Made in Banff

This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

When I was told I was getting the Margaret Greenham Theatre during my time at the Banff Playwrights Colony I thought that was strange. Strange because I was in Banff, the most beautiful place on earth. “Shouldn’t I be in a studio with a window so I can look at the scenery…or something?”

Bringing the Sun into the theatre. Photo: Brian Quirt.

But then again, I work in theatre. I made my choice long ago. If I wanted outdoor scenery I would have been a park ranger. But it made me think how theatre artists rarely spend time in an actual theatre, save for tech and performing for an audience.

So there I was in the Margaret Greenham Theatre being shown how to turn theatre lights on for myself. Again, very strange. I’m used to a guy, with a big voice and a small tool-belt, telling me that only trained technicians can flick a light switch on and/or off. Not here. Because I write choreography into all my work, I was given my mornings at the Colony to choreograph the dances I had written into this play.

On my first morning I found myself in a dark theatre and thought again, “Wow. Here I am in Banff and I’m inside a dark theatre with no windows.”

The irony of no daylight wasn’t lost on me. Same Same But Different is a play in which the sun appears on stage as a silent character that speaks to the story’s relationship to shadism: a by-product of colonialism, where a person of colour wishes for fair skin colour. Describing the sun to the team of Same Same But Different has been challenging. “What do you mean, Anita? So the Sun appears indoors? What does that look like to you?”

But then. In Banff. There was light. Continue Reading →

This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

Playwrights Colony out on the terrace of the Banff Springs Hotel. Photo: Brian Quirt

Sitting last night at the Banff Springs Hotel around a table of chatting, animated playwrights and theatre artists who come from coast to coast of Canada and parts of the U.S. I realized what a beautiful thing it is to have the opportunity to connect with writers outside of your community. From other countries. And what a rare thing it is too.

A few days ago, in the Vistas Dining Room, I had a chat with a visiting Dutch art historian who is writing a book during her stay at the Leighton Artists’ Colony, who said she was surprised by the size of Canada and the ease in which we seem to travel to different communities. In her experience, people in Holland consider the 50-minute drive between Amsterdam and Rotterdam to be virtually insurmountable. She said if you move to Rotterdam from Amsterdam, you can kiss your old friends goodbye. They will never visit! For Canadians like me, this is hard to imagine. In some large North American cities, 50 minutes is the time it takes for people to commute from their home in the suburbs to work. This is roughly the distance from Banff to Calgary. In July, I am flying to Fredericton, New Brunswick to work as Festival Dramaturg at a new play festival and I will be flying nine hours. And that’s within my own country.

It made me think about the unique challenges space and distance create for artists in Canada. The internet, skype and all the ways we stay virtually linked help of course, but there is something so powerful about being in the same room with each other as artists. Can that ever really be replicated or replaced? Continue Reading →

This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

Fear drives my writing. Staring at a script on a laptop gives me the same queasiness as people get when they see a tarantula confidently doing a pas-de-eight across their bathtub. Staring at words I’ve put to a page instills a wave of nausea-inducing questions: is it good enough? Will anyone care? Should I toss it in, go to law school and do real estate law in an office with no windows? And once these questions are subdued with a good dose of YouTube videos, comes the good kind of fear that drives most of us playwrights: If I don’t say this, if I don’t write this, the world will not know.

Playwrights Evan Placey and Mieko Ouchi on the deck of the Painter House in the Leighton Artists’ Colony. Photo: Brian Quirt.

So what better place to entertain these fearful questions than in the calming, idyllic setting of Banff. But upon arrival, my dream of tranquility was replaced by a new fear brought on by those I’m sharing the space with. I don’t mean my fellow artists (though their talent and brilliance is truly scary), but the wildlife.

Making it alive from my bedroom to the Painter House in the woods where I’m writing feels like a Herculean effort. I have prepared: if I see a grizzly bear, stretch my arms and do lots of movement (perhaps an Irish jig?). If it’s a black bear, move slowly and talk soothingly, rockabye black bear, in the Banff trees, please let me see my 30^th birthday…please…). And if it’s a cougar, well, at least my epitaph will be unique.

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This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

Today I had the wonderful privilege of having a morning in the theatre. As writers, sadly, this is actually quite a rare opportunity outside of production.

Playwright Mieko Ouchi (centre) with actors and stage combatants Richard Lee Hsi and Sheldon Elter. Photo: Brian Quirt.

In the Margaret Greenham Theatre I had the opportunity to work with Banff Playwrights Colony Company actors Richard Lee Hsi and Sheldon Elter on a new play I’m writing for teen audiences called I Am For You. The script is about violence, about what happens when a student teacher interrupts a fight between two girls in a high school drama room and introduces them to fighting through the art and craft of stage combat.  The play also explores Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the play the school drama club is prepping to perform.

As you can imagine, a play like this, full of physical contact and choreography, is difficult to fully capture on paper. This seems especially hard to write when you’re sitting alone in a room, without the benefit of bodies in front of you!
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Playwright Motion (left) and dramaturg Mel Hague.

This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

First, something to know about me: I am not well-travelled. I’ve spent my life in the greater Toronto area, but in the past year I’ve been fortunate enough to spend some time in Nova Scotia, working though, not exploring. Coming to Banff was my first chance to go west. Again, for work. I’m here for a little less than five days. Another thing to know about me is that I love living in cities. I don’t sleep well in the quiet, rural places I’ve been. I’ve come to rely on the constant mechanical hum of the city. It’s my lullaby.

So for me, coming to Banff to work as a dramaturg at the Playwrights Colony was a two-pronged experience. Immense excitement to have the chance to work with a brilliant artist in the most prominent play development centre in the country, and intense anxiety at being in such a quiet, wild place.

The last thing you should know about me is that I am not a particularly spiritual person. In my life, spirituality manifests itself through other people. On my own, when I’m alone, I find it difficult to connect to the spiritual.

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This week, we’ve invited writers from the 2013 Banff Playwrights Colony to guest blog about their experiences here.

The plays that inspired the 2013 Colony playwrights.

On Monday, I hosted my second play.write.night evening for Colony playwrights, where we were joined by the lovely and generous John Murrell, playwright, translator and librettist and former head of the Playwrights Colony, and emeritus artist in residence at The Banff Centre.

Along with current Colony Director Brian Quirt, I had imagined the evening as a chance for playwrights from the Colony to spend an evening in an unusual forum. With each other. In the rehearsal hall, in the best of all worlds, playwrights are warmly welcomed, but even in these situations we can feel a kind of separation as the script is explored by our collaborators: actors, directors, designers and technicians. We are most often the only playwright in the room.  play.write.night is an opportunity to change that.

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