What's Going On!!

So as an actor and a director I always found this time of year when companies were announcing their seasons to be very stressful. You start to realize what opportunities are up for grabs and everyone starts to get tense as they try and scramble to put together a season of work for themselves.

However, this is now my second season at the helm of APN and I've discovered in this position, I really like this time of year. And here's a few reasons why...look at all the APN members who are being produced or recognized next year!!! (Note: ** denotes plays that APN has helped to develop)

First of all...Nicole Moeller, who just received the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award For Drama for her play An Almost Perfect Thing**, which will also receive its second production at New West Theatre in Lethbridge next year.

Sterling Award Nominees 
- Outstanding New Play - Darrin Hagen for With Bells On** (also nominated for Outstanding Indie Production)
- Outstanding Fringe New Work - Marty Chan for Mothership Down**
- Outstanding Fringe New Work - David Belke for Forsooth My Lovely
- Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Theatre for Young Audiences - Tracy Carroll (Director) Lig and Bittle 


Raunch by Jacqueline Russell & Alice Nelson can be seen as part of Uprising at the Magnetic North Festival of Canadian plays in Calgary.


Andrew Torry's play Hideout** is being performed in both Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary it is being produced as part of SAGE Theatre's IGNITE Festival and in Edmonton it is being produced as part of Theatre Network's NextFest.

Mike Czuba's play Satellites is being produced at the IGNITE festival as well, along with Jeremy Park's play Kona Sirs. Mike will also be having his premiere production of Satie et Cocteau: A Rehearsal of a Play of a Composer by a Poet at the Mountain View Festival this summer.


Cheryl Foggo is producing in association with the Calgary Stampede Board her play John Ware Reimagined as a series of staged readings as part of the centennial Stampede celebrations.

Chris Craddock's one man show, Public Speaking is being presented as part of SAGE Theatre's 2012/2013 season.

Sequence** by Arun Lakra (winner of the 2011 Alberta Playwriting Competition) will receive its world premiere in Downstage Theatre's 2012/2013 season.

Conni Massing, Neil Fleming, Glenda Stirling, Caroline Russell-King and David Sealy are all having work produced next year at Lunchbox Theatre. Thanks to the entire staff and crew at Lunchbox who continue to be strong supporters and partners of APN in Calgary.

David Haas is having his play A Health Unto Her Majesty performed at the St. Jean Baptiste Festival.

Nathan Huisman has just signed on as the new General Manager at Workshop West Theatre who have also been great supporters and partners of APN in Edmonton.

I know that this list isn't complete and there are omissions, but for those of you who I missed, I do apologize but also remind you to keep us at APN informed of what you are doing and where you are being produced. If you tell us what you're up to, we can tell our membership what you're up to. We are here to help you market your work any way we can and the best way to market yourself is to get the word out that you are being produced.

I hope you all have a great summer of writing or relaxing. I'm going to try and relax as it would appear I have a lot of plays to see next season!!

Trevor

When clear is not clear enough...or is it??

I have been sitting on this quote which I found in the Calgary Herald on March 14th, searching for an opportune time to blog about it. The quote in question...

"In the absence of defining information, people project what they believe should be there. People are emotional and they want to engage with emotional characters. They will often engage their own psychology to do that. They will assume causality and infer narrative."

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of working with Sharon Cavanagh on her new play The Final Word. It's the story of an aging poet who has come to the Minister of Culture to demand a statue be erected of him. The language is poetic and offers a discussion on the nature of art and politics. While working on the play, questions came up on a couple of occasions regarding how a moment was to be played. Where I, as the director and dramaturg, understood a moment one way, Sharon understood it differently when she wrote it. Neither interpretation was incorrect, based on the material Sharon had written, even though they were in direct opposition of each other. On each occasion I deferred to Sharon. After all, she should know the answer as she wrote it. But on each occasion it became clear to the both of us that there was a lot of room for interpretation. So the question I posed to Sharon was "Have you provided a director or actor with enough information to ensure that your choices become their choices? If you wish them to approximate your thoughts and interpretation, have you given them enough information to get there?" I love this play and nothing stated above is meant as a criticism of the work. (How's that for clarity? Notice how I used Bold and Italics to be clear about this point. You should be able to infer how strongly I believe in that statement.)

