Here
are some of the playwrights we’ve been working with this season:
Rosa
Laborde
Rosa Laborde
came to PWM for a Residency in April 2008.
Rosa Laborde is an acting graduate
of The Oxford School of Drama in England. She is a Dora-nominated
playwright and a recent finalist for the Governor General's Literary
Award for her play Leo. Leo was produced with
Tarragon Theatre as well as The Great Canadian Theatre Company in
Ottawa. The Tarragon Production is touring in Vancouver (The Firehall),
Victoria (The Belfry) and Halifax (Neptune) in February/March 2008.
Her previous play Sugar was named Outstanding New Play
by NOW Magazine and is in development as a feature film. Other plays
include Dish, produced as part of LabCab at The Factory
Theatre and The Source produced as part of Rhubarb! at
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Rosa is currently Playwright in Residence
at The Tarragon Theatre where she is completing the plays Hush
and Eve's Morning. As an actress Rosa most recently appeared
in Aluna Theatre's Madre and Seventh Stage's Whale
Music. Other notable plays include: Paul Bettis' Svengali's,
Theatre Viscera's Nurture and the CBC Radio Dramas The
Communion and The Long Way Home. She has numerous
television credits - most recently recurring roles on ReGenesis
and History Bites. An Ottawa native, Rosa currently resides
in Toronto.
Rosa will be working on her play Hush,
in which a widowed Professor tries to reconnect with his wife by
entering the dreams of his eleven-year-old daughter.
Julie
Tamiko Manning and Adrienne Wong
Julie
Tamiko Manning and Adrienne Wong were in residence for
two weeks in April 2008, continuing work on their new play.
see below.
David Fennario
Bolsheviki by David Fennario
received an In-House Workshop in February 2008.
Canada's oldest fourteen year old runaway currently
working illegally under false identity as David Fennario. He describes
Bolsheviki as an uplifting, heartwarming play about a Canadian
soldier who decides that peackeeping means shooting his officers.
Fennario would not give his address.
Arthur Holden
Father Land by Arthur
Holden received an In-House Workshop in February 2008.
Arthur Holden makes his living as an
actor and translator in Montreal. Among his acting credits are recurring
roles in two locally-produced comedy series, Fries With That
and Seriously Weird. He also played Colonel John MacCrae
in Brian McKenna's miniseries The Great War and appears
(briefly) in Hollywood features like The Bone Collector,
The Aviator, 300, and the upcoming White Out.
As a translator, he has written English versions of numerous Quebecois
productions, including Leolo, Scoop, La Vie
Apres l'Amour and Rumeurs. He lives in Montreal with
his wife, novelist Claire Rothman, and their two sons. Father
Land is his first attempt at writing for the stage.
Father Land: A fraternal
conflict between Joe and Victor Brook over Victor's gaming debt
to a mobster is complicated by the admiration that Joseph's son
Eric has for his wayward uncle; and is further ramified by echoes
of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, whose story Eric is narrating
in a history essay.
Tracey Power
In January 2008, PWM collaborated with
Geordie Productions on an adaptation of The
Jungle Book by Tracey Power.
Tracey Power is a writer and actor dedicated to
the creation of new work. Her play Living Shadows, A Story of
Mary Pickford toured to theatres across Canada and won The
Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Production and Performance.
Last year Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary commissioned If Romance
is Dead… Who Killed it? and recently her newest play
The Accordion received a production in Edmonton with Village
Theatre in fall 2007. She is also co-creator and a music writer
for The Back Kitchen Release Party that will run at The
Arts Club Theatre this summer. The Jungle Book is Tracey’s
first adaptation and a story she’s always wanted to see brought
to life on stage.
The Jungle Book is a new adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's
stories of Mowgli the man-cub, whose adventures are told with elaborate
masks, puppets and music to bring jungle rhythms alive on stage.
Beatriz
Pizano
Beatriz Pizano came
for a one week residency at PWM in December 2007 to complete a production
draft of her new script, Madre, which will play at Theatre
Passe Muraille (Toronto) in February 2008.
