Dear Friends and Colleagues
I hope you all had a wonderful summer and are gearing up for a fantastic 2018/19 season.
This missive was composed on a train from Portsmouth (UK) to the Battersea Arts Centre Collective Touring Network first stop for Theatre Conspiracy’s UK tour of the 2017 Fringe First Award winner Foreign Radical, The Heads Up Festival (UK). After a six performances at beautiful The New Theatre Royal, this a brief moment to catch up and look back on the 207/2018 season.
2017/ 18 was one of production, translation, dramaturgy, new play development, international creation, and theatre with youth bouncing between 7 cities and 4 countries. Adventures this year included Germany, Scotland, the UK, Ireland and Northern Ireland. As always, it is a joy to meet the Theatre Makers across the world.
After a Vancouver summer including 6 Jessie Richardson Award nominations for Walt Whitman’s Secret (the frank theatre) and a month with the youth artists at The Richmond Gateway Theatre Academy, I was off to London for The Global Hive Labs initiative.
BoucheWHACKED! Theatre Collective, The Climate Change Theatre Action – Chicago and fellow director and wanderer Denise Serna and I joined forces with artists from France, Spain, Italy, China and the UK in our first Global Laboratories development workshop. What happens when we apply the information and communication technologies that allow us to reach across the world in the creation and presentation of live performing arts?
The Global Practice tools were later applied at The Chicago Climate Change Theatre Action in Chicago.
The fall, winter and early spring was a whirlwind of activities. I served as Associate Producer for Icarus Theatre Collective’s (London) International tour of Macbeth and would work with the company in London, Derry (Northern Ireland) and Dublin (Republic of London).
I continued working with London new playwriting house Theatre503 Literary Department serving as the dramaturgical lead for the New Play Development Workshops in collaboration with British Actors’ Equity and ongoing playwrights’ development activities.
Workshops, readings and presentations included Bradley Middleton’s in-yer-face The Flood and Blazed, Martin Edward’s story of three generation of Londoner’s of Caribbean heritage The Glory Road, and directing Brazilian playwright Rogerio Correa’s mediation on the role of art to affect change and the LGBTQ+ atrocities in Chechnya For Love and Fran Bushe’s story of a mother and a spouse grapple with freezing the sperm of a recently deceased love one in Keep him Here.
As the recipient of The Cole Foundation Award for Emerging Translators, I bounced back and forth from Montreal to workshop of Daniel Danis’ KIWI at Playwrights workshop Montreal. A staged reading took place to a packed studio at Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal. Once again, I cannot thank Daniel Danis, Emma Tibaldo, Maureen Labonte and the PWM gang enough for this wonderful experience.
Other projects included directing a London staged reading of Guillaume Corbeil’s Nous voir nous in an ensemble of Canadian and British artists with BoucheWHACKED and Theatre Stage Co. Canadian F(EH)stival.
I was also invited to lead a creation workshop addressing cross disciplinary and multi lingual work for British Equity London Office. And was able to shoot over to Oldenburg to observe the “Making Of” portion of Theatre Werde + innovation platform Flausen.
Following the adventures in Ireland, UK, Germany and Quebec, I landed back in Vancouver with Theatre Conspiracy serving as Associate Producer on the docu-theatre project on one of the largest Ponzi scheme in Canadian history Victim Impact (The Cultch Historic Theatre, Vancouver, CAN)
Other spring/ summer activities include dramaturgy for Brazil Diversity (Brazil Diversity and Theatre503, London UK), ongoing dramaturgical support for Theatre503’s Literary Department, and the directing project, Rogerio Correa’s short play For Love, was remounted at The Cockpit Theatre (London, UK).
Each year, I attempt to create time to work with youth. this season, I returned to The Richmond Gateway Academy’s Musical Theatre Camp (Richmond, CAN), joined by the terrific Christina Cuglietta and Abbey Dutton in a fusion of creation and musical theatre with Julie Casselman’s Blast Off!
This was followed by the immense pleasure of joining Nial McNeil in a workshop of his unique take on Shakespeare with The Cowboy Tempest.
The season came to a close with the honor of being this year’s recipient of the John Moffat and Larry Lillo Award. The award is presented at Vancouver’s Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards and awarded to an outstanding West Coast theatre artist for a project, a course of study or to fulfill their hearts desire.
This award commemorates John and Larry – two integral members of the Vancouver theatre community who were prodigiously talented artists and lovers of life and were sadly taken by the AIDS pandemic. Both men were recipients of numerous Jessie Richardson Awards, John for his work as an actor, Larry for his work as a director.
It is a particular honor to receive this award memorializing these two trail blazers in West Coast theatre. A special thank you to the selection committee and a huge congratulations to all my fellow Jessie Award recipients and nominees.
Have a great new season and see you at the Theatre
Jack Paterson