Playwrights' Workshop Montréal, Author at Playwrights' Workshop Montréal

December 14, 2017October 29, 2019

The Arrivals Legacy Project

Exploring Practice Intensive with Diane Roberts

Now accepting applications for our next training session with Diane Roberts

Dates: January 25 to 29, 2018
Time: 10AM to 6PM
Location: PWM
Fee: $50.00 (Fee is not a barrier to anyone who might be interested/eligible)

The Arrivals Personal Legacy (APL) Exploring Practice Intensive is a creative process designed for those who wish to create new works based on Ancestry and personal history. The process allows participants to connect in new ways to their authentic historic bodies as a powerful source for artistic expression, personal & cultural empowerment. The APL method is a combination of “Afrisporic” influenced performance traditions (dance, voice, movement, alignment, balance), contemporary story weaving and improve techniques that opens doors for the emergence of embodied truths drawn for critically anchored personal places. For more information, visit www.arrivalslegacy.com.

Application guideline:

To apply for this training, please submit a short statement to dramaturg@playwrights.ca (.doc/.rtf/.pdf) containing:

why you want to participate
what life experience you bring
artistic discipline and training (if any)
your name, phone numbers, mailing address and email
a small .jpg photo of yourself

Application deadline: January 12, 2018 at 5 PM

Instructor:

Diane Roberts is an accomplished director, dramaturge, writer and cultural animator, who has collaborated with innovative theatre visionaries and interdisciplinary artists for the past 30 years. Her directorial and dramaturgical work has been seen on stages across Canada and her reputation as a mentor, teacher and community collaborator is nationally and internationally recognized. Roberts has birthed a vision for theatre that encourages Indigenous ways of knowing as a stepping stone to creative expression.

Training made possible by

December 14, 2017October 29, 2019

Call for Submissions: The 2018 Gros Morne Playwrights’ Residency

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM) and Le Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) in partnership with Creative Gros Morne and the Cole Foundation, invite playwrights to submit their application for a 12-day dual-lingual residency that will welcome applications from across the country.

The Residency

Unique in Canada, 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 Montreal 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 in April 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 a Dramaturg from the CEAD, to be named in late January. 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.

www.bonnebay.ca, www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/nl/grosmorne/index.aspx , www.grenfell.mun.ca/Pages/Grenfell-Campus.aspx

Residency Program

April 9, 2018
Travel to Norris Point (anyone departing West of Ontario will have to add a day to travel)

April 9 to 18, 2018
– 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 19-20, 2018
Readings and symposium with invited students and faculty of Grenfell Campus and the surrounding community of Norris Point

April 21, 2018
Travel to Deer Lake and departure for home.

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:
– 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 February 9, 2018 at 5pm

Please send English submission by email to: residency@playwrights.ca

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 Monday, March 5, 2018.

For more information please contact Emma Tibaldo at emma@playwrights.ca.

November 3, 2017October 29, 2019

Public reading of a new translation – River Bed

Join us in our new studio for our first public reading of a new translation

Venue: PWM Studio

Please join us for a public reading of River Bed, translation by JORDAN ARSENEAULT, prize recipient of PWM’s 2016 Cole Foundation Emerging Translator Competition of ÉRIC NOËL’sFaire des enfants (2011, Théâtre de Quat’Sous, published by Leméac Éditeur)

Directed by Jesse Stong
Translation Dramaturgy by Maureen Labonté

Synopsis:
Very early one Sunday morning Philippe and his mother Myriam wake up at the same time. Set over a 48-hour period, told in two acts split between the city and the suburban countryside, River Bed is an emotionally acute play about the yearnings and impulses that unsettle our familiar reality.

Authorial statement:
“There is a kind of all-consuming flame some people are drawn to, leaving others to tend unwittingly to their ashes.” – Éric Noël

CLICK TO RSVP

November 3, 2017October 29, 2019

Subverting the canon: Writing plays as though race, class, gender and sexual orientation mattered

Now accepting applications for our next training session with Corrina Hodgson.

