Stage Door News
Stage Door News
TORONTO, October 13, 2011 – Tarragon Theatre extends their congratulations to playwrights Brendan Gall, Jonathan Garfinkel and Erin Shields on their nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. These shortlisted playwrights had their work developed and premiered at the Tarragon over the last three seasons. “The issues these outstanding playwrights explore, whether it is eroticism in the contemporary relationship, the Israeli-Palestinian question or the victimization of women in wartime, all speak to the courage of their writing,” says Tarragon Theatre Artistic Director, Richard Rose. “We are proud to have given them a theatrical home.”
The Canada Council for the Arts announced the shortlist on Tuesday, October 1, 2011 celebrating the excellence of Canadian writers, illustrators and translators. English language finalists for drama include Brendan Gall for Minor Complications: Two Plays, Jonathan Garfinkel for House of Many Tongues, Erin Shields for If We Were Birds, Donna-Michelle St. Bernard for Gas Girls and Vern Thiessen for Lenin’s Embalmers.
Erin Shields is a playwright and actor who trained at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London, England and is currently a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre. A vivid re-imagining of Ovid’s myth, If We Were Birds premiered in a 60 minute version SummerWorks in 2008, with Mainspace premiere at Tarragon in 2010.
Brendan Gall is a Dora-nominated playwright and actor. His play, Wide Awake Hearts, one of his two plays featured in Minor Complications, had its world premiere at Tarragon Theatre in 2010. Gall is also a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon.
Playwright and author, Jonathan Garfinkel was a member of Tarragon’s Playwrights Unit in 2006. During that time he developed House of Many Tongues, where magic realism triumphs over political reality. The play received its world premiere at Tarragon in 2009.
Many of the plays that have graced Tarragon’s stages in recent years began in the Playwrights Unit, and received their first presentation during Tarragon’s annual Play Reading Week. They include Liquor Guns Karate by Morwyn Brebner, Kingfisher Days and Alice’s Affair by Susan Coyne, Alias Godot by Brendan Gall, Plan B by Michael Healey, Léo by Rosa Laborde, East of Berlin by Hannah Moscovitch, The Fall by Greg Nelson and d’bi.young anitafrika’s word!sound!powah!. This year’s Playwrighting Unit includes Marie Beath Badian, Leanna Brodie, Jason Maghanoy, Haley McGee, Bobby Theodore and Evan Tsitsias. The 2011 Play Reading Week takes place November 14-20, 2011.
2011-10-13
Toronto: Tarragon Theatre congratulates playwrights nominated for GG literary awards