The basis of our working method is the development of long-term
relationships with individual writers. Here are a few of our success
stories, stemming from such relationships.
Burning Vision by Marie Clements
Elisa’s Skin by Carole Fréchette
girls!girls!girls! by Greg MacArthur
The Monument by Colleen Wagner
The Swanne by Peter Hinton
Marie Clements wrote the first scenes of her play
Burning Vision in the June 2000 Women's Writers’
Unit of Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal. Artistic Director
Paula Danckert took on the project as script dramaturg, working
with Marie through long- distance collaboration and meetings in
Vancouver, Ottawa and Montréal. Peter Hinton, on leave from his
position as Dramaturg in Residence at PWM, directed Burning Vision
in its 2003 incarnation. When rehearsals began in Vancouver in February
2002, Paula was Production Dramaturg. She also participated inthe
remount of the play at the 2003 Festival de théâtre
des Amériques, and at the first annual Magnetic
North Festival. Burning Vision was nominated for
the 2003 Governor General’s Award and won the 2004 Canada-Japan
Literary Award, presented by the Canada Council for the Arts with
the Embassy of Japan.
Greg MacArthur’s girls!girls!girls!
was developed during an Artist
Residency at Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, with Peter
Hinton as dramaturg. The residency concluded with an In-House Workshop
of the script. The Montréal actors in the cast were so excited by
the work that they formed a small company, Teatro Comenici, with
the intention of producing the script. The company was admitted
to the 2001 Montréal Fringe Festival, with Peter
Hinton as production director. PWM continued its support of the
production by providing rehearsal space, photocopies and publicity
assistance, and by financing Greg's stay in Montreal for the production.
The show was the hit of the Fringe, and was picked up by the 2001
Festival de théâtre des Amériques.
Carole Fréchette’s play Elisa’s
Skin (La peau d’Élisa) achieved a successful
transition into the English-language theatre community through PWM’s
Transmissions
program. First developed through a week-long exchange between Montréal
and Brussels, the original French version was nominated for a Governor
General’s Award in 1998. In 2001, the English version of the
play, translated by John Murrell, was presented at a Transmissions
reading in Toronto. As a result, the Tarragon Theatre produced Elisa’s
Skin as part of their following season. In 2002, Carol Fréchette
was awarded the Siminovitch prize, the richest award in Canadian
theatre.
In the spring of 1999, Paula Danckert submitted Colleen
Wagner’s play The Monument to Playwrights’
Workshop Montréal’s sister organization CEAD as one of six
scripts under consideration for the annual Transmissions
program. As a result, CEAD’s reading committee commissioned
Carole Fréchette to write the French translation. Following
a workshop of the English version, the translation was given a staged
reading in November 1999 at La Licorne Theatre. Jean-Denis Leduc,
Artistic Director of La Licorne’s resident production company
Theatre de la Manufacture, produced the translation in his next
season. As a result of travels by Gabriel Safdie, past president
of the PWM Board of Directors, as well as Colleen Wagner herself,
The Monument’s production history also included productions
in Mandarin (Beijing, October 2000) and German (Berlin, January
2001).
Much of the writing of Peter Hinton's play trilogy
The Swanne was completed while Peter was Playwright in
Residence at Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, with Paula Danckert
as dramaturg. In December 1999, in cooperation with the Montréal
company Clowns Gone Bad Productions, PWM performed a three-day marathon
reading of the script, which was a hybrid of an in-house
workshop and a public
reading. 27 actors took part in this reading, which was open
to the public. In 2002, The Swanne was selected by the
Stratford Festival for production in 2002 (Part I), 2003 (Part II)
and 2004 (Part III), and Paula was hired by the company as Production
Dramaturg.
