Category: Announcements

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New Application Process for Dramaturgical Collaboration at PWM

Image with text which reads: "New Application Process"

We are excited to introduce a new application process for Dramaturgical Collaboration to welcome artists and projects to PWM in our 2022-2023 season.

Thank you for your interest! Applications are now closed for our 2022-2023 season. Once we finalize our current season we will open applications for next year!

How to Apply

You can apply for Dramaturgical Collaboration via the google form. Audio and video applications are also welcomed. Please forward audio or video applications to dramaturg@playwrights.ca.

We encourage you to familiarize yourself with Dramaturgy at PWM before submitting your application.

If you have any questions regarding accessibility, or require assistance with this application, please contact accessibility@playwrights.ca. For accessibility information and video tours of our location, please click here.

The application form will remain open year round, but a selection committee will be formed once a year to choose projects for the upcoming season. For best consideration for the 2022-2023 season (August 2022-June 2023) please submit a form by Feb 18th, 2022 at 11:59 PM. All applicants will receive a response by email in April 2022 informing them of the outcome of their application. We welcome individual playwright/creator(s) and collectives to apply. We welcome local and national applications. If you are a theatre company, please contact PWM’s Artistic Director at sarah@playwrights.ca to discuss Dramaturgical Collaborations. 

We are accepting applications for projects at any stage of development. It could be an idea, a first draft (in whatever form that may be), or a new iteration of a project that has already been shared. It could be a play, a performance, a digital work (for example: AR/VR, interactive game-based presentation, live or prerecorded virtual performance) or something hybrid in terms of language, discipline, or technology.

If you have any questions regarding application criteria, please contact dramaturg@playwrights.ca

About Dramaturgical Collaboration at PWM

Dramaturgical Collaboration at PWM will include Dramaturgical Conversation and may also include one or a combination of the following opportunities to be determined mutually by PWM and the playwright/creator(s) according to the needs of the project: Workshops, Residencies, Mentorships, and Public Readings. A glossary of these terms can be found here.

PWM has numerous ongoing projects, including those delayed due to COVID-19 that the organization continues to be committed to. Therefore, at this time, PWM will be welcoming a limited number of new projects. In accordance with PWM’s strategic goals for outreach, we will continue to maintain the flexibility to reach out to playwrights/creator(s), and work that inspires us.

PWM is committed to creating an environment where all individuals are treated with dignity and respect.  We are continuously working to make all of our programs accessible and inclusive. 

PWM welcomes all applicants to our programs. While recognizing that the identity of each person is fundamentally plural, multidimensional, changing and evolving, we strongly encourage applications from artists who are: Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), Black, POC, racialized (including recent immigrants), 2SLGBTQQIPAA+, d/Deaf, neurodivergent, disabled, living with chronic illness and/or chronic pain. PWM is strongly committed to supporting a wide range of cultural identities and lived experiences, therefore we encourage applicants to self-identify in their application if they are comfortable doing so.

Application Form for Dramaturgical Collaboration at PWM

You can apply for Dramaturgical Collaboration via the google form. Audio and video applications are also welcomed. Please forward audio or video applications to dramaturg@playwrights.ca.

We encourage you to familiarize yourself with Dramaturgy at PWM before submitting the application.

Your proposal will not be sent until you click the SUBMIT button at the end of the application via the google form. You will be able to edit your responses until the application’s deadline by reusing the same email address and login.

The deadline to submit is February 18, 2022 at 11:59 PM. All applicants will receive a response by email in April 2022 informing them of the outcome of their application.

If you have any questions regarding accessibility, or require assistance with this application, please contact accessibility@playwrights.ca. For accessibility information and video tours of our location, please click here. If you have any questions regarding application criteria, please contact dramaturg@playwrights.ca.

APPLY NOW
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Board and Staff Changes at PWM

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This past year, we have undergone many changes at PWM! We transitioned into a co-leadership structure between our Artistic Director, Fatma Sarah Elkashef, and Managing Director, Lesley Bramhill; and we welcomed new staff and board members to the PWM team!

