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It begins with  Shawn DeSouza-Coelho as “The Man in the Window,” performing magic and conjuring the playful spirit that drives the creativity behind piece/meal. Stay for a bite and enjoy a series of thought-provoking excerpts. Intimate and playful, these fresh new works-in-development will breath life into the deserted Artery space.  The line-up includes a mix of pieces from up-and-coming local voices, as well as established artists, including Governor-General-award-winner Vern Thiessen and award-winning singer/songwriter Donna Creighton.

Magnetic North runs June 9 to 19th. See their website for details.

piece/meal runs
June 14 – 16 from 11am-1pm
The Artery at 158 King Street West, Kitchener (map here)
Admission: $15. Free to Industry Series participants. Brunch included.

MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2010

You Know I Love You Still by Maggie Clark

After being held captive for 16 years in her kidnapper’s basement, Eleanor ventures into her first relationship with a man haunted by his own recently ended 15-year marriage. With humour and warmth, the play unravels the story after the story.

Poet/playwright Maggie Clark was full-time Editor-in-Chief of Imprint, UW’s official student newspaper. Her poetry has been published in RATTLE, The Pedestal and ditch magazine.

In the remote New Mexico community of Gehenna, the citizens are spontaneously combusting. In another world, a devastated family searches for missing pieces of their son, after his body returns from war.  Gehanna is a story told in two parts, two worlds, the dreamscape of a hidden, unknown world and the hyper-realism of a world known too well. Hearts escape from mournful chests, angles lose their way, and people disappear with the final telling of their stories.

Adam’s first play, Headache Grey, was produced by Theatre & Company in 1999 and was produced the following year at Buddies in Bad Times. then she was presented in 2003 by Rumble Productions and produced by Shifting Point. Other credits include A Cloudless Sky and Alone, both produced by REIRart. In June, A Map of Somewhere Only We Know will be produced in Toronto as part of the InspiraTO Festival.

Northern Daughter is a one-woman musical sprung from the song of the same name. Liz is from up north: She hasn’t been home in 30 years. Northern daughter comes home.

Donna is a Canadian-acclaimed singer/songwriter. Nominated form a Canadian Fold Music Award, she has won the London Music Award for Folk/World/Celtic 4 times and twice been awarded the Jack Richardson Award. Over the past 10 years she has toured North America with Sirens, sharing the stage with countless talented musicians, including Bruce Cockburn, Philosopher Kings and Lisa Loeb.

TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010

Aftershock by Evan Tsitsias

Anna has returned from a reality makeover television show. Back in the trailer she shares with her family, she finds them shocked at her transformation.

Evan recently produced Bagged, a short film he wrote for the CBC, airing later this year and screened in March at WIFT. He has also produced the Canadian Premiere of Homebody/Kabul (Dora Nomination) at Berkeley St. Theatre. Evan is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in New York City.

In 1942, The Government of Canada forced 100 families off 17,500 acres of farmland in the St. Vincent Township of Southwestern Ontario. The reason? The land was needed as an Armored Vehicle Fighting Area to train troops for the war effort overseas. The Tank Range Project explores the farmers’ sacrifice and relevance of the land’s use.

Founding members of the Grey-Bruce Arts Collective, Roger Shank and Jamie Robinson have worked with companies across the nation, such as: The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Canstage, the Lorianne Kimsa Theatre for Young People, the Citadel Theatre and Neptune Theatre. They are based out of Meaford.

Considered the bible of international-style ballroom, Alex Moore’s Ballroom Dancing contains all the steps and elements essential to that art form. There are no new steps and no new conventions. Period. What happens when two gay men question why? An examination of partner dancing: How it works, how it feels and what it says through the eyes of two men who enjoy dancing together and are inquisitive enough to try to figure out why.

Jeff Fox is a professional ballroom dancer, choreographer and author living in Kitchener. Trevor Copp is an actor, mime and ballroom dancer.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16, 2010

The Maple Leaves by Heather Debling

Based upon the true story of the Maple Leaves, a WWI concert troupe formed to boost the morale of the men on the front lines, Deblings’ play considers where duty really lies.

Heather Debling is a writer based in Stratford, Ontario.

A man returns to his childhood home searching for secrets buried in the backyard of his parents’ bungalow. A haunting story of a father, his son, and the mystery that lies between them, this new work is the latest from one of Canada’s most produced playwrights.

