Challenge
To free Canadian play development from the limitations of the traditional model.
Plan
To create new-work incubators equipped to guide a show into production only when the time is right.
What Worked
Focusing on relationships instead of commissions.
What Didn’t
Difficulty in articulating results to funders.
What’s Next
Scaling the model to serve more artists.
Canada may have better bacon and universal health care. But when it comes to the challenges of play development, the issues remain pretty much the same up north as in the U.S. While many Americans have heard of the Banff Centre in Calgary as a hotbed of theatrical development—likewise Alberta Theatre Projects in Edmonton, whose Enbridge playRites Festival is modeled after the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana—fewer may be aware of three play-development organizations that are addressing the needs of Canadian playwrights in eye-opening ways.
Nightswimming
Toronto, Ontario
Brian Quirt founded Nightswimming with producer Naomi Campbell in 1995. “We started the same way every other small company starts—there was a play we wanted to produce,” says Quirt, who trained as a dramaturg. But the pressures of raising money to ensure production rubbed Quirt and his colleagues the wrong way, and they began to wonder if they could be more helpful by focusing on the development process.
“One of the biggest problems I see is that many institutional theatres or festivals have play-development programs that can become very rigid over time, so that ultimately the plays have to fit into that model, instead of the programs adapting to the play,” Quirt observes. Because Nightswimming is free from the pressures of production, he says, it can be flexible in responding to the needs of each play.
Take the seven-play cycle City of Wine by Ned Dickens. Nightswimming has been working on it for more than 15 years, since establishing a relationship with Dickens and agreeing to commission and develop the project. “When we take a project on, we commit all the way,” Quirt notes, adding that while most Nightswimming projects have a three-to-four-year life span, many evolve over longer periods of time. In 2009, seven theatre schools from across Canada each presented one play from City of Wine at a festival in Toronto, involving some 170 collaborators. “It was the largest workshop in Canadian theatre history,” posits Quirt. Not only did the public workshop raise the profile of the cycle (and of Nightswimming), it also sparked a number of mentorships between students and professionals. Now the organization is working to get a consortium of seven theatres on board to give the play cycle a full premiere in 2015. “People get bored with big projects,” he quips. “This one has to be huge.”
Quirt says Nightswimming’s activities shrink and grow to suit the needs of its artists: “That fluidity has been a fantastic founding principle of the company.” Still, such nimbleness can be hard to articulate to funders. “So much of what we do is behind the scenes, though we try to be assertive about being credited for the work we do,” he admits.
The Canadian Centre for Theatre Creation
Edmonton, Alberta
The Canadian Center for Theatre Creation (CCTC) is a relative newcomer to the Canadian play-development scene and is tied to the University of Alberta, known for its research. According to Kathleen Weiss, who founded CCTC five years ago with fellow faculty members Kim McCaw and Jan Selman, CCTC aims to develop “performer-created work. We cover conventional scripts, work by women and people of color as well as socially conscious theatre.” Development methods include readings, workshops and public showings. “We try to bring our connections to CCTC,” says Weiss, who, like Nightswimming’s Quirt, believes in establishing relationships with artists before approaching them for a commission.
CCTC also fosters productions, though the financing for them is raised independently of the university. “There is a healthy tension between our professional activity and our academic research,” says Weiss, who ultimately envisions CCTC as a fully professional organization that rests alongside (rather than within) university academics.
“Productions are our long-term goal,” she confirms, noting how important a play’s initial exposure is to ensuring its future life. A case in point is Canadian playwright Elaine Avila’s Quality, which received development through CCTC and was first produced site-specifically in an Edmonton shoe store. Quality has gone on to receive productions in London, Albuquerque, N.M., Panamá City and Romans-sur-Isère, France.
Weiss observes how play-development organizations are often put in a position where they must market their developed plays to producing institutions. “There’s a lot of things that work in that model, but ultimately, you are still bound by conventional taste,” she says. “CCTC is a way to start creating other structures of development and production in order to make work that isn’t readily appetizing for professional theatres.”
For now Weiss and her colleagues are focused on creating greater access to their organization, developing their website as a forum for debate and discussion. “We bleed for plays that are weird,” Weiss says. “For me, CCTC is about producing work that wouldn’t otherwise get made, and this extends to people making theatre in different ways. The biggest challenge we face at CCTC is there’s a limited amount of work that we can produce.”
Playwrights Theatre Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia
“One of the fantastic things about Canadian theatre,” says Heidi Taylor, incoming artistic and executive director of Playwrights Theatre Centre, “is that there’s always one degree of separation in the theatremaking community across the whole country.” She points out that PTC, along with Nightswimming and CCTC, is part of the Playwrights Development Centres of Canada network.
Part of PTC’s mandate is to promote writers from British Columbia into the national conversation—and soon, according to Taylor, into international exchanges. Currently it has two core programs, both (unlike programs at Nightswimming and CCTC) open to applications from all Canadian writers. “The PTC Associates” are six resident writers from B.C. who work with the company for three years, receiving stipends, development opportunities and dramaturgical feedback. When Taylor and I spoke, she and her team were gearing up for a spring-melt retreat with the Associates to Caravan Farm Theatre, located on 80 acres five hours outside of Vancouver. PTC’s other hallmark is the PTC Writers’ Colony, a 10-day development retreat in Vancouver, during which a company of actors is on call for rehearsals, conversations and readings.
“One of the things we talk about is how a writer is used to working, versus the way they want to work,” says Taylor. According to Taylor, “British Columbia is last in per capita funding for the arts—yet, interestingly, PTC is the nation’s largest play-development organization.” She notes there is “a demand from our province to serve the community. We’ve found the best way to do that is lead in artistic vigor.”
Taylor estimates that 65 percent of Colony projects have gone on to professional stagings—often, in co-productions between three or four theatres. “The lack of mid-sized theatres and spaces creates a demand for cooperation,” Taylor says. “In Canada, it’s all about personal relationships. PTC aims to broker relationships between directors, playwrights and producers. When you are working with someone for 18 months on a project, you want to have a good time.”
