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Call for Submissions: The 2019 Gros Morne Playwrights’ Residency
Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM) and Le Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) in partnership with Creative Gros Morne, Cole Foundation, and Memorial University invite playwrights to submit their application for a 12-day dual-lingual residency that will welcome applications from across the country.
The Residency
The Gros Morne Playwrights’ Residency will invite 7 playwrights from across Canada to participate in a 12-day playwriting retreat in Norris Point, Newfoundland. It will be headed by two National New Play Development Centres: Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM) and le Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD). These two institutions have been developing new plays for over 50 years and organizing residencies for over twenty years. This partnership makes it possible to welcome playwrights in a dual-lingual setting. English language playwrights are asked to apply through PWM and French language playwrights through the CEAD. Three artists will be selected from English language submissions, three from French language submissions. We are reserving the seventh selection for submissions from Newfoundland and Labrador.
A Place to Create
The seven selected playwrights will spend 12 days from April 17-28, 2019 at the Bonne Bay Marine Station, writing, dreaming, sharing and creating exciting new plays for the Canadian and International stage. This residency will create lasting links between theatre artists from across the country and generate discussion around the work being created in Canada. The residency will be hosted by Emma Tibaldo, Artistic Director of PWM and Paul Lefebvre, Dramaturg and Artistic Advisor at le CEAD. The Gros Morne Playwrights’ Residency will include transportation, accommodations, meals, an honorarium and dramaturgical support.
There are few places better equipped to welcome artists for a creative residency than the Bonne Bay Marine Station. It is located in a spectacular setting on Newfoundland’s breath-taking west coast, surrounded by Gros Morne National Park and within the vibrant community of Norris Point. The station is equipped with bedrooms, a kitchen, a small theatre, and places to sit and write. Tailor made for artistic residencies that inspire new work that can very well change the way we see the world.
The last two days of the residency is dedicated to sharing the work of the selected playwrights with invited students and faculty of Grenfell Campus-Memorial University. This will include readings and a symposium on contemporary theatre in Canada.
Residency Program
April 17, 2019:
Travel to Norris Point (anyone departing West of Ontario will have to add a day to travel)
April 18 to 25, 2019:
– Unstructured writing time at Bonne Bay Marine Station.
– Individual sessions with residency dramaturgs as requested by the playwright.
– Daily coming together of all participants to exchange on the process of work and the writing, based on the idea of a 5 à 7.
April 26-27, 2019:
Readings and symposium with invited students and faculty of Grenfell Campus and the surrounding community of Norris Point
April 28, 2019:
Departure for home.
Accessibility
The residence is wheelchair accessible.
However, the library and theatre space at the Bonne Bay Marine Station which is used often by the playwrights requires the participant in a wheelchair to leave the residence, travel across the parking lot, into the main lobby entrance to access the library/theatre space.
The parking lot is cleaned of snow and ice but in case of a snow storm, it will be hazardous due to too much snow and ice coverage. If a snow storm does happen, the residency organizers (PWM and CEAD) will do everything in their power to find a different meeting room that would not require for participants to leave the residence.
Submission Guidelines
– proposal of a play in the early stages of development (first draft or slightly beyond);
– be available for the whole residency;
– be willing to participate in all activities prepared for the residency.
Submission package must include the following:
(Please submit the following as a single PDF file)
– a letter stating your interest in the residency;
– presentation of your project (maximum 1 page) with a 10 page excerpt of the play in process;
– a C.V. with a short biography (maximum 2 pages);
– a copy of your last play published, workshopped or produced.
Submission deadline is Monday, January 14, 2019 at 4 PM
Please send English submission by email to: residency@playwrights.ca
with subject line: 2019 Gros Morne Playwrights’ Residency
Incomplete submissions will not be considered. Selection will be made by a committee set up by PWM and CEAD. We will only notify the selected applicants. This will be done on Friday, February 8, 2019.
