partnership Archives - Playwrights' Workshop Montréal

February 15, 2022March 18, 2022

Queer Reading Series

Abstract graphic art of shapes in shades of blue, purple, pink and red arranged with one larger blue square which has text that reads: "Queer Reading Series, March 18, March 19, 7:00 PM".

The Queer Readings Series is Presented by Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal’s Young Creators Unit and Centaur Theatre with Festival Director Jesse Stong.

The Queer Reading Series- a selection of staged public readings showcasing emerging Canadian Queer Playwrights is back for two nights only at Centaur Theatre!

QUEER READING SERIES SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, MARCH 18 at 7:00 PM – NO JUSTICE/NO PEACE by Blxck Cxsper

With direction by Jesse Stong

Please note that for the reading of “No Justice/No Peace” by Blxck Cxsper, there will be strobe lights as well as loud music.

SATURDAY, MARCH 19 at 7:00 PM – SCORPIO MOON by Adjani Poirier

With direction by Murdoch Schon. Financially supported by Y4Y Québec

SATURDAY, MARCH 19 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM – QUEER LEADERSHIP IN THEATRE PANEL

Centaur Theatre and PWM are delighted to present the Queer Leadership in Theatre Panel as a part of our Queer Reading Series! This panel discussion, moderated by Jesse Stong, will be looking at how queerness intersects with art-making. We will talk about the shows, the movements, and the key players making amazing Queer art. Then, we will open the discussion to the community to gather more stories, insights, and questions. This panel will take place in the Centaur Theatre gallery.

Panelists:
Gabe Maharjan, Co-Chair, Quebec Drama Federation
Corrina Hodgson, Artistic Director of Rose Festival
Greg MacArthur, Playwright & Professor at Concordia University
Alisa Palmer, Artistic Director of the English section of the National Theatre School of Canada

Jesse Stong, Moderator

RESERVE YOUR TICKETS

Admission is free. Space is limited.

QUEER READING SERIES VENUE: CENTAUR THEATRE

453, rue Saint-François-Xavier
Montréal, QC H2Y 2T1

For questions regarding accessibility, please email accessibility@playwrights.ca. Please refer to Centaur Theatre’s accessibility webpage to plan your trip to this venue.

ABOUT THE PLAYS

NO JUSTICE/NO PEACE

By Blxck Cxsper

The Blxck Cxsper universe is a multidisciplinary work of fiction based around a vigilante who questions super hero culture and the many ways it negatively affects society.

Kyng “Blxck Cxsper” Rose (they/them) is a multidisciplinary hip hop artist based in Montreal best known for being the founder of Trans Trenderz, the world’s first record label dedicated to trans musicians. In 2021 they were named by Billboard in their Change Agents list alongside names like Jay-Z and The Weeknd, the same year they debuted their fictional Blxck Cxsper universe at the Montreal Fringe Festival.

SCORPIO MOON

By Adjani Poirier

Night, the hot summer air hangs heavy with regret. Two estranged friends find themselves together again in a crumbling abandoned warehouse. Lily wants absolution, Koa has other ideas. A story about the complexities of Blackness, queerness, art, love, and the ever agonizing question: is forgiveness possible in the face of heartbreaking betrayal?

Adjani is interested in creating work that explores the beauty and the ugly of the human experience. She’s drawn to stories that reveal the complexity of navigating a world where systemic “isms” oppress and yet love and connection still seep through the cracks, strong and fierce, giving us life. Her plays include Celebrity Dogs, part of Boca del Lupo’s national project “Plays2Perform @ Home”, Still Gay When I’m Not In Love and On Life and Living: A History of AIDS Community Care Montreal. She curated the 2021 edition of QueerCab with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and currently lives and writes in her hometown of Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal where she studies playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada.

ABOUT THE QUEER READINGS SERIES

Centaur Theatre and Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal believe in the importance of providing young theatre artists with tools for developing and showcasing their work. The Queer Reading Series is a free reading series that seeks to provide a platform for emerging artists to experiment with their writing.

The Young Creators Unit was not created as a queer-specific program, but over the past three years has become a vibrant space for self-discovery and political/personal creation. I am so proud that we’ve gained a reputation for being a supportive space for emerging queer artists to be bold, dive deeply into the intersections of their identity, and make work for the stage that reflects their unique existence in our contemporary world.

JESSE STONG
Festival Director and
Young Creators Unit Leader

Centaur Theatre is so happy to collaborate with PWM’s Young Creators Unit by supporting the process of bringing the voices of the next generation of Montreal’s diverse artists to the stage. They are the future of theatre.

EDA HOLMES
Artistic Director of Centaur Theatre

About the Young Creators Unit

Thanks to generous funding from Canadian Heritage, RBC Foundation, the Zeller Family Foundation, and the dedicated mentorship of PWM dramaturg Jesse Stong, the Young Creators Unit has become a mainstay for young Canadian playwrights. Since its beginnings in 2015, YCU has supported more than a hundred young artists as they take risks, develop their voices and find their place in Canadian theatre.

Click here to find out more about the Young Creators Unit.

PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH

FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED BY

May 14, 2020June 29, 2020

Young Creators Unit – 2020 Showcase

An extraordinary showcase for an extraordinary year!

We are taking our Young Creators Unit showcase live to YouTube for TWO nights of staged readings from new work by emerging theatre creators.

“We are so excited and proud to present to you this year’s Young Creators Unit. After an exceptional year of digging in and dynamic creation, these participants took on the challenge of finishing our time together in the current socially distant reality. We held together virtually as a group, and now want to welcome audiences at home to join our circle and witness some of the work in development.“

JESSE STONG
Young Creators Unit Leader

Every year we produce two evenings of readings where creators from our Young Creators Unit (YCU) read excerpts of their work to an enthusiastic audience of peers and theatre community leaders. Because of the confinement put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been working with this year’s 18 YCU members to capture the readings on video.

At 8PM EST on May 29th and 30th, we will showcase their work on Youtube Live with introductions and commentary by YCU leader Jesse Stong. Join us virtually on this page, or directly on YouTube. Watching the showcase on our YouTube channel also gives you access to a live chat where the artists and our staff will be present to answer your questions and have a good time!

WATCH ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Keep scrolling to access the livestreams on this page and learn more about the playwrights.

Night 1

LIVE Friday, May 29th at 8PM EST

Click on a playwright to learn about their work

Night 2

LIVE Saturday, May 30th at 8PM EST

Click on a playwright to learn about their work

About the Young Creators Unit

Thanks to generous funding from Canadian Heritage and the Zeller Family Foundation, and the dedicated mentorship of PWM dramaturg Jesse Stong, the Young Creators Unit has become a mainstay for young Canadian playwrights. Since its beginnings in 2015, YCU has supported more than a hundred young artists as they take risks, develop their voices and find their place in Canadian theatre.

More about the Young Creators Unit.

February 12, 2020February 21, 2020

Chez Nous Staged-Reading Series

Coming up from February 24th to 27th 2020, join us and delve into the history of English Montreal theatre!

WHAT: Chez Nous: A Staged-Reading Series Showcasing English-Language Drama in Québec (1930-1979)
WHEN: Monday, February 24 – Thursday, 27 February at 7 P.M.
WHERE: Moyse Hall, McGill University – 853 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal H3A 0G5

Chez Nous: A Staged-Reading Series Showcasing English-Language Drama in Quebec (1930-1979) is a collaboration between Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal and professor Erin Hurley (Department of English, McGill University), with the artistic collaboration of four of Montreal’s English-language theatres: Black Theatre Workshop, Centaur Theatre, Imago Theatre, and the Segal Centre. The event will spotlight influential writers like Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Mada Gage Bolton and more, including PWM’s founders Carol Libman and Aviva Ravel, who helped shape Montreal’s English-language theatre tradition.

The series, which is free and open to the public, runs from Feb. 24 to 27, 2020 in McGill University’s Moyse Hall at 7 p.m. Each evening will be followed by a talk-back with the director, cast, and research team. The research team is composed of Alexis Diamond (playwright and translator) and Alison Bowie (dramaturgy and PhD candidate at Concordia), along with Emma Tibaldo (Artistic and Executive Director of PWM).

Feb. 24: Theme: “A Question of Class” – Rethinking the ‘good life’ during the Depression and WWII.

Facebook event

Mada Gage Bolton, Dealer’s Choice (1937) — A working woman comes up with a plan to trade her independent New York lifestyle for a family homestead in the country.
Janet McPhee and Herbert Whittaker, Jupiter in Retreat (1942) — A haughty mathematician and his two servants play a suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse in a Laurentian cabin.

Directed by Micheline Chevrier, Artistic and Executive Director, Imago Theatre.

Feb. 25: Theme: “He said X, She asked, Why” – A poetic take on the darker aspects of human nature.

Facebook Event

Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen, A Man Was Killed (1959) — A black comedy about the human impulse for violence and the destruction of social relations.
Elinore Siminovitch, Big X, Little Y (1974) — Women’s roles in society are playfully examined through nursery rhymes, songs, and games.

Directed by Eda Holmes, Artistic and Executive Director, Centaur Theatre.

Feb. 26: Theme: “The Third Solitude” — Portraits of the Jewish Montreal experience.

Facebook Event

William Werry, The Bag of Earth (1967) — A respected Jewish tailor awaits the return of his grandson who is bringing him a bag of earth from Israel.
Aviva Ravel, Dispossessed (1976) — Moved by the death of a former lover, a woman confronts what her life could have been.

Directed by Caitlin Murphy, Artistic Associate, Segal Centre for the Performing Arts.

Feb. 27: Theme: “Identity Crisis” – Tension between fact and fiction comes to a head.

Facebook Event

Carol Libman, The Reluctant Hero (1956) — One miner, two reporters, and a media circus. Who will determine what makes a hero?
Linda Ghan, Coldsnap (1979) — An immigrant from Jamaica must get married in order to stay in Canada, but he questions his motives and recounts his experience with racism.

Directed by Quincy Armorer, Artistic Director, Black Theatre Workshop.