Staff Changes at PWM

PWM would like to thank both Juan Velasquez and Danielle Eyer for their work at PWM this year. Juan Velasquez stepped in as our Interim Communications Manager from July to October 2021; while Danielle continued her work as Data and Archival Associate during the summer and fall. Thank you both for the commitment and creativity you brought to your work at PWM!

Welcome Christine ML Lee and Erika Squires

Christine ML Lee is PWM’s new Office Manager and Program Coordinator (for our Young Creators Unit and New Stories Project.) You can read Christine’s bio here.

Black and white headshot of Christine Lee.

“I’m so excited to be working at PWM and to be supporting the Young Creators’ Unit (YCU) as well as the New Stories Project (NSP). Having previously been a part of the YCU, I am thrilled to contribute to the development of these incredible two programs that foster new and underrepresented voices!”

-Christine ML Lee

Erika Squires is PWM’s new Communications Manager! You can read Erika’s bio here.

“I am so grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate on the development of new theatre through this role at PWM. This organization does so much important work, and I look forward to highlighting dramaturgical process as the new Communications Manager at PWM!”

-Erika Squires

Black and white headshot of Erika Squires.

Board Changes at PWM

We would like to extend the warmest thank you to former board members Caroline Lin and Amir Sám Nakhjavani who have stepped down from their respective positions at PWM. As we look to the future, we are grateful for the tireless effort, work and commitment our past board members have offered to our organization. Caroline and Amir, thank you for your contributions to PWM and to our community.

Welcome Géraldine Émile

Géraldine is PWM’s newest member of the Board of Directors.

Geraldine is a lawyer currently working in the financial field with an extensive experience in Compliance and Estate law. She possesses a Bachelor’s in Law along with a Masters in Common Law and International Law from Sherbrooke University. Raised in Haiti, from a young age, Geraldine has always had a passion for the arts and has practiced various types such as learning to play the piano and various styles of dancing. One of her most recent art-related projects consisted of organizing of a photo exhibition showcasing the island of Haiti and it’s culture and beauty. On her spare times she enjoys running, boxing and attending plays, opera and ballet shows. She has also participated in interactive seminars to develop her public speaking skills.

Learn more about our board of directors here.

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Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal Welcomes New Artistic Director Fatma Sarah Elkashef

Blue banner with text which reads: PWM NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, Fatma Sarah Elkashef.

After an extended leadership search, led by our board of directors and hiring committee, PWM is delighted to announce that Fatma Sarah Elkashef has been appointed as our new Artistic Director.

As a longstanding dramaturg with Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, and an outstanding theatre artist in our community, Sarah will shape the future of our organization with passion and advance dramaturgical practice at a national level. 

Sarah’s role as Artistic Director also establishes a new organizational structure for Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, creating a co-leadership team between Fatma Sarah Elkashef as Artistic Director and Lesley Bramhill as the newly-appointed Managing Director.

Fatma Sarah Elkashef

is a dramaturg and theatre maker with a practise in new play development and interdisciplinary creation. Born and raised in the U.K. to Egyptian and Dutch parents, Sarah has been based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal since 2011. Previously she was the senior reader at Soho Theatre in London and worked in New York City for eleven years as a producer, company manager, literary associate and director. Sarah is a graduate of Warwick University in English Literature and Theatre (U.K.), has an M.A. in Theatre from Hunter College (CUNY, NYC), and a Graduate Diploma in Communications from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). At PWM she founded the Interdisciplinary Writers’ Lab to explore non-text centered approaches to making performance and the remote Writers’ Room to foster solidarity amongst playwrights during the pandemic. Since 2012 Sarah has worked across programs at the National Theatre School of Canada as a dramaturg, creator, mentor, and teacher. Read more about Sarah.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the legacy of PWM’s incredible work and for the time and care taken by the Board and committee during this process. I am excited to create more opportunities for thoughtful collaborative work across practises and cultures, and to welcome new voices and approaches to the organization. PWM has always encouraged my curiosity and dramaturgical exploration and I want to offer that support to emerging dramaturgs while shining a light on process in general.