For more information, please contact Emma Tibaldo at emma@playwrights.ca.
Join us for a public reading of a new translation
Presented by Talisman Theatre
in collaboration with Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal
Wildfire
(Le Brasier) by David Paquet
Translated by Leanna Brodie
Dramaturgy by Emma Tibaldo
Directed by Rachel Peake
Featuring Samantha Bitonti, Adam Capriolo, Amanda Silveira and Anie Richer
Date: Friday, November 14, 2018
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: PWM Studio (7250 Clark Street, Suite 103, Montreal, QC H2R 2Y3)
Limited seating. Click here to RSVP.
This is a FREE event. Donations are welcome at the door.
Synopsis:
Three very odd triplets are consumed by suffering; an unusual couple is inflamed by love; a lonely woman’s heart is kindled by forbidden desire. Somewhere between black comedy and Greek tragedy, this ferocious, poetic, and tightly structured four-hander is an epic exploration of heredity and fate that also leaves room for the individual. Doomed to the flames by their very nature, Paquet’s seemingly ordinary characters nevertheless choose to struggle against their solitude in ways that are by turns hilarious, touching, and cruel… while managing to remain both relatable and astonishing.
Leanna Brodie:
Leanna Brodie is a Vancouver-based actor and writer as well as the translator of numerous Québec playwrights, including Hélène Ducharme (whose Dora-winning Baobab continues to tour internationally after over 600 performances), Rébecca Déraspe, Catherine Léger, Larry Tremblay, Philippe Soldevila, Louise Bombardier, Olivier Sylvestre, Sébastien Harrisson, and Christian Bégin (5 Jessie Award nominations for Ruby Slippers Theatre’s Après Moi). You Are Happy, Opium_37, and My Mother Dog are published by Playwrights Canada Press. Two of her translations premiered in the 2017-18 season: Rébecca Déraspe’s You Are Happy at the Great Canadian Theatre Company, and Catherine Léger’s I Lost My Husband at Gateway Theatre (where it sold out its entire run). Current projects include Déraspe’s Gametes and I Am William; the collective creation Espoir/Espwa; Philippe Soldevila’s Conte de la neige; David Paquet’s Le Brasier; and Olivier Sylvestre’s Le Désert. Her translation of Sylvestre’s The Paradise Arms was the winner of the 2018 Safewords New Play Prize. As an actor, Brodie has been Jessie-nominated for performances in both English (Pi Theatre’s Terminus) and French (Théâtre la Seizième’s Bonjour, là, bonjour). She is currently an Associate at Playwrights Theatre Centre, co-writing Salesman in China with Jovanni Sy.
Join us for a public reading of a new play
I Am Byron
by Don Druick
Directed by Jesse Stong
Date: Friday, November 16, 2018
Time: 7 p.m.
Venue: PWM Studio (7250 Clark Street, Suite 103, Montreal, QC H2R 2Y3)
This is a FREE event. Donations are welcome at the door.
Limited seating. Click here to RSVP.
About the play:
Situating Byron – a narcissist, a desperate celebrity now in a tizzy on the cusp of his quickly disappearing twenties. Situating Byron – a mind at the edge, mired in fear and confusion.
Striving, ambition, desire are at the core of our sense of ourselves; this is what we believe we can do – for better or ill – to achieve, to strengthen our lives. To make these lives of ours better, more productive, and yes, happier. To assure our position in the world as we continually confront the unkind face of a bleak universe. The melancholy of the human condition.
The failure of Byron to be other than what he would wish; on his way to a future he’s not keen to experience, but must. This is at the heart of my play, its tragedy: Byron’s regret, Byron’s relief. And like all species of tragic tropes, my play ends badly for Byron.
Don Druick:
– un montréalais – award winning playwright, translator & librettist – baroque musician – gardener and chef
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Don Druick’s plays have been produced on stage, radio and television in Canada, Europe, Japan, and the USA.
