40 Years at Play - PTC's Past and Present

An organization can accumulate a lot of stuff over the course of 40 years. If this ‘stuff’ happens to be a pile of old furniture and peeling binders this may not be something to celebrate! On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have an archive, all of that accumulated ‘stuff’ can remind you of who you are and what you have done to get where you are today. All of those old documents, photographs, videos, and yes, floppy disks, can provide a sense of history and a source of ideas and inspiration that can’t be found anywhere else.

As the PTC’s newest intern, I am thrilled to have the chance to delve into the world of theatre, past and present. In anticipation of the PTC’s 40th anniversary, I am searching through the archives in order to gain a sense of the history and people who have contributed to the PTC over the last 40 years. During the next month I will continue to post updates on some of the more unexpected or interesting things that I find within the archives and on Tuesday June 26th I, along with the wonderful staff and volunteers here at the PTC, will showcase some of the hundreds of photographs from the PTC archives at the PAL Studio Theatre. The 40 Years at Play naming event is a chance for the Vancouver theatre community to come together, reminisce, celebrate Canadian theatre, and help us to identify the people, productions, and events featured in our photographs.

To begin, I thought that I would pay homage to previous retrospectives by showcasing the invitations and pamphlets created to celebrate (and memorialize) The New Play Centre. In 1995 The New Play Centre joined with the Betty Lambert Society to form the Playwrights Theatre Centre and this transformation sparked a rather unique gala event, The New Play Centre (1979 – 1995): A Retrospective, complete with obituary, wake, and eulogies for the then newly departed NPC. As the obituary shows, even then the Playwrights Theatre Centre had a substantial community of playwrights and members; imagine where the PTC is today, 17 years later. 

 

Save the date!

On Tuesday, June 26th 2012, PTC invites you to join us for an evening of celebration and fun. We will be unveiling photos from our archives and asking you to help us name who’s who. More information will be posted soon on our website!

40 Years at Play 
Tuesday, June 26th 2012 7:00– 10:00pm
PAL Studio Theatre, 581 Cardero Street, Vancouver
 



Helen Brown 
Archive Project Coordinator at PTC
 
Helen Brown is currently working on completing her degrees in library and information studies and archival studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. In other words,  she is a librarian and archivist in the making, with a passion for literature, the arts, public service, and promoting and providing local events that foster community and creativity. Helen is thrilled to have the chance to explore the history of the PTC and its role in supporting Canadian theatre. She has previously worked as a student archivist at Library and Archives Canada, as a student librarian at UBC’s Woodward Life Sciences Library, and as a library volunteer at UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections and the Vancouver Aquarium. 

PTC announces new leadership!

Playwrights Theatre Centre today announced that, effective December 1, 2012, Heidi Taylor will assume leadership as the Artistic and Executive Director. Martin Kinch, who has led the organization for over 10 years as Executive Director and Literary Manager, is stepping down to focus on freelance writing and directing and to continue his teaching at the University of British Columbia.

As of March 1, Heidi became the Incoming Artistic and Executive Director, and will assume full executive responsibilities in December of this year. Heidi has been the Dramaturg at PTC since 2005. Since joining PTC, she has dramaturged over 40 plays by writers including Jan Derbyshire, Dave Deveau, Joan Kivanda, Hannah Moscovitch, Anita Majumdar, Jason Maghanoy, Tanya Marquardt, and Kendra Fanconi, Recent credits include Sea of Sand, which she co-directed with playwright Eric Rhys Miller, Transmission (co-directed with Tanya Marquardt), and Cloudless (José Teodoro/BC Buds). Heidi teaches acting at Simon Fraser University, and is a co-founder of Proximity Arts, a cross-disciplinary company whose work ranges from interactive sound installation to outdoor-sited dance to chamber opera.

“On behalf of the entire board, I am delighted to announce Heidi Taylor’s appointment,” said Board Chair Jennifer Moore. “Heidi brings to the position an intimate familiarity with both PTC and the Canadian theatre ecology as a whole. Her strong focus on innovation and experimental work will serve PTC well as we move into the future. In this volatile funding climate, we are pleased to be able to make a decision that benefits both the stability of the organization and its artistic practices.”

“I also wish to thank Martin for his years of service. Under his leadership, PTC has flourished during challenging times and brought many exciting new Canadian plays to the stage,” she added.