– Fatma Sarah Elkashef, Artistic Director of PWM

Following the departure of Emma Tibaldo, after fourteen influential years at the helm of Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal in the position of Executive and Artistic Director, we look hopefully to the future of our organization under new leadership.

As a nationally-mandated theatre development centre, we’re thrilled to welcome such a visionary leader. It’s rare that you get the combination of a broad international background with a track record of engagement on the local and national stage. Fatma Sarah Elkashef brings that along with a breadth of experience in artistic creation, production, and management. Her passion for and breadth of knowledge in dramaturgy as well as her deep commitment to artists and the theatre community make her the ideal person to shepherd PWM into the future.

– Naïma Kristel Phillips, President of the Board of Directors at PWM

In collaboration with Arts Consulting Group, and our board of directors, Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal has shifted our organizational structure to better support our internal leadership.

In addition to the appointment of Fatma Sarah Elkashef as Artistic Director, Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal is delighted that Lesley Bramhill, our former General Manager, will be moving forward with our organization in the role of Managing Director.

The establishment of this new co-leadership team honours PWM’s spirit of collaboration and we are excited to see how Sarah and Lesley will shape the future of our organization.

Image of Lesley Bramhill sitting on a stool.

I am grateful for the attention and care our board of directors gave to PWM’s succession process that has culminated in this new leadership structure. It is a new chapter of the organization that I am proud to be a part of. Together with the board, I look forward to working with Sarah on continuing to strengthen the organization.

– Lesley Bramhill, Managing Director of PWM

Access to a downloadable PDF of this press release is available here:

PWM-Welcomes-New-Artistic-Director-Fatma-Sarah-ElkashefDownload
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PWM+MAI Joint Support for Artists Featuring Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal and MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels) are thrilled to announce that the PWM + MAI  Joint Support for Artists will feature Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph with her work Wild Roots.

THE ARTIST

Headshot of Jamila Jai Joseph

Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph is a Montreal based interdisciplinary artist with her primary mediums being dance performer 20+yrs/choreographer 10+yrs, self taught emerging singer 15yrs/song writer 15yrs, emerging theatre artist 3yrs.  

A past recipient of Black Theatre Workshop’s Victor Phillips award in 2002 Jamila has continued performing, creating, and learning, telling her stories, and sharing her expressions throughout her work. In 2015 Jamila started JaiDanse, a dance facilitation/dance performance company and has produced and co-produced shows both for stage and theatre at local venues around the city. Mothers Say I Love you, written by Trey Anthony (Black Theatre Workshop 2019) & Nicole Brooke’s a Cappella “musical odyssey” Obeah Opera (ASAH Productions 2019) in Toronto, with her first stage role being back in 2017  where she portrayed ‘Lady in Purple’ in the Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls… (McGill University’s Tuesday Night Café Theatre) and again in 2018 as an “Encore presentation…” produced by the cast (Les 6 Productions). As we all came to stand still in the last 2 years, Jamila used the time to study her crafts, sharpen her creative tools and has added some new skills to her toolbelt. Currently, she is choreographing for theatre (tba) and is also writing script and song/working on her own Performance Theatre piece entitled Wild Roots.

THE PROJECT

Wild Roots is a theatrical fantasy that glimpses into the journey of a young Canadian Caribbean woman as she explores spiritual connection to self through a unique series of events. Held within a dream, song, dance & folkloric customs set the tone for this learning session as she confronts challenging parts of herself that she must work through. Taking a deeper look at the differences in how one may go about questioning old belief systems, cultural and societal norms.

The modality of healing becomes the landscape on which this story roots itself, using an interdisciplinary approach and perspective to narrate the story further exploring how intergenerational traditions can lend itself to self-discovery and healing.

THE PROGRAM

The PWM + MAI joint support accompanies creators on their journey to develop a project and explore their practice. It is aimed at artists encountering structural and systemic obstacles to their full participation in the arts because of their claimed identity and/or perceived identity in society. 

More details about the program available here.

We are so excited to support the development of Jamila’s project, and wish her a fulfilling creation process!