Beatriz Pizano is the founder and artistic
director of Aluna Theatre. She has been a recipient of numerous
awards and grants including The Chalmers Professional Development
(2006) and the Urjo Kareda Emerging Artists grant from the Tarragon
Theatre (2004-2005). Playwrights’ Units: Nightwood Theatre
(Madre 2005) and Tarragon Theatre (The Communion 2006). As a dramaturge
she has worked on a number of projects including two seasons at
the Paprika Festival. Other playwriting credits include For
Sale (nominated as Outstanding New Play), meeting playce
(co-creator), and Tangueratas (co-writer, Chicano/Latino
Literary Contest winner and Southwest Festival of New Plays in Texas
contest winner). Film writing credits include In Between and
A Devil at my Table.
Madre is a 90-minute
theatrical memoir that follows Julia of the Many Mary's, an aging
woman in Colombia who is fighting to maintain a sense of self as
she succumbs to Alzheimer's. As Julia's lifetime of memories unravels,
her adopted daughter Angela returns from Toronto to care for her,
and to make one last desperate attempt to resolve their conflicted
relationship while Julia still recognizes her.
Colleen
Wagner
Colleen Wagner visited
PWM for a week-long residency in December 2007, where her script
(working title Fathers) received an In-House Workshop.
Colleen Wagner is a Governor General
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced
internationally and her 1996 Governor General award play, The
Monument, has been translated into six languages and performed
internationally, with a production in June 2007 in Rwanda, Africa.
The Monument has also been adapted to a screenplay and
is currently in financing in LA. She co-founded and was co-artistic
director of The NotaBle Acts Theatre Co. in Fredericton, New Brunswick
from 2002-2007. She is currently developing a number of new plays
and film projects. She teaches Screenwriting in the Dept. of Film
at York University.
Alexis Diamond
Alexis Diamond's
script Ride received an In-House Workshop in December 2007.
Alexis Diamond is a playwright and librettist based
in Montreal. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Concordia and
an MA in English Literature from the University of Montreal. Her
short works have been presented by Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal,
the Montreal Fringe Festival, Tapestry New Opera Works (Toronto),
Nightwood Theatre (Toronto), Soundstreams (Toronto) and CBC Radio.
She is a recipient of a Canadian Opera Creation Program Fellowship
and a Leighton Studio Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Recently, Alexis received an IPOLC grant from the Canada Council
for the Arts to develop Ride with composer Nick Carpenter.
Alexis also works as a freelance writer, translator and as a script
consultant for film. Co-founder of RoseBush TheatreWorks with Marie-Leofeli
R. Barlizo and Emma Tibaldo, Alexis has served as President of the
Board of PWM.
Ride is a musical for children
that takes a fantastical journey through the world of young people
tackling environmental issues.
Manon Beaudoin
and Martha Ross
Manon Beaudoin and
Martha Ross came to PWM for a three day residency
in November to develop Queen Of Hearts by Manon Beaudoin.
Manon Beaudoin is the Artistic Director
of a new bilingual theatre company Les Saints who recently produced
The Queen of Hearts for the Toronto theatre The Tank House,
and The Bloody Clean Up or the lamentable tale of Marie-Antoinette,
for the VECC in Vancouver which Manon wrote. East of the Sun
and West of the Moon is Manon's fourth show for The
Caravan Farm Theatre in Armstrong, BC. Manon is a co-founder of
Cirque Poule (Vancouver, Victoria and Paris). She is also a founding
member of Leaky Heaven Circus (Vancouver). She is a co-creator of
Flying Blind, an Axis/Belfry/Arts Club/Legs on the Wall
coproduction, in Canada and Australia. Manon is a core member of
the internationally acclaimed production of The Overcoat.
Martha Ross co-founded Theatre Columbus with Leah
Cherniak after she graduated from Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
Continuing in the spirit of their training, their company has created
twenty-eight original comedies, including the internationally acclaimed
The Anger in Ernest & Ernestine (1987); The Attic,
the Pearls and 3 Fine Girls (1995), for which she received
a Dora Mavor Moore award for her performance; and The Betrayal,
which received a 1999 Chalmers Award for Best New Play. As well
as performing, Martha has written several plays, including, Dr.
