Note:
due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this workshop will take place remotely.
Contact harris@playwrights.ca for any questions about the workshop.
This five-day workshop led by theatre artist and author Carmen Aguirre is focused on writing that taps into personal experiences, with the goal of generating content leading to the creation of a one-person show or a multi-character play.
Using an exercise from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed canon to kickstart the writing process, the group will explore personal stories that are intentionally set within a larger social, political, and historical context.
The workshop will tackle the challenge of writing works which are meant to speak to universal experience as opposed to a writing process meant only for personal catharsis. Participants will also begin to learn how to wrap the personal and the political around each other effectively. The workshop will address questions such as: how do I write about personal experience without being self-indulgent? Why would anybody care about my personal story? How do I enter into a dialogue with the audience through my personal story, as opposed to using a personal story to enter into a dialogue with myself? How do I write about political issues that are important to me through personal story?
Schedule:
(5-day virtual workshop)
1PM to 4PM EST every day
Monday, December 14 to Friday, December 18, 2020.
Location:
The workshop will take place remotely via video-conferencing software.
Application Instructions
- Please attach a bio and/or CV as well as a brief paragraph detailing your interest in the workshop.
- Send applications to harris@playwrights.ca with subject line: Exploring Practice with Carmen Aguirre.
- Apply before 1 PM on November 26, 2020 to ensure that your application will be considered.
- Please note that the number of spots are very limited.
About the instructor
Carmen Aguirre is a Chilean-Canadian, award-winning theatre artist and author who has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, including Chile Con Carne, The Refugee Hotel, The Trigger, Blue Box, Broken Tailbone, and Anywhere But Here, as well as the #1 international bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (winner of CBC Canada Reads 2012), and its bestselling sequel, Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution.
She is currently writing an adaptation of Euripides’ Medea for Vancouver’s Rumble Theatre, Moliere’s The Learned Ladies for Toronto’s Factory Theatre, a short digital piece for Ontario’s Stratford Festival entitled Floating Life, and an untitled play on the life of famed twentieth century Italian photographer and revolutionary Tina Modotti for Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre. Reframed, an outdoor performance piece about online discourse, conceived and co-created with The Electric Company, received its world premiere on October 7th, 2020, in Vancouver, commissioned by Ottawa’s National Arts Centre for its Grand Acts of Theatre initiative.
Carmen is a Core Artist at Electric Company Theatre, a co-founding member of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition (CALTAC), and has over eighty film, TV, and stage acting credits, including her award-winning lead role in the Canadian premiere of Stephen Adley Guirgis’ The Motherfucker with the Hat, and her Leo-nominated lead performance in the independent feature film Bella Ciao!. She looks forward to starring in Cecilia Araneda’s stunning debut feature film, Intersection, to be shot in Winnipeg in Spring 2021. Carmen is presently on the 2020 Siminovitch Prize shortlist, the most prestigious theatre award in Canada. She is a graduate of Studio 58.
WITH THE collaboration of
This workshop is financially supported by