During his decade-long tenure as Executive Director/Literary Manager, Martin changed the face of PTC, initiating vital programs like the Dramaturgical Reading Program, the News and Flying Start. He has presided over the creation of the PTC Playwrights Colony and the new Associates residency program. He led PTC in its collaboration with a variety of British Columbia Theatre companies and served as dramaturg to a significant group of playwrights, among them: Dennis Bolen, Tim Carlson, Camyar Chai, Tom Cone, Dorothy Dittrich, C. E. Gatchalian, Nicola Harwood, Sherry MacDonald, Mitch Miyagawa, Sheldon Rosen, Sally Stubbs, James Fagan Tait, José Teodoro, Andrew Templeton, Charles Tidler, Bryan Wade, Ian Weir and Marcus Youssef. Most recently, he completed a three-year collaboration with Adrienne Wong as dramaturg, director and writer of the PodPlays project.

In the spring, PTC will initiate a national search for a Dramaturg to join the creative team in fall 2012 to work with both Martin and Heidi. The transition will complete during PTC’s October Writers’ Colony. As Heidi plans for the 2012-13 season, she will continue to provide creative and professional support to PTC’s Associates; six playwrights who are currently 18 months in to a three-year play development process.

PTC is a dramaturgically focused theatre company that finds, nurtures, and advances the Canadian playwright, supporting new plays from creation to performance, administering a variety of programs that support playwrights at each stage of their careers. PTC has successfully supported over 5,000 new plays since its founding as the New Play Centre in 1973, most recently The Idiot, by James Fagan Tait; Trunk, by Jeremy Waller and Falling in Time, by C.E. Gatchalian.

While numbers tell a part of the story, playwright Lucia Frangione captured the essence of the organization. “PTC's Writer's Colony was one of the most valuable experiences I've had in my 25 years in the business... The calibre of dramaturgy was top notch. I was able to crack open some large questions about my play and my process. The feedback was guided and useful and far more in-depth than customary dramaturgical processes I've had... One of the most educational aspects of the colony was watching the three other wildly different writers in process and talking with them about their work: how they survive; what theatre is like in their province. This colony connected me to the country. I feel this colony is vital to the health and development of Canadian Theatre.”

Mapping the Making 2

Poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz says that poetry "takes you from silence to silence […]. It is what happens between the words that matters." In theatre, the artists work so that the silence after the curtain closes is more alive than the silence when the lights went down. But what of the silence of a writer and a blank page? How do we get from the seed of a new idea to dynamic performance? Tim Carlson and Jeremy Waller have shared some insights on what leads them forward in their writing.

Jeremy Waller

Jeremy Waller is a writer and director, and Artistic Director of Craning Neck Theatre. He also freelances as a Sound and Set Designer, Technical Director and Production Manager. Recent directing credits include, Biographies Of The Dead And Dying (Craning Neck/Machine Fair) and the Secret Love Life Of Ophelia (ABC Productions, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton), The Dark Between (Craning Neck Theatre), and The Absurdessy (Green Leaf Circus). Most recently, he directed Trunk at Club PuSh, co-produced by Craning Neck Theatre and Theate Conspiracy, where he is artist-in-residence. He is working on a new play Jo Speechly's Lost Decade with the support of PTC.

Jo Speechly's Lost Decade focuses on the collision between Jo Speechly, a reclusive artist; her dying mother, Elen; Jo's old friend Gwydion, who has a hidden agenda to publicize her work; and Jo's lover, Stephen, whose physical and spiritual presence permeates Jo's un-exhibited but prolific photographic oeuvre.

PTC: What music inspires you in the writing of this piece?

Jeremy: I Have to say that no particular music is currently inspiring this piece, other than the imagined sound of the play of minerals in different bodies of water. And the sound of voices on a reel to reel tape recorder.

PTC: Tell us about your main character.

Jeremy: Jo Speechly is a learned recluse in her mid-forties. She is seeking the end of an hypnotic artistic process using the documents/material of previous generations of her family. Creating in a vacuum, having turned away from the art world which once brought her relative fame, her privacy is about to be invaded by the conflicting desires of her want-to-be biographer, her over-protective mother, and a former lover.

