>>PREVIEW
PLAYWORKS INK
Runs until November 5
Glenbow Museum
At last year’s Playworks Ink, an annual series of seminars and workshops co-presented by Theatre Alberta and the Alberta Playwrights’ Network (APN), Maryanne Pope took home the Julia Young Memorial Prize for her play Savior. At 38, Pope is confident she knows how to write a play, but is still looking forward to attending Clem Martini’s workshop, Writing a Producible Play.
"I’m not at the point of writing great ones that are ready to be produced, but I’m getting to that point," she says. "I want to know the next steps, more the business-type things. How to get someone interested and saying, ‘Maybe we’ll put this on the stage.’ That’s a big black void for me."
Playworks Ink, now in its fourth year, provides theatre people with the kind of ongoing training that is essential for any professionals or would-be professionals – theatre-based or otherwise. For aspiring professional theatre artists like Pope, the ability to select appropriate seminars and workshops provides a self-created curriculum for the weekend event, a kind of microcosmic theatre school that informs the existing experience of the event’s roughly 70 registered playwrights, actors, directors, clowns and designers.
Though the event’s attendees represent a relatively focused core of theatre professionals, Playworks also provides the public with the opportunity to either learn more about the creative process or actively participate. For one, this year’s Playworks will include the launch of two books: Theatre 100 and The Blunt Playwright, A Guide for the Aspiring Dramatist. The first will honour 100 contributors to Alberta theatre from the last 100 years (including former Fast Forward editor and theatre critic Martin Morrow), while the second, written by playwright Clem Martini, is an attempt to provide a uniquely Canadian perspective on the craft of playwriting.
For audiences more interested in performance, Playworks will feature readings of four plays in the Glenbow Museum Theatre: Dale Kwong’s Ai Ya! Sweet and Sour Secrets, headlining playwright Wendy Lill’s Chimera, Collin Doyle’s Slumberland Motel, and Kevin Loring’s The Ballad of Floyd. According to APN’s executive director, Ken Cameron, this showcase offers its audiences more than the performance of the reading itself.
"These are the kinds of plays you’re not going to see on the big stages because they’re so challenging," he says. "My challenge is to come and see if this is something you want to see on these stages."
Last year was the first time the Glenbow Museum played host to Playworks. In addition to providing the program with a theatre space for play readings, the museum has also been able to match its evening lecture series to the content of the readings themselves. This year’s first showcase event, for example, will combine Ai Ya! Sweet and Sour Secrets and a talk delivered by Glenbow’s curator of Chinese Studies, Beth Carter. Mindful always, as theatre artists tend to be, that all work and no play makes for a dull night, the late night Glenbow series, release galas, and after-hours social events hosted at the Auburn Saloon provide audiences and artists alike the opportunity to mingle and, importantly, drink.
For Pope, however, her second Playworks is primarily an opportunity to hone her skills, combining a career in professional playwriting with her existing projects as a novelist, nonprofit administrator and owner of her own production company. Trying to be a theatre professional, after all, takes more than creativity. Whether becoming a professional or simply strengthening existing skills, theatre artists must continually take stock of their abilities.
Though it certainly won’t be her last, Pope is looking forward to one very pragmatic seminar: Glenda Stirling’s Show Me the Money: Grant Writing.
For more information, visit www.theatrealberta.com. |
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