Vern Thiessen has written for stage, radio and television. His stage plays have been seen across Canada, the US and Europe, including Shakespeare’s Will, Apple, Einstein’s Gift, Blowfish, The Resurrection of John Frum and Vimy. Thiessen is the recipient of numerous awards including the Governor General’s Literary Award, Canada’s highest honour for playwriting.

There’s lots to celebrate. Last week, not only did Pat the Dog Playwright Center sign on our 100th member, we won the Gowlings Literary Award at the 22nd Annual K-W Arts Awards on June 6th. Being first-time nominees, we were taken by surprise.

Eager to hear more? Got a poem to share? Join Pat the Dog and Kevin Sutton in June for more open mike, more SLAM and more great verse.

June Poetry SLAM!
June 26, 2010
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
The Button Factory
25 Regina Street South, Waterloo

Tickets at the door. PWYC, suggested donation $5.

The Pat the Dog Playwright Centre’s Table Sessions are over for the summer. Need your performing arts fix? The region is bursting with creativity.

Visit the Magnetic North Theatre Festival (and Pat the Dog’s piece/meal brunchtime reading series) is in town. And just down the road in Toronto there’s 10-minute plays at InspiratTO, lots of indie pieces at SummerWorks, and cutting edge theatre at the Toronto Fringe. Just to name a few.

We’ll be back in September with a new series of session, workshops, readings and events. Stay tuned for updates.

Recent directing credits also include: And All For Love (National Arts Centre), Generous (Tarragon), Afterplay (Shaw Festival), The Last Five Years (CanStage and MTC), This is How it Goes (Neptune Theatre), Helen’s Necklace (Grand Theatre), and The Play About The Baby (Soulpepper).

Daryl has been awarded the Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize for an Outstanding Emerging Theatre Director, the Toronto Theatre Emerging Artist Award, and a Robert Merritt Award for Outstanding Director (This is How it Goes).  He is also one of three writer/directors for the interactive feature film Late Fragment, produced by the Canadian Film Centre/National Film Board, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

What do you look for in a script?
A surprise.

From a practical standpoint – is there an ideal number of characters  or script length?
Nope.  I’ll happily sit in a theatre for 9 hours if the playwright earns every minute of it. (Conversely, there’s nothing more excruciating than a 3-hour play that only has 10 minutes of compelling content.)

Does script formatting matter or can it get in the way?
Nope. As long as I understand what’s going on, the format doesn’t matter.

How do you feel about detailed stage directions?
Write the information you need to impart to make the action make sense. Long detailed stage directions become cumbersome in rehearsal and often ignored. If you are selective and concise with stage directions, they stand out better, and have a far better chance of being adhered to.

What turns you off a script?
Cliches.

Does the topic matter as much as the delivery? Or are there topics so important any discussion is worthy of staging?
Doesn’t matter how you deliver the story if you have nothing to deliver. Content is everything.  You must have an important story to tell.

What bad habits from television / movie scripts does a playwright need to break?
Lots of short episodic scenes in lots of different locations.  Storytelling in theatre needs time to develop. Long scenes. Rich dialogue.

What is the most important play of the past 100 years and why?
Wow, that’s impossible to answer.  Though I would say that Caryl Churchill is one of the most important playwrights of the past century.

If you could give emerging playwrights three pieces of advice, what would they be?
I’ll just give you one good one I heard recently. I’m directing “Rabbit Hole” by David Lindsay-Abaire right now.  He explains that as a young playwright, his instructor told him that in order to write a great play he must “write about what scares him most” He had no idea what that meant. Years later, he became a father. When friends of his lost their young child in a tragic accident, he suddenly realized that losing his child was the thing he was most scared of in the world.  And he wrote “Rabbit Hole”, about a young couple losing a child.  And won the Pulitzer Prize for it.

In this spoken-word poetry competition, judges and performers come from the audience itself. Got something to say? You’ll have three minutes at the mike. Participants are welcomed on a first-come basis. Sign up early online via our Facebook Group, SLAM! ‘Box in a Button, or at the event itself.

To encourage creativity, First Prize goes to the highest scoring poet; Second Prize goes to the lowest scoring poet. In partnership with the Living Earth Festival, the winner also receives promotion through a spotlight poetry set at the inaugural Speaker’s Corner spoken word event (part of the Living Earth Festival!) on Saturday, April 24. More prize details still to come!

Can’t make the event? Join the discussion or look for future slam events on our SLAM! ‘Box in a Button Facebook Group.

Whether you wish to perform or just listen, the event is pay-what-you-can and open to all.

April 23, 2010
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
The Button Factory
25 Regina Street South,
Waterloo, ON

Ken Cameron

Ken Cameron is the Artistic Director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, a national festival showcasing exceptional new Canadian work, co-presented with the National Arts Centre. Also a playwright, Ken is the author of Harvest, My Morocco and My One And Only. All three plays will be published by Newest Press in 2010.

What do you look for in a script?
At Magnetic North we do not produce scripts from scratch, like a theatre company: instead we present touring productions by theatre companies, bringing in the ready-made work to our festival. As a result I am not really looking at scripts these days, so much as I am looking at full productions.

But when I think about scripts that I love, they are often “rich”: rich in characterizations, rich in plot, rich in dialogue. I am really intrigued by plays which give the actors lots to play with in relation to one another – lots of opportunities to attack, cajole, insult, seduce in turn – dramatic action in other words.

From a practical standpoint – is there an ideal number of characters or script length?
Since the mid-90s when government funding for the Arts hit the first of its many crises, the average cast size on Canada’s stages have steadily shrunk. At about the same time Canada’s Fringe Festivals emerged as a popular and cost-effective platform for emerging playwrights to develop their craft. Both factors put pressure on playwrights to create plays with ever smaller casts, culminating the ultimate small cast: the one-man show.

It’s not entirely a bad thing. By focusing on only three or four characters a playwright has the opportunity to really develop character, intention and plot. Every character matters and must be full fleshed-out, and the playwright must use all their skill in drawing the remaining characters into conflict and sustaining tension between a small cast over a full length play. It’s a great way to practice one’s craft. And one- or two-person plays often provide the actors with opportunities to show off their craft and turn in a truly virtuosic performances.

Fortunately, though, we are starting to see Artistic Directors and audiences tiring of small cast plays and looking for those affordable plays that allow them to create with a larger canvas.

Does script formatting matter or can it get in the way?
When I was the Executive Director of the Alberta Playwrights Network the most common question we received from budding playwrights was “what is the proper format for stage plays?” I’ve often surmised that this question comes from reading manuals on how to write a screenplay. In film, there are rigid rules for how to format a script. And I mean rigid. This is because, if formatted properly, a page of screenplay really does translate into a minute of screen time. This is not the case for stage plays, however, where an average page can vary widely in the time it takes to play out onstage.

I feel very strongly that the format of a script should reflect the play itself. I am publishing a book of three plays later this year and one of the plays, a one-person show, is formatted quite differently, with line breaks to reflect the cadence and flow of text. It’s not something I do often, but when a script demands it I will break from traditional formatting.

And what is that traditional formatting? There are several different options, and Canadian publishers vary even amongst themselves. Buy a few plays and see what works for you.

How do you feel about detailed stage directions?
I think Samuel French has lead many playwrights astray. Scripts available form Samuel French are covered with detailed stage directions and annotated with set descriptions and props lists. Beginning playwrights often over-write their stage directions feeling it is their responsibility to follow Samuel French’s example.

What many people fail to realize is that these directions are usually based on the first production or the Broadway hit production and are rarely written by the playwright herself. Often they reflect the director’s vision. Oddly, directors and actors are taught in theatre school that the first thing they ought to do is cross out stage directions and begin from a blank slate, using the words and the actor’s impulses as their only stage directions. I once wrote an entire script without a single stage direction as a challenge to myself to see if I could communicate my intentions through the text alone.

Beautiful moments can emerge when a director and playwright trust the actors to bring the script to life. Theatre is at its best when it involves collaboration, and trust is at the heart of it.

What turns you off in a script?
If it’s not clear from the above, over-written stage directions turn me off!

Does the topic matter as much as the delivery? Or are there topics so important any discussion is worthy of staging?
I think topic and delivery are intertwined and inseparable. There are many important subjects that need to be dealt with, but if that is one’s primary impetus for writing a play, the really you are dead in the water. A play that deals with an important topic is the same as any play – it must tell a compelling story and it must tell it in an interesting way that captures and retains the attention of an audience.

What bad habits from television / movie scripts does a playwright need to break?
When Directors talk about how a play is too cinematic, they oftentimes mean that the scenes are very short, not leaving enough time for the characters to develop. Just as often it can mean that plot points are introduced and just as quickly resolved. Theatre has difficulty “cutting” from one location to another, so once you have asked a director, designer and cast to go to all the work of creating a particular time and space, then its important to let them stay and explore one another in that space. (Note I said “explore one another”, not the space itself – a play is nearly always about conflict between characters).