Dates: December 11, 12, 18 and 19, 2017
Time: 4PM to 8PM
Location: PWM
Fee: $45 (Fee is not a barrier to anyone who might be interested/eligible)

“The well-made play holds a mirror to society and in so doing it mirrors the very forces that oppress those of us who are not straight, white, able-bodied, men.

As a disabled, fat, queer playwright, I am obsessed with exploring ways to break that mirror through breaking traditional three-act structure.

In this workshop we will look at a number of different scripts and scenes that are utilizing Epic Theatre techniques in a variety of ways to accomplish a subject position for marginalized voices. We will look at our own work, and see if these techniques can be applied, and how our characters benefit from these applications. As such, participants should come with a completed piece that they are willing to work on and share with other members. This can be a one-act or full-length piece.” – Corrina

Familiarity with recent Montreal productions such as Tragic Queens, The Mountaintop, Angelique, and Intractable Woman is beneficial but not essential.

Familiarity with the following texts would be appreciated, as we will probably be referring to them frequently throughout the workshop:

Venus, Suzan Lori Parks
Peeling, Katie O’Reilly
You for Me for You, Mia Chung

There is also a certain presumed familiarity with the works of Tony Kushner, Brad Fraser, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels, and Sarah Kane.

Application guideline: To apply for this training, please submit a bio, a short (1-2 paragraph) statement of why this particular approach to playwriting is of interest to you, the piece that you intend to work on, and a couple of sentences about your familiarity with Epic Theatre.
Please send applications to emma@playwrights.ca
Subject line: Exploring Practice with Corrina Hodgson
Application deadline: December 1, 2017 at 5PM

Instructor:

Corrina Hodgson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her plays have been produced across Canada and in the US as well as on CBC Radio One. She is the past winner of the Jane Chambers International Playwriting Competition, Theatre BC’s Playwriting Competition, and has been Playwright in Residence at the University of Lethbridge, as well as on the Antechamber Writer’s Unit at Buddies in Bad Times and the Groundswell Writers Unit at Nightwood Theatre. She is one of the co-founders of the Rose Festival.

“The well-made play.
So very entertaining.
And so very dangerous.
So we can change the characters in our plays.
And we can change the orientation of those charactersAnd can “crip up” those characters.
And diversify the race and gender of those characters.
But unless and until we break the mirror, we will continue to reproduce the social forces that marginalize and deny a subject position to minority voices — even when we position them as protagonists in our dramas, reimagine the context of those dramas, or repopulate those dramas with the bodies and peoples we want to see onstage.” – Corrina

Training made possible by

September 21, 2017September 14, 2018

Call for applications

PWM’s Young Creators Unit is back!

Thanks to the GOVERNMENT OF CANADA, the TELUS MONTREAL COMMUNITY BOARD, and the ZELLER FAMILY FOUNDATION, we are happy to announce we will be offering this amazing opportunity for emerging creators for a third year.

Workshops will take place every Wednesday evening starting in late October. If you are under 30 and interested in developing a new piece of theatre, please contact Jesse Stong at jesse@playwrights.ca and let us know a bit about yourself and what you are hoping to get from the unit.

Deadline: October 15, 2017

Want to see a sample of last year’s unit?

Thank you to our funders! Without their generous donations, the Young Creators Unit would not be possible.

September 18, 2017September 14, 2018

Congrats to the nominees

Congrats to all the 2016-2017 METAs nominees!

Nominees for Outstanding New Text (Original or Adaptation):
AMANDA KELLOCK – The Halloween Tree (Geordie Productions) – Script developed with PWM
MICHAEL MILECH – Honesty Rents by the Hour (Infinithéâtre)
ERIN SHIELDS – Instant (Geordie Productions) – Script developed with PWM
KENT STAINES (Book) & AKIVA ROMER SEGAL (Lyrics) – Prom Queen (Segal Centre for Performing Arts)
JESSE STONG – Water Weight (Geordie Productions) – Script commissioned and developed through PWM through the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Libres comme l’art program