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Ed Roy Speaks on New Show, Creativity and Assembly Lines
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By Harris Frost
Dora Award-winning theatre practitioner Ed Roy spoke with us in July about his new one-man show The History of the World which he’s developing in collaboration with PWM.
PWM: To start, could you speak briefly about this new project you’re working on?
Ed Roy: I’m working on a one-man show called The History of the World, which was inspired by an investigative look into my childhood and the people who raised me. It’s a fusion of a lecture and storytelling. It’s about the correlation between the lecturers’ personal history, my personal history, and historical events. And how larger events in history affect our lives in ways we aren’t conscious of.
PWM: You call this a hybrid performance. What does that entail?
Ed Roy: Well, it’s interactive in a way. I not only propose a thesis, I also interact with the audience asking them questions about their own relationship with history and consciousness. So there’s that element to it as well as the theatrical aspects of it.
PWM: I came across a video from 2013 of you performing an early version of this piece. How much has it changed in the last five years?
Ed Roy: I was an instructor at Guelph University and that’s really where I developed my lecturing style. What I find was that my students lacked an overview of history, culture, art and how that intersects with their own creation. And then I got this inspiration to start doing a three and half minute improv called The History of the World in 3 ½ Minutes. I started expanding on that gradually over the next few years. Later, when I was at the Rubaboo festival in Edmonton, the festival organizer suggested that I do a version of it, very last minute. I performed it with no notes or anything and it ended up being four hours long.
So by the time we got to that [2013] workshop you mentioned, I was starting to play with physical elements and I thought “Why am I lecturing on the history of the world?” and I started to intersperse my own personal story because I started to do investigative work to find out my personal history. And my personal history was truly clouded. So I started to infuse the lecture with that. But it was still very raw.
The mash-up between the personal stories and the historical lecture wasn’t quite melding yet, but the idea was there. And between then and now, this project has always been in the back of my mind. Now, I’ve cannibalized a lot of what was in those original versions so I really have about three plays that have congealed into one. I liken it to a painting. Any painting that we see, we’re seeing the result of many paintings that are layered beneath the painting in front of us. That’s what this is. And so is history.
PWM: What kinds of spaces do you plan on performing this piece in?
Ed Roy: I don’t know, but I did originally think about doing it in a lecture hall. Because a lecture hall is invariably theatrical. It has all the ingredients of what theatre is. So it could be interesting to do it there. [The piece] does involve a gigantic weather balloon that I use as a projection surface and for other things, so that I don’t know about that yet.
PWM: Why did you choose to work with PWM on this?
Ed Roy: A bit of it is synchronicity. But I am originally from Montreal. When Paula Danckert was here I would always be dropping in. I had a discussion with Emma a few years ago about this piece because I was looking for a dramaturg.
I think that dramaturgy works best when there’s a personal relationship as well. I am also a dramaturg myself. And to me, the best dramaturg is a knowledgeable person who can invest themselves personally in a project. So the journey becomes shared. And in the past couple of workshops that’s what Emma and I have been doing.
PWM: When will the show be premiering?
Ed Roy: How dare you!
In an ideal world: 2020 or 2021. Yesterday would be great but it needs more time. So often we rush toward that product. And in the early stages in my career as a director/dramaturg, we would do shows very, very quickly. Or I would be brought in as a director on a show with a ten- day-long rehearsal period, for a play that wasn’t finished. And I acquired the skill set to put the shows together very quickly. But on this show, I’m building relationships that’ll support how I want to work.
PWM: Does the fact that this show is so personal change your approach to writing it?
Ed Roy: It is personal. But everything we do is personal. I can’t speak for everyone, but if I’m going to spend time with an artist and we’re going to put a show on together, then the subject matter has to be something that I believe in. And it represents an aspect of me, one way or another. So if a show goes up and it’s shitty, I take that personally.
PWM: Even in the type of situation you were talking about earlier where you were brought in to a show with very little rehearsal time?
Ed Roy: I married myself completely to those shows. But here’s the thing, I died a thousand deaths when they didn’t work. I also called an end to that when I knew it wasn’t working for me. Because I decided that I’m not on an assembly line, if I had wanted to be on one I would have made that choice in my early twenties and worked at a car factory. I think that’s a trap. But that’s the challenge of this field. I can’t make this decision for anyone else but when I take on a project I take it personally.
To know something well, to come up with something original, you have to discard so much before you get to something interesting. It takes time. So with a project that has taken so long, there were projects in between and that’s also part of the process. Sometimes you pick something up off the back-burner and look at it with new eyes. And right now, all I have on my mind is this project. And then other things will reveal themselves.
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.
Accessibilité
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
Présenté par Talisman Theatre
in collaboration with Le 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
Heure : 7 p.m.
Lieu : 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 et 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
Heure : 7 p.m.
Lieu : 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
Heure : 7PM
Lieu : 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).
