Stratford Festival 2009 Playwrights' Retreat.
Daniel MacIvor, John Murrell, Stephen Massicotte, Florence Gibson
Oct 21, 2009
Playwright Sunil Kuruvilla (Studio Theatre's Rice Boy) attended last year's session with noted Canadian playwrights Marjorie Chan, (a nanking winter) and Erin Shields (If We Were Birds)
Kuruvilla revised his play Rice Boy, which garnered favourable reviews, and solid audience attendance as part of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's 2009 Studio Theatre playbill.
Festival dramaturge Robert Blacker and Bob White, Visiting Co-Director of New Plays at the Festival, chose eight playwrights from across Canada to participate in the 2009 retreat. Kuruvilla met Blacker when he studied at The Yale School of Drama.
This year's playwrights range from Daniel MacIvor, (Beautiful View, How it Works) who was awarded the 2008 Siminovitch Prize for his contributions to Canadian theatre, to Stratford actor Paul Dunn. whose play High Gravel Blind was part of the Festival’s inaugural Studio Theatre season in 2002.
The Creative Pulse
The Playwrights Retreat is a chance for writers to work and live within the Festival environment, meet their peers for dinner at the end each day, and discuss the progress of individual projects. The eight playwrights are also offered tickets to see the Festival shows, and the opportunity to meet Stratford artists, and staff.
In turn, the Festival gets a chance to keep their creative finger on the pulse of Canada’s promising new playwrights, while reconnecting with the more international names like Daniel McIvor (Monster, House) and John Murrell (Waiting for the Parade) whose plays have been translated and performed around the world.
The 2009 Playwrights
- Tara Beagan - Irish Canadian actress, from Alberta who wrote Thy Neighbour’s Wife. Beagan was nominated for her role in the play and it won the 2005 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Independent New Play. She was also playwright in residence for Cahoots Theatre Project in 2007/2008.
- Lisa Codrington - Wrote Opera on the Rocks for Ambient Opera Society and The Colony, for Tapestry New Opera’s Opera to Go. Her play Cast Iron, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award for Drama. She is also a member of the Shaw Festival Acting Company (Little Foxes, In Good King Charles’s Golden Days). Lisa is currently working on two plays - Jane, recently presented at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre's Groundswell Festival and b current's rock.paper.sistahz festival, in addition to Refined, recently presented at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille's Buzz Festival.
- Paul Dunn - His play High Gravel Blind opened the Studio Theatre's first season in 2002, and his play Offensive Shadows, produced by Studio 180, won the Audience Choice award at Toronto’s 2007 Summerworks Festival. Dunn is a member of Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre’s Playwrights' Unit. He also spent six seasons with the Stratford Festival's Acting Company.
- Florence Gibson - (Belle, Home is My Road, i think i can, Missing) is currently playwright in residence for Toronto’s Factory Theatre. How Do I Love Thee? premières at Alberta Theatre Projects in February 2010, and Augury, her play about Canada’s first woman doctor, premières at Toronto's Nightwood Theatre in 2010. She is currently working on a new one-woman show, Love Handles, her novel Stout and a screen play, A Man Like Me.
- Anosh Irani - Author of novels The Song of Kahunsha, The Cripple and His Talismans, a finalist for Canada Reads and winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2007.His play Bombay Black won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2006, including for Outstanding New Play, and he was nominated for the 2007 Governor General’s Award for The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black. His play My Granny the Goldfish will première at Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre in April 2010.
- Stephen Massicotte - wrote award-winning plays Looking After Eden, Pervert, and The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook series originated at Calgary’s Ground Zero Theatre.In 2002, his play, Mary’s Wedding, premièred at Alberta Theatre Projects’playRites Festival and won the 2000 Alberta Playwriting Competition,the 2002 Betty Mitchell Award for Best New Play, and the 2003 Alberta Literary Award for Drama. Mary’s Wedding continues to be produced throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. In 2006, The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion, a co-production between the Tarragon Theatre and the Great Canadian Theatre Company, and was a hit off-Broadway in 2007.Recent play, The Clockmaker, premièred at Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites Festival in 2009 and won the Betty Mitchell Award for Best New Play.
George F Walker, Linda Griffiths, Hannah Moscovitch
The Festival also hosts playwrights' residencies throughout the year, and other playwrights that have visited the Festival include Linda Griffiths, (Age of Arousal), Hannah Moscovitch (The Russian Play, East of Berlin) and Vern Theissen (Shakespeare’s Will, Vimy)
George F. Walker, whose work Zastrozzi debuted at Stratford as part of the 2009 season, will be presenting his new play King of Thieves beginning August 2, 2010, at The Studio Theatre.
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