ArticlesJ. Gordon Shillingford Publishing
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FeaturesPlay examines themes of friendship, power through unplanned pregnancy in a work camp
Boom Baby, a play by Calgary-based playwright Natalie Meisner, tells a story of friendship and power, set in the oil fields of Alberta. -
DramaPlaywright examines polarizing topic of MAID and Jewish faith with flashes of humour
In Seven Days, a play by Toronto-based Jordi Mand, deals with a family’s response to MAID – the process of allowing a terminally ill person to receive medical assistance in dying. The idea for the play arose when a friend of Mand’s father announced that he had qualified for MAID and planned to proceed. His decision sparked intense debate within the Jewish community and within Mand’s own family. -
FeaturesPlay offers story of hope in the face of monumental enemies
You’d be forgiven for believing that Bentboy is an art offering that is bent out of shape, but you would be mistaken. In fact, it’s in fine storytelling form. Written by Herbie Barnes, who currently serves as the artistic director at Young People’s Theatre in Toronto, Bentboy is a story set in pre-contact times, yet is offered to us in a way that is timeless. -
DramaPlay set in Caribbean restaurant highlights broken immigration system
The play our place by Toronto-based playwright, librettist, and screenwriter Kanika Ambrose is set in the fictionalized Caribbean restaurant Jerk Pork Castle in Scarborough. Working there without documentation are Andrea and Niesha from the imagined Caribbean countries of Caviva and Fanon. Rounding out the cast are Malcolm and Eldrick, the potential love interests. -
DramaTale follows 3 generations of Indigenous women’s art, activism, survival ‘through acts of love’
Produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange in the fall of 2021 and now being published as a book, Cree-Saulteaux theatre artist and playwright Darla Contois’s play The War Being Waged is a multidisciplinary, multi-generational work exploring the roles that art, activism, and family play in the lives of Indigenous women resisting ongoing colonialism in Canada today. -
FeaturesTrilingual play blends symbolism, documentary montages to gradually reveal message of Amik, the beaver
Like a giant beaver dam spotted in satellite imagery, Émilie Monnet’s acclaimed play Okinum keeps growing. First performed in French in 2018 at Montreal’s Centre théâtre d’aujourd’hui, published in French with Les Herbes rouges in 2020; then released as an audio drama, and performed in English at Centaur Theatre and at the National Arts Centre in 2021, the work is now published in English. -
DramaPlays offer prompt for artists and audiences to consider colonization and occupation
What would it be like to get into the headspace of a suicide bomber? The play The Only Good Indian gives artists the opportunity to find out. For each performance, a different artist straps themself into a suicide vest and then tries to justify carrying out such an extreme action. -
DramaOne-man drama brings ‘the singing miner’ through disaster to life
“You ask me what kept me alive down there? Well, it was my faith. My music. My family.” So says the protagonist of Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story by Beau Dixon, a playwright, actor, and musician who divides his time between Peterborough and Toronto. -
FeaturesPlay showcasing Viola Desmond’s historical stand grew to span period of four decades
Viola Desmond made history in 1946 when she refused to leave a whites-only area of the Roseland Theatre, a movie house in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She was then convicted of a minor tax violation for the one-cent tax difference between the seat she paid for and the more expensive seat she used. -
DramaOne-act play is based on Lara Rae’s life and transition, with some details changed
In the foreword to Lara Rae’s play Dragonfly, actor and playwright Brian Drader describes how, as Rae’s dramaturg, his most compelling memories are “witnessing the constant ebb and flow of a storyteller wrestling with their own life’s experiences and placing them into dramatic form.”