This program is a partnership between
PWM logo
Project supported by the Government of Quebec as part of l’Entente sur le Développement Culturel and the City of Montreal, and by the Canada Council for the Arts
Canada Council logo

A downloadable version of this announcement is available here:

PWMMAI-Joint-Support-Artist-AnnouncementDownload

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APPLY NOW: Experimentation in Digital Creation

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal is introducing a new micro-residency program focusing on digital dramaturgy.

Applications are now closed.

Building upon months of online workshops, and various forms of digital theatrical experimentation, PWM is excited to introduce our new micro-residency program: Experimentation in Digital Creation!

This program is open to any theatre project that has digital elements to explore— whether the plan is to present them virtually, in-person, or disseminated in a hybrid-fashion (partly online and partly in-person).

We will be inviting selected artists from across Canada to experiment with us for 3 to 5 days, depending on the needs of their project. Residencies will take place at some point between January and August 2022.

Artists will will have access to our studio, equipment, and PWM’s dramaturgs— including digital dramaturgs and multi-media creators potatoCakes_digital, who are leading this exciting project!

Together, we will create a digital dramaturgy process centred on our resident artists and their exploratory questions. 

PWM promotes equity and encourages applicants to indicate if they self-identify as belonging to one or more equity priority groups: women, racialized persons, 2SLGBTQQIPAA+, Indigenous persons, refugees, recent and first-generation immigrants not belonging to the dominant cultures in their areas, d/Deaf persons, neurodivergent persons, disabled persons, emerging artists, persons living with chronic illness, persons living with chronic pain, if they feel comfortable doing so.

This program was created for folks who are interested in experimenting with new digital art forms. The projects are ideally in the early to mid-stages of development and are in a place to benefit from exploration with different tools and form.  

PWM is a versatile blackbox studio equipped with:

  • Video Equipment (Cameras, switcher, projectors)
  • VR equipment (Vive Pro2 & Oculus Quest 2)
  • Lighting
  • Podcasting microphones
  • Virtual conferencing
  • Greenscreen
  • Other equipment will be sourced by PWM depending on each project’s individual needs

For our full tech rider and available equipment, click here.

Given the knowledge-sharing component of this initiative, prospective participants should be aware that there will be documentation of the digital dramaturgical process that will be shared publicly on our website.

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.

APPLICATIONS NOW CLOSED
PROJECT SUPPORTED BY
THE DIGITAL DRAMATURGY CLINIC IS FUNDED BY THE SECRETARIAT FOR RELATIONS WITH ENGLISH-SPEAKING QUEBECERS
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Young Creators Unit 2021-22: Now Open For Applications!

Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal is excited to once again be calling for all emerging storytellers under the age of 30 to apply for our YOUNG CREATORS UNIT (YCU)

Applications are open to new and emerging artists. Participants will receive a customized work plan that includes bi-weekly workshops, one-on-one mentorship, grant writing support, and networking opportunities.

PWM strongly encourages applications from Indigenous artists (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), racialized artists (including racialized recent immigrants), members of the 2SLGBTQQIPAA+ communities, Deaf artists, disabled artists, neurodivergent artists, and artists living with chronic illness and/or chronic pain. For questions about accessibility, please contact Jesse Stong at accessibility@playwrights.ca.

Due to the current circumstances of the pandemic, the YCU will only be supporting a maximum of 10 artists*, with a program that will start in October online (over Zoom), and then hopefully shift into smaller live groups/workshops. Group workshops will take place bi-weekly on TUESDAYS FROM 2PM-5PM. The program will run from October 19th 2021 to May 20th 2022  

*Because we only have limited spots this year, please only apply if you are available for this weekly timeslot, and committed to your project/attendance/participation.

how to apply

Send a one-page application to jesse@playwrights.ca by October 9, 2021. You will receive a response by October 12, 2021.

Your application should include:

  • A brief bio of yourself, and your experience (if any) as a storyteller/creator.
  • A brief description of the work you would like to develop, or a list of some ideas.
  • One paragraph on why you would like to join the unit, and what you hope to get out of it.


Please email jesse@playwrights.ca with any additional questions, or for support with the application if needed. 

Learn more about the YCU

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