Stage Door News
Stage Door News
November 10, 2011…The Stratford Shakespeare Festival has commissioned new works from Canadian playwrights Jason Sherman and Hannah Moscovitch and an English translation from Linda Gaboriau of a new play by Michel Tremblay.
“New work has a vital role to play in a classical theatre such as ours,” says Stratford Artistic Director Des McAnuff. “The great writers of the past addressed the topical issues of their times, and their works exist on a continuum with the very latest in contemporary drama. Each illuminates the other: new plays are best appreciated in the context of the classics, and our approach to the classics is kept fresh and innovative by the work we do on brand new scripts. I’m very excited about what will emerge from our relationship with these outstanding dramatic artists.”
“Since its founding, the Festival has played a significant role in the development of new plays in Canada,” says General Director Antoni Cimolino. “Now more than ever we are working with playwrights to ensure they have the resources to advance their craft. These are exciting writers whose work I've enjoyed for years. It is a pleasure to deepen our commitment and strengthen our relationship with them.”
Mr. Sherman has written extensively for the stage, radio and television. His works include Remnants (A Fable); It’s All True; Patience; Reading Hebron; The Retreat; The League of Nathans; An Acre of Time and Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. He served as executive story editor and writer on the TV series ReGenesis, earning Gemini and Canadian Screenwriting Award nominations. He also created the television adaptation of Vincent Lam’s Giller Prize-winning story collection Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. For CBC Radio he wrote National Affairs, Irving Invectus and Graf (for which he received the Canadian Screenwriting Award for radio drama), as well as episodes of Afghanada. In 2003 and 2004 the Festival workshopped his dramatization of The Brothers Karamazov at the Studio Theatre, and the piece premièred at the Tom Patterson Theatre in 2005.
Ms Moscovitch is a 2001 graduate of the National Theatre School’s acting program. East of Berlin, written while Ms Moscovitch was part of the Tarragon Playwrights Unit, premièred at that theatre in the fall of 2007 and has been seen across Canada and most recently in Chicago. Her plays Essay and The Russian Play premièred at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival in 2005, where they won the Contra Guys Award for Best New Play and the Jury Prize for Best New Production, respectively. Both were remounted as part of a double bill at Factory Theatre in 2008. A native of Ottawa, Ms Moscovitch now lives in Toronto. She is playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre, where her play The Children’s Republic will be seen as part of the 2011-12 season. Ms Moscovitch also participated in an individual residency with the Festival two summers ago.
Ms Gaboriau will translate Michel Tremblay’s newest work, L’Oratorio de Noël, which will première in Montreal in February. Born in Boston, she has lived in Montreal since 1963. Her critically acclaimed translations of more than 100 plays include the works of some of Quebec’s most prominent writers, including Michel Tremblay and Michel Marc Bouchard. As a literary manager and dramaturge, Ms Gaboriau has held numerous translation residencies and directed many international exchange projects, including the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Her awards for stage translations include two Chalmers Awards (Orphan Muses by Michel Marc Bouchard – 1999; The Queens by Normand Chaurette – 1993) and the Governor General’s Translation Award for Stone and Ashes by Daniel Danis (1996). Her translation of Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again was seen at Stratford in 2010 and this fall she was a participant in the Festival’s annual Playwrights’ Retreat.
At the end of his first season in 2008, Mr. McAnuff began a new series of commissions, now totalling eight projects, two of which have already been produced at Stratford: George F. Walker’s King of Thieves and a revised version of John Mighton’s The Little Years, which opened to rave reviews in July. A third, Wanderlust, by Morris Panych and Marek Norman, will be produced in 2012. Also under commission are Judith Thompson and the creators of The Drowsy Chaperone, Lisa Lambert, Bob Martin, Don McKellar and Greg Morrison.
The Festival’s New Play Program also includes the Playwrights Retreat, launched in 2008 by Festival Dramaturge Robert Blacker. Since then, 52 Canadian playwrights have participated in either the Retreat or individual writing residencies, with Andrew Moodie completing the Festival’s most recent residency in September. Two projects from the Festival’s upcoming 2012 season came out of these residencies: Daniel MacIvor’s play, The Best Brothers, and the Alon Nashman/Paul Thompson collaboration, Hirsch.
2011-11-10
Stratford: The Stratford Festival announces three new commissions