Dapertutto (nominated for the Floyd S. Chalmers Best New Play
award in 1990); Ratbag, a musical about the Industrial
Revolution, which she wrote with John Millard; The Dog and the
Angel for the Caravan Farm Theatre Co. (1999); The Crack for
Rumble Theatre (2002) and most recently, And Up They Flew,
a “serious comedy” about the tensions of the 20th century.
She is currently writing a one woman show, On the Lam,
about a woman who goes into hiding after killing her neighbour,
whom she catches stealing her family’s water supply.
Queen Of Hearts concerns a nurse
and a patient who are locked in a psychiatric hospital as a city
is air-bombed.
Cheryl Foggo
In November 2007, PWM presented a staged
reading of Cheryl Foggo’s Heaven at
MainLine Theatre, as a coproduction with Black Theatre Workshop.
A descendant of Black pioneers who
settled in Alberta and Saskatchewan during the first decade of the
twentieth century, Cheryl Foggo has written extensively about the
Black pioneers’ experience. Foggo has been published and produced
as a journalist, screenwriter, poet, playwright, writer of fiction
and non-fiction and young adult novelist. She is the recipient of
numerous awards for her work. Foggo’s Heaven has
received a national playwriting nomination, a Betty Mitchell best
new play nomination, and has been aired on CBC’s “Sunday
Showcase” and “Monday Night Playhouse”.
Heaven is set in 1927,
twenty-two years after the arrival of the first black pioneers in
Amber Valley, Alberta. The play tells the story of Charlotte Williams,
who arrives in Amber Valley to take over a vacant teaching post.
Rahul
Varma
Rahul Varma’s
Truth and Treason received an In-House Workshop in November
2007.
Rahul Varma is a playwright, essayist,
and community activist and artistic director of the Teesri Duniya
Theatre which he co-founded in 1981. He writes both in Hindi and
English which is the language of his adulthood. He is one of only
a few culturally diverse playwrights whose works have been translated
and produced in French, Hindi and other languages. His recent works
include Counter Offence and Bhopal, which was
translated in Hindi as Zahreeli Hawa by India’s preeminent
director Habib Tanvir.
Truth and Treason
is an epic drama played against the Iraqi invasion; a study of the
devastating effects of war, and what we are force to sacrifice in
the name of our beliefs.
Carol
Anderson, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman, Ryan Griffith, Greg MacArthur
and Darrah Teitel
In October 2007, PWM presented the
Precipice radio play project at the Studio Hydro-Quebec, Monument
National, in cooperation with CBC Radio and the National Theatre
School of Canada. The plays presented were:
Who Is This Old Black
Woman?: At a bus stop, on
a glistening cold Montreal afternoon, a white woman looks into the
eyes of an elderly black stranger, embarks on a voyage of memory,
and recalls a story of budding interracial love, against the backdrop
of a 1960s society.
Carol Cece Anderson is a Toronto-based
playwright and actor.
February Anxiety: What do you do
when your mother makes pancakes out of tears, your recycling talks
to you, and death lives in your faucets?
Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman is the 2007 winner of
the Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition for Scratch and
a student of the National Theatre School’s playwriting program.
Kind: In the future, two salvage
company scouts encounter divine energy ... unfortunately, they react
to it in very different ways.
Ryan Griffith is a 2006 graduate of the National
Theatre School’s playwriting program.
Poutine: On a freezing cold New
Years' Day, four friends brave the cold, empty streets of Montreal
in search of poutine. They end up finding something altogether different.
Greg MacArthur is primarily a playwright and occasionally
an actor. His plays have been produced across Canada, as well as
in South Africa, Germany, and the UK. His writing credits include
recovery; Get Away; Snowman; girls!
girls! girls!; Epiphany; The Rise and Fall of
Peter Gaveston; and Beggar Boy (a play for children).
He was the co-founder and co-artistic director of House of Slacks,
a Toronto-based collaborative theatre company. His plays have been
translated into German and French. He is currently Artist-In-Residence
at Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal.
Palliative: As an elderly woman slips further and
further back into her wartime fantasies, her daughter tries to cope
with the painful realities of losing a loved one.
Darrah Teitel is a 2007 graduate of the National
Theatre School’s playwriting program.
Marcia
Kash
Someone Else’s Shoes by Marcia
Kash received an In-House Workshop in October 2007.
Marcia Kash began her career as an actor at the
Royal Court Theatre in London, England and went on to play leading
roles in the U.K., Canada and the U.S. As well as developing a successful
career as a director, she is also an internationally produced playwright
with nine shows to her credit.. Her first play Who’s Under
Where? has received more than one hundred productions around
the world and has been translated into five languages. Other plays
include Discovering Elvis, which was produced in Quebec
under the title A La Recherche d’Elvis and received
a best play nomination at Les Masques, 2001; and a CBC radio drama
entitled Thicker Than Water, which she is currently adapting
for the stage under the title Someone Else’s Shoes.
In various stages of development are a new musical with Doug Hughes
and Jonathan Monro, a new farce with Ian D. Clark and a screenplay
with Mary Colin Chisholm.
Someone Else's Shoes is a story
about a Jewish family just after WWII and the search for a lost
member of the family.
Gerard
Vásquez, Elisabet Ràfols, Michael Bantjes and Danielle
Henripin
As part of Journées de la culture
in September 2007, PWM presented readings in English and French
of Oooo!, a Catalan play by Gerard Vàsquez.
The English translation was by Elisabet Ràfols
and Michael Bantjes. The French translation was
by Danielle Henripin. It will be presented this
fall in Saskatoon, SK, directed by Tom Bentley.
Elisabet Ràfols (Barcelona,
Catalonia) is a founding member of Tant per Tant, a cultural collective
devoted to the translation and production of Catalan and Canadian
plays. Her translation into Catalan of Jeux de patience
by Abla Farhoud was produced by Espai Brossa in Barcelona (2005).
Currently she is working on the Catalan translation of Out in
the Cold by Cheryl Jack.
Montréal native Danielle Henripin
has been a translator at the UN Headquarters in New York since 2005.
She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from
the Université de Montréal, where she taught translation
for film and television for six years. An adaptation specialist,
she has translated 10 films and had held positions at MusiquePlus,
Radio-Canada and Cossette. For this translation, her first from
a literary work in Spanish, she used the Spanish version of Oooo!.
Oooo! is a historical
two-act set in Nazi Germany, following the attempts of a Gestapo
agent to stage a clown show for Hitler. His unwilling partner, a
nationally beloved clown, wrestles with his own conscience and his
partner’s continued resistance to the Third Reich.
Michèle Magny and
Linda Gaboriau
Michèle Magny’s
play Marina, The Last Blush of Life, in English translation
by Linda Gaboriau, received an In-House Workshop in September 2007.
Born in Montreal, Michèle Magny
graduated in 1968 from the National Theatre School of Canada’s
acting program. She has acted on most Montreal stages and has toured
Quebec many times. Notable appearances at the TNM were in Les
Fées ont soif by Denise Boucher, Bonjour là
bonjour by Michel Tremblay, and the creation of La charge
de l'orignal épormyable by Claude Gauvreau. She has
also acted in Paris and on tour in France, notably in Quatre
à Quatre by Michel Garneau. She has directed numerous
plays, among them La Reprise by Claude Gauvreau at Théâtre
d'Aujourd'hui, which won the Masque prize for best production of
the year in 1994, and was a finalist in the category of Best Director.
In 1993, also at the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui, her first
play was produced: Marina, le dernier rose aux joues, about
the writer Marina Tsvétaéva. The play, published by
Actes-Sud-Leméac, was nominated for the Governor General’s
Literary Prize in the category of theatre in 1995. In 1996, she
wrote Carré de ciel, which was produced in Montreal
at the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui under the direction of
Martine Beaulne. Michèle has written two radio plays for
Radio-Canada, as well as Entre l’oubli et la mémoire,
a script on the various stories surrounding the opening of the Bibliothèque
Nationale à Montréal in May 2005, read by students
of the National Theatre School, where she has taught acting for
the past ten years. She frequently works as a consultant for speech
and narration of text with the reporters and hosts of Radio-Canada,
from Vancouver to Moncton.
Based on the life of Marina Tsvetaeva,
one of Russia’s most influential poets of the 20th century,
Marina, The Last Blush of Life explores the final
days of this extraordinary woman during the hardships of the Russian
Revolution.
Linda Gaboriau: see below.
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
|