Digital Dramaturgy Initiative — Apply to the Montreal residency

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal is now accepting applications for a week-long residency, within the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative, to take place from April 26th to May 1st, 2021

WHAT IS THE DIGITAL DRAMATURGY INITIATIVE?

Following the first iteration of the project at the Blyth Festival pre-pandemic, the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative (DDI) is a collaboration between Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Manitoba Association of Playwrights and the Blyth Festival.

The pandemic has accelerated our use of digital tools. However, knowledge and financial gaps are still with us. With this reality in mind, we designed three locally based residencies designed to investigate and expand our collective vocabulary with digital technology.

These three distinct week-long residencies have been designed to allow for a deep investigation and articulation of two main questions:

Where are the literacy gaps in managing the processes and systems in the integration of digital components?
How to best organize creative relationships to maximize expertise in the collaboration process?

THE MONTREAL RESIDENCY

Covid and its impact on live arts : how do we share and grow work in process.

APRIL 26 – MAY 1, 2021

Creating theatre inside a pandemic – how to use the tools available, what is possible, and what have we learned so far? How can we use this knowledge to create a more accessible platform for theatre? What can we take back into live theatre?

Organized by Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, the Montreal residency is looking for theatre performance projects that were conceived for the stage but that now need to be transformed for a digital audience; as well as projects conceived for the new Digital reality. The project may be at any point in the process of creation.

The residency will focus on working with collectives or individuals to discover the possibilities available for the transformation of the work through technology, to a digital platform. This project is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Literacy Fund, as such, an important component of the work is the dissemination of knowledge and expertise. To this end, applicants must be willing to share parts of their creative process and knowledge gained through the residency. DDI and participants will negotiate fair Intellectual Property rights for educational, non-commercial dissemination of exploratory work undertaken during the residency, an example of which can be found here.

Auxiliary programming over the course of the workshop week will include collective investigations into both traditional and emerging digital tools and technologies, exploring the vocabulary needed to collaborate in digital integration and exploration, and looking at case studies from Canadian and international initiatives.

Each participating artist will receive a $750 honorarium and is expected to be available for the 5 days of the residency.

We are continuously working to make all of our programs accessible. We recognize that the identity of each person is fundamentally plural, multidimensional, changing and evolving.

We are committed to working with artists to create spaces within which Indigenous artists (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), racialized artists (including recent immigrants), members of the 2SLGBTQQIPAA+ communities and/or neurodiverse and disabled artists as well as artists living with chronic illness and chronic pain can create.

APPLICATION PROCESS

To apply, please complete the online application form. During the application process, you will be asked to include the following:

A description of the project (max. 500 words);
An artistic statement in relation to the integration of digital tools;
The names of the project’s collaborators, and their creative disciplines;
The stage of the work in progress;
Your dramaturgical questions being investigated, or what you are investigating;
The technologies you are presently using for the project (if any);
The technologies you wish you had access to for this project (if known);
The knowledge gaps (if you know them) in relation to transforming the work to a digital platform;
Any documentation you deem appropriate to the project, sending video files as links.

Audio or video applications are welcomed.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY