Playwrights Canada PressTag

Read an Excerpt from Mishka Lavigne's GG-Winning Play, Haven, in Which Two Strangers Connect in an Unexpected Way

In Mishka Lavigne's Haven (Playwrights Canada Press, translated by Neil Blackadder), which won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in its original French, the audience meets Elsie ...

Playwright Debbie Patterson on Why She Will Keep Exploring What It Means to "Die Well"

What does it mean to "die well"? If death is the end, is there anything left, at that point, to learn? These are the kinds of questions that fascinate acclaimed Winnipeg theatre creator Debbie Patterson, and ...

Beatriz Pizano on Why Writing Fast Takes a Long Time & the Slow but Hopeful Evolution She Sees in Canadian Theatre

As a playwright, director, actor, and activist, Beatriz Pizano has made a name for herself creating theatre that is daring and emotionally complex. She's been highly decorated for her incisive, compelling ...

Playwright Natasha Adiyana Morris on The Plays that Shaped Her & Why She Won't Remove Local Culture from Her Work

Playwright Natasha Adiyana Morris' The Negroes Are Congregating (forthcoming from Playwrights Canada Press later this month) became a sensation during its 2020 run at Theatre Passe Muraille. Morris, ...

Frances Koncan on How Playwrighting Gets Her "Closest to the Truth"

Frances Koncan's play, Women of the Fur Trade (Playwrights Canada Press) is the antidote to dull historical renditions of early Canada. Set in "eighteen hundred and something something", it follows three ...

Playwright & Passe Muraille Artistic Director Marjorie Chan on Writing the Scenes That "Need to Get Out" First

Librettist and playwright Marjorie Chan, who serves as Artistic Director of Toronto's iconic Theatre Passe Muraille while also creating her own plays and librettos, has a knack for exploring power, ...

Fairy Tale Lovers' Delight: Read an Excerpt from Kat Sandler's Dark & Funny Play, Yaga

The story of Baba Yaga, the forest-dwelling witch who grinds bones in her chicken-legged house, is one of the most enduring, strange, and iconic images from world folklore, and that's saying a lot. So ...

"I Knew I Wanted Big Stories" Susanna Fournier on Crafting Hundreds of Years of Dystopian History for Her Plays

Imagine creating not just a fully realized world, but an entire history that spans hundreds of years. That is the creativity Susanna Fournier brought to her suite of three plays, The Empire (Playwrights ...

Read an Excerpt from Hannah Moscovitch, Maev Beaty & Ann-Marie Kerr's Painful & Beautiful Exploration of Motherhood for Modern Artists

We're continuing our week-long spotlight on excerpts at Open Book, bringing you delicious free samples of some of the most exciting Canadian books out this year. Today we've got something special: our ...

Playwright Makambe K Simamba on Fearlessly Exploring "How Far Characters are Willing to Go in Order to Live Their Truths"

CW: discussion of anti-Black violenceIt's a gutting image: a seventeen-year old Black boy, a child in a hoodie, dead far too soon because of hateful and unchecked anti-Black racism. Makambe K Simamba's Our ...