I recently saw the film Inglourious Basterds, and was surprised by just how much time the director takes with each scene. If one can set aside all the violence and Second World War revisionism, then each segment of the film builds to a scene that is essentially little more than two or more characters sitting at a table with one another. Yet, because of the plotting, the characters and the given circumstances, these simple moments are rich with dialogue, subtext and dramatic action. Truly virtuosic storytelling on the part of the writer/director and the actors.

What is the most important play of the past 100 years and why?
For Canadians it’s likely The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. The odd thing about having a country that is so young is that our theatre culture is very, very recent. Rita Joe premiered in 1967 in Vancouver: and starred Chief Dan George, then chief of the Squamish Band of Burrard Inlet, BC. Two years later it was revived at opened the studio theatre in The National Arts Centre. That was the year I was born. Its worth noting that The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is sometimes called one of the first plays written about Canada to be professionally produced: in a way Canadian Theatre is as old as I am. So I like to think Canadian Theatre is very, very young.

I saw Rita Joe in 1990 while I was a 20-year old student at McGill University. The same year that I saw the play a group of Mohawk Warriors blockaded a bridge in Montréal to protest the development of land which they claimed they had land rights. Here were political events outside my doorstep that had their roots in the same institutionalized racism depicted in a play that had been written two decades earlier. It sad that this political situation should persist: but I think it also champions the relevance of theatre generally.

Fill in the blank. I wish people would stop telling playwrights to… …
… think about their audience. The worst plays I have written in my life are plays I wrote to please someone else. At one point in my career I discovered I was over-concerned with what an audience might think of a particular moment or a turn in the plot, or an atrocious action a character might make or shocking line of dialogue they might say. Write what you want to see onstage: write a story that grips you, about a subject you personally are passionate about.

If you could give emerging playwrights three pieces of advice, what would they be?

1. Go to the theatre and see plays. When I was at the Alberta Playwrights Network I was astonished at how many budding playwrights turned up at my door wanting advice on their script, but who had not set foot in a theatre in years. When I asked them about this many simply blinked at me, curious as to why it would matter. Would you expect to be able to play hockey if you had never seen the game played?
2. Go to the library and read plays. A play on the page is never the same as on the stage. The actors, director, designers and creative team breathe life into a play that, on the page, is only a blueprint of production. Better yet: read the play before you go see it onstage and compare what was in your imagination with what you saw onstage.
3. Write. Many playwrights forget this stage. Writing is hard work, and it’s easy to get distracted and to spend one’s time talking about writing. One can only go to the pub and talk about how hard the writer’s life is before one needs to stay home on a Thursday night and actually do some writing.

Pat the Dog Playwright Centre is pleased to announce we’ve been chosen to present the playwright reading series for this year’s Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

piece/meal is a brunch-time series providing an intimate, playful introduction to fresh new plays in development from intriguing new theatre artists. All excerpts are from full-length plays currently under development at Pat the Dog Playwright Centre.  Come taste our spicy, innovative, invigorating new work served up with a soupcon of style, brioche and caffeine.

piece/meal takes place at:

The Artery
158 King Street West
Kitchener, ON (click here for the Google Map)
June 14, 15, 16, 2010
11 AM – 1 PM

Admission is free to Magnetic North Theatre Festival Industry Series participants.  For everyone else, it’s PWYC with a suggested donation of $15. Brunch is included on a first-come, first-served basis so arrive early.

While actors will benefit immensely, actors are not the only people these techniques empower. This theatre training is for anyone seeking dynamic learning opportunities that will increase self awareness and confidence. This training de-mechanizes the body from repetitive and automatic action, liberates the mind from assumptive patterning, and frees the creative spirit to animate the thoughts and feelings that come with our experiences. Theatre training helps participants connect with each other by encouraging more effective communication through more liberated self-expression.

Saturday March 13, 2010
Button Factory
9-2pm
Free to Pat the Dog members
$50 non-members

Conducted by Heather Majaury.

You will:

• Learn about the Theatre of the Oppressed system of play creation
• Experience exercises, game and techniques including:
  • Newspaper Theatre
  • Image Theatre
  • Forum Theatre
  • Cops in the Head
  • Rainbow of Desires
• Participate in a democratized space encouraging creative collective decision making with an emphasis on problem solving
• Share stories and view them through a powerful theatrical mirror that allows for:
  • Insightful reflection
  • Analysis that leads to powerful decision-making
  • The possibility of transformative learning
• Carry what you learn outside the studio experience into your actual life

Note: Bring your own lunch.

To attend, RSVP to Lisa O’Connell at lisa@patthedog.org or call 519-886-4577.