Don lives in Elmira, a small Mennonite farming town near Waterloo Ontario, with artist Jane Buyers.
Join us for a public reading of a new translation
Presented by Talisman Theatre
in collaboration with Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal
Midnight
(Minuit) by Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon
Translated by Alexis Diamond
Translation dramaturgy by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Emma Tibaldo
Featuring Danette Mackay, Stefanie Buxton, Marcel Jeannin, Gabe Maharjan and Diana Fajrajsl
Date: Friday, November 14, 2018
Time: 7PM
Venue: PWM Studio (7250 Clark Street, Suite 103, Montreal, QC H2R 2Y3)
Limited seating. Click here to RSVP.
This is a FREE event. Donations are welcome at the door.
Synopsis :
As an act of resistance against a despotic government that hunts down old people and sucks their memories dry, the irrepressible Midnight keeps her mother in hiding, to protect her and her daughter and their secret world. They swap knowing smiles and lost words while braving a lack of food and light, driven mad with love, anger, fear.
This homage to a fading civilization stirs up snow and subversion, ancestral culture and instinct: craved, warped, misused, a past re-animated and electrified, just like new.
Alexis Diamond :
Alexis Diamond is a Montreal-based playwright, opera librettist, translator and theatre curator. Her award-winning plays, operas and translations for audiences of all ages have been presented across Canada, in the U.S. and in Europe. She also collaborates with several international artists on performance-installations involving text, movement and sound. In addition to her translation of Minuit by Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon for Talisman, she is currently working on three other translations: Petite Sorcière by Pascal Brullemans (Geordie Productions 2Play Tour), Lettre pour Éléna by Érika Tremblay-Roy (Le Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke), and Andy’s Gone by Marie-Claude Verdier (Playwrights Canada Press). Currently the Quebec Caucus representative for the Playwrights Guild of Canada, she is co-founder of Composite Theatre Co. and a long-standing member of Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing (Concordia University) and an M.E. in English Studies (Université de Montréal).
Join us for a public reading of a new translation
Clean Slate
(Table Rase, premiered at Théâtre Espace Libre in their 2015-2016 season)
by Catherine Chabot in collaboration with Brigitte Poupart, Vicky Bertrand, Marie-Anick Blais, Rose-Anne Déry, Sarah Laurendeau and Marie-Noëlle Voisin
Translation by Jennie Herbin,
prize recipient of PWM’s 2017 Cole Foundation Emerging Translator Competition.
Translation dramaturgy by Maureen Labonté
Directed by Leslie Baker
Featuring Stefanie Buxton, Cleopatra Boudreau, Gita Miller, Julie Trepanier, Rebecca Gibian, Anie Richer, and Brett Donahue
Date: Friday, November 9, 2018
Time: 7PM
Venue: PWM Studio, 7250 Clark Street, Suite 103, Montreal, QC H2R 2Y3
Limited seating. Click here to RSVP.
This is a FREE event. Donations are welcome at the door.
Content Warning: This play features sexually explicit conversations.
Synopsis:
Six friends gather at a site of their shared childhood: They drink, they laugh, but most importantly, they admit things they’ve never before had the courage to say. In a time where the heroes of the past exist less and less, the young women must support each other as they independently become the heroes they need. Inspired by the seemingly incomprehensible decision of their friend, the girls make a pact to shed their traumas and bad habits and start afresh. With the honesty and intimacy of a death bed, Clean Slate allows the audience to eavesdrop on a brave, messy, and above all authentic portrait of millennial sisterhood.
Jennie Herbin:
Jennie is fascinated by language, storytelling, and their ability to pierce boundaries, shaping collective imaginations. A Nova Scotia native, Jennie is a graduate of Neptune Theatre’s Pre-Professional Acting Training Program in Halifax. A move to Montréal in 2011 led to studies in Hispanic Literature and French Literature at McGill, and then an M.A. in Translation Studies from Concordia University. Her experience as a digital content creator and translator spans several fields.
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