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.

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