Tim Carlson

Tim Carlson is the artistic producer of Theatre Conspiracy in Vancouver, BC. His plays include: Omniscience (Vancouver, Berlin, Magdeberg, Lisbon, Chicago; published by Talonbooks 2007); Diplomacy (Vancouver, Talonbooks 2009), Live from a Bush of Ghosts (PuSh Festival, 2009), the one-act newsroom comedies Night Desk (2001) and The Chronicle has Hart (2000) — and a full-length comedy A Liar’s Guide to Non-fiction (Vancouver Playhouse reading, 2010). As a dramaturg he is collaborating with Berlin-based Rimini Protokol1 on Best Before (PuSh Festival / Cultch 2010, touring to 15 Canadian, U.S. and European cities 2010). As co-curator and co-producer he collaborated with the PuSh Festival in creating the inaugural Club PuSh series in 2009. He is creating a new work, Extraction, with Theatre Conspiracy, while continuing development of Nine Tenths with the support of PTC.

Tim Carlson's Nine Tenths has received two PTC workshops to date. Tim is engaged in rewrites over the winter and will return to the workshop table in May. Nine Tenths follows the development of a play, also titled Nine Tenths. Early drafts followed the interpersonal relationships of the playwrights, director and two actors over 3 months. How and why we stay in relationships - should we settle for the nine-tenths that work, or keep searching for the missing one-tenth? - formed the core question both inside and outside the rehearsal hall. Tim has developed the piece further while not on duty at Club PuSh, and it has now become a two-hander.

PTC: What music inspires you in the writing of this piece?

Tim: I turned up the volume on my recent playlist this morning and thought about the songs that might be working on me indirectly. Imagine a mashup of:

Luna's Tiger Lily Girl ("sweet obscenity / bring her back to me / lost in her perfume / think I'm going to sue") Here's Luna playing it at Zulu Records in Vancouver in 2009

Bob Dylan's Love Sick (I see lovers in the meadow / I see silhouettes in the window / I watch them til they're gone and they leave me hanging on / to a shadow" )

Tom Waits' Kiss Me ("I won't believe that our love's a mystery / I won't believe our love's a sin / I want you to kiss me like a stranger once again)

PTC: Tell us briefly about your main character.

Tim: There are two. Nine Tenths is an even-handed two-hander. We follow an Actor and an Actress from the first day of rehearsal through to opening night, developing their roles in a relationship play titled Nine Tenths. We see only one scene from the play, a breakup scene, as it morphs through the rehearsal process, influenced by the past of the Actor and Actress as well as the personal and professional chemistry that builds between them. One of them is desperate for solitude and disconnection; the other hungry for intimacy and sexual connection.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more updates from our Associates as they delve deeper into their creative process.

Emily Kedar, Dramaturgical Intern

Mapping the Making

Through our Associates program we are currently supporting six talented playwrights over three years, helping bring their ideas forward into workshops, readings and production talks. As we shift into our second year of the program, we invite you to learn more about what they are creating and what we are doing to help make it happen. Over the next six weeks you'll get a window into their creative process right here on our blog. Welcome to Mapping the Making!

Jenn Griffin

Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Jenn Griffin has been a Vancouver based actor for over twenty years and more recently an actor/playwright. She was awarded the Sydney Risk award in 1999 for best emerging playwright in the wake of her first play Drinking with Persephone. Into the Waves, her first full-length play was read at The Hysteria Festival, Toronto, in 2005. In 2006, Jenn co-conceived with Marilyn Norry, My Mother’s Story, a theatrical collage. In 2007, Jenn was commissioned to create a piece for Fugue Theatre. In 2009, Via Beatrice, the commissioned work, received a Jessie Richardson nomination for outstanding original script.

For the associates program, Jenn has made multiple trips to the Centre for Great Apes in Florida to research her piece, The Long Call, which parallels loss of freedom in the human and animal worlds. Physical performance is a part of the development process, as the central character taps into he animal knowledge via her connection with the great apes.

PTC: Tell us briefly about your main character.

JG: The main character is named Holly Dasein (pronounced "design.") She’s a middle aged woman who has surfaced from a traumatic past and at the top of the play, she has just completed her BA. Holly's academic interests are widespread but her passion is the Great Apes and her dream is to release Orang Utans back into the wild.She's recently resumed communication with her ex-boyfriend Jack who is incarcerated. She believes that confronting Jack and unearthing their shared past will be the key to her own freedom. Holly comes out of my exposureto animals and humans alike who have survived great trauma. I am interested in examining the impact of captivity on both the human and animal soul.

PTC: Tell us about what kind of music inspires you and influences your writing of this piece.

JG: Gamelan is my main inspiration for The Long Call. Many songs have popped into my head during the time I have been considering the piece and they are all part of the world of the play too. Along with Gamelan, there’s also music strippers dance to and music from the radio that underscores a relationship in the 80's. Also, more recent music you might hear anywhere in North America. Like the song "Tom" by Natalie Imbruglia.

Traditional Gamelan music from Indonesia

Torn, Natalie Imbruglia

Jordan Hall

Jordan is an emerging artist whose work has been dubbed “stellar, insightful” by PlankMagazine, “thoughtful” by CBC Radio, and “vivid, memorable” by NOW. Her writing for the stage includes her short works Red, The Second Last Man on Earth, Asleep at the Wheel, and The Possible Lives of Dolores Garcia Rodriguez, as well as her full-length play, Kayak, which recently won Samuel French’s 2010 Canadian Playwright’s competition.

Jordan’s plays have been produced across the country, most recently at the 2011 Vancouver Fringe and 2010 Summerworks Festival. She is developing her newest work, Travelling Light, as an Associate with the Playwrights Theatre Centre. Her first short film, Love Sucks, recently screened at the Bell Lightbox in Toronto, and her second, Run Dry, will be screening at VWIFF 2012 this March. As a dramaturg, Jordan recently worked on the Dora-nominated Belle of Winnipeg with Keystone Theatre, sits on the Board of Foundry Theatre, and is a mentor for UBC’s Booming Ground program.

For the Associates Program, Jordan has researched particle physics and representations of science in the media for her mystery-drama Travelling Light, in which the disappearance of a brilliant physicist triggers ethical and metaphysical searches for the central character.

PTC: Tell us briefly about your main character.

JH: The three central characters in Travelling Light came into existence together, as a system. I knew there was a scientist who was missing (David), and that his research partner (Cameron) was searching for him, and that she would enlist the help of a former friend of the scientist who had left pure science to become a public figure (Julian). The tension in the triangle was coming from the countervailing pulls in these characters' attitudes: the arrogance of David's genius, the faith that Cameron has in David that is both profound but potentially blinding, and Julian's more populist, but very commercial opinions.

PTC: Tell us about what kind of music inspires you and influences your writing of this piece.

JH: I hate picking just one! I've got a Travelling Light playlist that I listen to as I write. There's a lot of Kate Bush (Pi, Running Up That Hill), and The Stills (Everything I Build), and the James Newton Howard soundtrack for The Village, with all that haunting violin.

Kate Bush- Running Up that Hill

The Stills, Everything I Build

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for updates from our other four Associates.

- Emily, Dramaturgical Intern @ PTC

Wrapping up the Colony

This year's Colony was brimming with writerly talent and critical thought, as dramaturgs, writers, actors and PTC administrators gathered to hear and respond to four new Canadian plays. As the dramaturgical intern, I was completely giddy at the thought of sitting around a table with bright, sharp minds talking theatre. I was in dramaturgical heaven (read: nerd heaven.) I decided to see if the playwrights had as much of a blast as I did, so I asked José Teodoro and Lucia Frangione what they thought of their experience at the Colony and this is what they had to say.

José Teodoro

My time at this year’s Playwrights Colony was immersive and exhilarating: to find myself seated round a jumble of tables, being pummeled by such an array of fully engaged, thoughtful/impulsive, stimulating feedback, responses of such intelligence and specificity and just plain usefulness from everyone connected to Team PTC, not only the formidable dramaturgical bedrock, but also the guest artists, the interns, the administrative staff. And, of course, my fellow playwrights. Listening to and discussing their work was just as important a part of my play’s development and my Colony experience in general as were the hours devoted to my ownwork. (Where do they find these people, my fiendishly talented new comrades?) In an all-too short period of time my play was ushered to a place it would not have reached otherwise. So I’m grateful, obviously, and am already crating plans to persuade these people into letting me come back for seconds...

José Teodoro’s plays include The Tourist, Slowly, an exchange is taking place, Steps and Cloudless. His most recent play, MOTE, was developed at the 2011 Playwrights Colony.

