
Tamiko Manning has been working out of Montreal mainly as a professional
stage actor for the last 14 years after graduating from the Dome
Theatre in 1991. She has also worked as director, writer, singer
and theatre creator. She most recently appeared on stage as an actor
and dancer in The Place Between with Native Earth Performing
Arts. She has acted with companies like Nightwood Theatre, Magnus
Theatre, Carousel and LKTYP in Ontario, Chëyikwe Performance,
Urban Ink Productions and Rumble Productions in B.C. and Teatro
Comaneci, Projet Porte Parole, Black Theatre Workshop, The Other
Theatre, Strange Fish, Geordie and Infinitheatre in Quebec. She
has performed in the Magnetic North Festival (Burning Vision)
in Ottawa and Le Festival Théâtre des Amériques
(Burning Vision & girls! girls! girls!) in
Montreal. Julie’s previous writing experience was with Strange
Fish Productions, a company which she co-founded with 8 other theatre
artists, on the collective creation Swarming in 1993 and with Urban
Ink on another collective creation, Hunted in 2003. It
was there that she started collaborating with Vancouver theatre
artist, Adrienne Wong on a lighthearted and fun idea which deals
with the emotionally complex theme of identity. With the past and
present support of the CBC Radio and NeWorld Theatre in Vancouver
and PWM here in Montreal, Adrienne and Julie have been able to develop
this project for the last 2 years and are looking forward to a full
production with NeWorld Theatre in the 2008-09 season.
Adrienne
Wong creates, performs and produces new work for theatre and radio
in Vancouver. Her one person ukulele show HURTed premiered
this spring at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, produced
by La Luna Productions. She has collaborated with Shakti Dance Collective,
Shifting Point Theatre, Theatre Replacement, Firehall Arts Centre
and Rubicon Equity Co-Op and performed for the Arts Club Theatre,
the Firehall Arts Centre, Vancouver Moving Theatre and neworldtheatre.
Favourite projects include devising a miniature play for Box Theatre,
co-writing on the Downtown Eastside Community Play, playing Scrabble
the radio (North by Northwest, CBC Radio One), and creating interactive
letter-writing projects in Vancouver and Whitehorse. Upcoming projects
include hanging out at the Vancouver Police Museum for ...these
lives were around me (battery opera) and performing in the
Western premiere of Tideline by Wajdi Mouawad, co-produced
by Touchstone Theatre and neworld. Adrienne is a graduate of SFU’s
School for the Contemporary Arts and one third of neworldtheatre's
Artistic Producing Team.
A
cross-national collaboration between Julie and Adrienne, the play began as a radio comic book about a kick-ass fusion
band entrusted with the task of saving the world from the homogenizing
effects of AM radio. Locked out by CBC, the girls took the idea
(and a ukulele) to Galiano Island and hunkered down for the storm.
Seven days later Mixie and Trixie emerged: two office gals who live
side by side but seem miles apart, yet have more in common than
they think. The gals traveled to Montreal where Mixie benefited
from the dramaturgical assistance of Greg McArthur and Paula Danckert.
The development process examines hybridity and shifting identity
through the lens of Canadian pop culture. Continued development
is scheduled, with an eye for NeWorld Theatre to produce the play
in the 2008/09 season. Developed by NeWorld in association with
Playwrights' Workshop Montréal.
Check out some of the playwrights
we have worked with in our past seasons.
The
2006-2007 playwrights
The
2005-2006 playwrights
The
2004-2005 playwrights
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