While I don't think one can create with this quote in the front of your mind, it is an interesting thought to keep in the back of your mind when working on your next great play. A play can be overwritten as easily as a play can be underwritten. The overwritten work provides no room for interpretation by the artists or audience, while the underwritten provides no defining information and can be anything to to anyone. On a theatrical spectrum you could put Norm Foster at one end and Samuel Beckett at the other. Where does your work live? One interpretation or many? Are you generating the meaning of your work or is the audience? Are you providing us with enough of a context for thought?

So where did this quote come from? Shall I keep that a secret and have you infer it came from a writer? Well I won't. The quote wasn't from a writer at all. The quote came from David Mark an expert in Artificial Intelligence, speaking at a gaming conference, about creating video game characters.

Whirlwind Weekend

Well, then that happened...

This past weekend (Sept 23 - 25) I had the pleasure and opportunity to attend the Playwrights' Development Centres of Canada, annual meeting and conference, hosted by Maureen Labonte and the Banff Centre for the Arts. On hand were representatives from all of the PDCC's from BC to Atlantic Canada and every province in between. On the morning of the first day every centre was asked to give a report on what their organization was up to and what was happening in their region. I reported on the new initiatives (Prologue, Boot Camp) as well as our other programming (Act One, Act Two, Playwrights Circles) and spoke of our current trend of creating greater structure to all of our programming. Not to toot APN's horn, but honk honk, we have been one of the busiest centres in Canada over the past year both from an organizational standpoint as well as playwriting itself. I received many questions and inquiries about our programs and structures over the weekend ranging from how we work, what we do and how we do it.

Each centre (thanks to the Canada Council/Playwrights' Guild of Canada) was able to bring a writer with them to the conference and the afternoon was spent discussing the work that they were doing within their region. On the second evening we heard excerpts from plays the writers were working on, all of which were amazing and incredibly diverse. From Jenny Munday's new work called Bunk Beds about two young sisters fighting for space as they both grow older to a monologue by Atlantic playwright Ryan Griffith's about a married man who one night rolls over to look in his wife's eyes and falls in love with her. The readings led to a long discussion in the bar that night about how do we get the great plays being written in every region into the hands of producers outside of those regions. I feel that this is a conversation that is going to continue right up to the date of next year's conference.

We had information sessions from Canada Council regarding their new Operational Granting Streams and from the Playwrights' Guild of Canada regarding their new programs and policies. Both incredibly eye opening and interesting. Michelle and I then headed back to Calgary before the conference ended as we had to set up the Playwrights' Guild of Canada Meet and Greet event at the Auburn Saloon, where we were privileged to hear a reading from Brad Fraser of a new work he has in development.

All in all a busy, but fantastic weekend where I got my batteries recharged. I left the weekend thinking that the PDCC organizations are not all that different from the writers we serve. For a year we work in isolation and then emerge from our regional cocoons to greet each other and check in and talk about the work that we've been doing. I find it incredibly reassuring (as I've noticed most playwrights do) when you come out of the basement and chat with others like you and discover that we are all striving to do the same things...write the play or aid the play and that as regional as we may be, we aren't at all different.

Thanks to Heather Inglis our who organized a brilliant weekend.

And now, a nap!!!

Cheers.

Trevor, the ED

When Art Mirrors Life or Vice Versa

Daily I get the Theatre newsfeed from the New York Times as well as getting the National and Arts newsfeeds from the Globe and Mail. This morning I came across these two articles (click on the newspapers to link to the articles), which started me wondering where do playwrights get their ideas from? If one gets their ideas from the current events of the day, how long is a current event current?

The year after 9/11 we had a number of plays with a variety of thoughts and responses to the tragedy. Then we had a period of silence until the recent 10th anniversary of the tragedy (on another thought, I always feel strange using the word anniversary when describing a tragedy as anniversary to me is a celebratory word). Will there be a time in the future when 9/11 will no longer be the subject of plays, just as the war in Vietnam has no longer become the subject of plays and movies? And when large subjects like the aforementioned are no longer the subject of plays, is that because the events are no longer current or because we've exhausted our voice on the subject? Does an audience no longer wish to hear or have we said everything to be said?

Food for thought and hopefully some dialogue.

I was also struck by the impending death of Clifford Olsen and began to wonder when a play about a man imprisoned for life who is finally facing death would surface in this country.