MOTE

José's new play MOTE is an inspired re-telling of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. In this re-imagined staged version of the much-loved horror flick, Marion Crane and Norman Bates are met with radically different destinies than what we as audience members have come to expect. José manages to reveal and highlight a layer of psychological complexity that creates a unique and compelling framework for Hitchock's story. He confronts and challenges our expectations and generates a profound level of investment in characters we thought we knew and understood, until now. At the PTC Colony, we were able to see the draft come close to completion as José refined it over the 10 day workshop, following feedback from participating dramaturgs and writers. By the third read of the script on the last day of the workshop, José remarked that he was happy with where he was able to bring it, and that it's nearly ready to get on its feet.

Lucia Frangione

The Colony reunited me with dramaturg Lisa C. Ravensbergen: we had worked together on my play Cariboo Magi ten years ago. I can't say that the three hours we busted our chops over my kitchen table analyzing my super structure were enjoyable, in fact, I got a little grumpy with her asking me "why, why, why" but that was precisely the question that needed to be addressed and she was tough enough to wrestle it out with me. She helped me find the driving force behind the play which turned it from a poetic wandering collection of stories into an active pursuit that now earns its ending. I wrote three drafts in under two weeks: about a hundred and eighty pages. I found the guided feedback from everyone around the table very useful. What a glory-fest of brainiacs PTC collected. And I particularly appreciated the involvement of the other playwrights. We all sat in on each other's readings and were invited to offer our responses, something not done at Banff. We lucked out as writers and enjoyed each other's company immensely. I loved discussing our varying approaches to the work, how our careers have evolved, how we each survive, what theatre is doing in the various provinces we're from...I loved hearing their drafts evolve. I wish I could do this every year. Thank you PTC for one of my most valuable writer experiences so far in my career.

Lucia is an internationally-produced and award-winning playwright and actor, best known for performing in her own works: Paradise Garden, Espresso, MMM, Cariboo Magi, Chickens, and Holy Mo. Espresso toured Western Canada and ran for a year at teatr Jeleniogorski with a Polish translation then picked up by teatr Powszechny in Warsaw. A thirty-minute version of her new play Leave Of Absence won the Amnesty International contest through Activist Theatre and was performed at the 2011 Vancouver International Fringe Festival. She is currently working on a new play about the Italian internment in BC called Fresco with Bella Luna for the Italian Cultural Centre and an adaptation of Loves Labour’s Lost for St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott. Her twenty three plays have been produced by theatres such as The Arts Club, Belfry, Ruby Slippers, Solo Collective, Chemainus Theatre, Prairie Theatre Exchange and Lambs Players San Diego. She has been the recipient of two Gordon Armstrong writing awards, the Sydney Risk award and the CAEA Stage West emerging artist award. She is published by Talon Books and is a proud member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and PTC. Lucia also teaches a popular on-line playwright course.

Walk a Mile Joe

Lucia's newest play Walk a Mile Joe presents a profoundly honest and vulnerable world in which Joe and Mary will try anything to understand the lives they've lived and all that they've misunderstood. After not seeing him for ten yeas, Mary comes to comfort Joe after the death of his parents on a cold, Prairie winter's night and together they plunge head first into the past. They re-embody memories from their childhood, all the way until their last meeting, trying with all their might to untangle any knots they find. Filled with vibrant imagery that burns so brightly it nearly ignites the page, Walk a Mile Joe submerges us into the intimacies of a life we've never known-- but a life in which we surprisingly come to recognize our own stories. No matter who we are, time's waves polishes our memories like pebbles, and so we each are each met with same soft erosion of the past. At the Colony, we witnessed Lucia's draft transform as she re-structured the script twice through the ten day workshop. On the final day, the poeticism and theatrical structure of the script began to merge in an engaging and thought-provoking way.

Final Thoughts

Besides being fertile grounds for the growth of new and vibrant Canadian theatre, the PTC Colony also provided a chance for four playwrights to come together from different provinces and do what writers do best (when they aren't writing of course)-- party. Below is a picture of their final night at the Colony. From left to right we have Lucia Frangione, José Teodoro, Greg MacArthur, Robert Plowman and their new fabulous friend whom they met at the bar. From what I've heard from the writers, the four of them have really come together to form a great friendship. I'm not sure if this includes the blue-haired diva, but I hope so.

Emily Kedar

Dramaturgy Intern at PTC

Emily is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in English and Theatre. An emerging writer and dramaturg, Emily is honoured and delighted to be the newest member of the PTC team. She has worked as a developmental dramaturg at Factory Theatre under Iris Turcott and as a production dramaturg with the Driftwood Theatre Company in Toronto. Her three main passions are poetry, theatre and gardening, and she is happily pursuing all three in her new home of Vancouver. She is blessed and blissed out to find herself on the gorgeous Pacific coast and to be so involved in making theatre that challenges, delights, and jumps to life.

