Stage Door News
Stage Door News
TORONTO, November 17, 2011 – Tarragon Theatre extends our heartfelt congratulations to Erin Shields, a current playwright-in-residence, on receiving the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for If We Were Birds.
“We are proud to have premiered her full-length play, If We Were Birds, in 2010 and are deeply gratified to see Erin and her writing celebrated on a national scale,” says Richard Rose, Tarragon Theatre’s artistic director. “Erin is a playwright with many, many plays to write and we look forward to meeting them on our stages in the years to come.”
If We Were Birds director and former Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist, Alan Dilworth also extends his praise, “I am so pleased and proud that If We Were Birds has been honoured with the Governor General's Award for Drama. It is a work of gut wrenching, visceral drama written in Shields' muscular poetic voice. It is a resonant re-telling of a classic tale that searingly speaks to our times.”
Shields was recognized for her work, If We Were Birds, which premiered in a 60 minute version SummerWorks in 2008, with its full-length Mainspace premiere at Tarragon in 2010. In this vivid re-imagining of Ovid’s myth, Procne, daughter of the King of Athens, marries the triumphant war hero Tereus and returns with him to Thrace, leaving her beloved sister Philomela behind. Procne begs her husband to reunite the sisters. Desire triumphs over reason igniting a chain of shattering events.
The Governor General’s Literary Awards will be presented by His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, at Rideau Hall on November 24th, 2011. For more information on the awards, a list of this year's winners and the CCA visit www.canadacouncil.ca.
Erin Shields is a playwright and actor. In 2004, she became a founding member of Groundwater Productions through which she creates, develops and produces much of her work including If We Were Birds which premiered at SummerWorks 2008. If We Were Birds earned the 2008 SummerWorks Festival's Outstanding Production Award, won two 2010 Dora Mavor Moore awards and has been translated into German as part of The German Theatre Exchange. Shield’s other plays include Montparnasse, winner of the Alberta Theatre Projects’ 2010 Enbridge playRites Award and The Unfortunate Misadventures of Masha Galinski, nominated for a Dora Award in 2008, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Groundwater/Summerworks), and Dance of the Red Skirts (Theatre Columbus). Erin Shields is playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre and lives in Toronto.
2011-11-17
Toronto: Tarragon Theatre congratulates Erin Shields on winning the Governor General’s Award