Two Dramaturgs Drama-Nerding Out

After the amazing colony at PTC last week, Lisa C. Ravensbergen and I reflected on the experience of dramaturging new work. At this year's colony all four scripts were inspired, in whole or in part, by a specific event or work of art. Mote by José Teodoro, for example, is a re-imagined version of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and The Decameron: A City by Greg MacArthur is an inventive response to the disintegration of a specific social scene in Montreal.

This particular tid-bit of conversation between Lisa and me began with a simple yet valuable question: Should a dramaturg be privy to the source material that inspires a script? Be it a movie, a book, a historical event, or a personal experience-- does having a sound knowledge of the source enrich the development of the work or potentially skew the direction of the piece? Here's what we came up with.

Emily: I was thinking about the value of knowing/not knowing the source material that inspired a script. The key to this seems to be that the more points of view there are on a project, the more more possibilities there are for development. So if there are 2 dramaturgs on a specific project, and one knows the source material and the other doesn't, then the writer is able to see a response to his piece that comes from various points of view; an experience that parallels the various and distinct points of view of audience members.

Also it's essential to distinguish between the structure and message of the script and that of the original material.

So, this it seems to me that a dramaturg can help refine and articulate the relationship between the source material and the script. What do you think?

Lisa: I guess you're speaking to intention... the personal intention (why this particular source material... why now?).

E: In a way. I meant more that it is important to compare and contrast the form/content of the script and the source in order to figure out what the script needs to be more itself. To me it is more about the direction of the draft than the intention of the writer.

L: Except when the source is highly personal, the writer's intention may weigh more heavily for them than the script's 'direction.'

E: Very true. Interesting. I guess different forms of source material require different forms of dramaturgy.

L: Bingo!

E: Awesome. So each project elicits a unique relationship between dramaturg, writer and script, a relationship that must be a careful and sensitive response to the specific project at hand. This is perhaps why dramaturgy is so hard to define.

L: Sure. And just like an actor trains and exposes themselves to different teachers, texts, styles of acting, etc... a dramaturg will have their own artistic range and to varying degrees be more or less experienced in specific styles of dramaturgy. And the stakes are not any less intense for a dramaturg: it becomes key for a dramaturg to ask at some point, "what can I bring to this project? Is that what the writer needs or has expressed that they want? Am I the best person for this job?"

When you listened to the dramaturgs around the table last week - we all entered into the work from different points of view - and yet, I believe I was on the project that fit me and my inclinations best - as it suited the other dramaturgs to be in their pairings.

E: Right. It seems that a continual checking in with the state of the project is key, so that as it develops both the writer and the dramaturg are serving it as best they can.

L: And the tricky part is asking the right question. at the right time.

E: I guess my next question would be about focus then. Is the dramaturg always working with the intention of the writer in mind? Or does the dramaturg focus on what the script itself seems to want? Intuitively, I would say it's most likely a delicate balancing act between the two, but let's address this question next time on Lisa and Emily Drama-nerd out! Coming soon to a blog near you.

Lisa C. Ravensburgen

Creator / Actor / Dramaturg / Dancer

A tawny mix of Ojibway/ Swampy Cree and English/ Irish, Lisa C. Ravensbergen has established herself as a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily as a creator, actor, dramaturge and sometimes dancer. She supplements her somewhat eclectic and thoroughly enjoyable practice of theatre and community collaborations with the delights of motherhood and the challenges of self-produced works. She is an Associate Artist with Full Circle: First Nations Performance, a member of LMDA and a graduate of TWU and SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Lisa is grateful for her life, for the hard lessons behind her and for the opportunities that so generously lie before her.

Emily Kedar

Dramaturgy Intern at PTC

Emily is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in English and Theatre. An emerging writer and dramaturg, Emily is honoured and delighted to be the newest member of the PTC team. She has worked as a developmental dramaturg at Factory Theatre under Iris Turcott and as a production dramaturg with the Driftwood Theatre Company in Toronto. Her three pain passions are poetry, theatre and gardening, and she is happily pursuing all three in her new home of Vancouver. She is blessed and blissed to find herself on the gorgeous Pacific coast and to be so involved in making theatre that challenges, delights, and jumps to life.