>>PREVIEW
PLAYWORKS INK 2005
Theatre Alberta and the Alberta Playwrights’ Network
Runs November 3 to 6
Glenbow Museum
He’s helped Daniel MacIvor create a Monster and Rick Miller find Jesus, and now dynamic director-collaborator Daniel Brooks will be sharing some of his tricks of the trade at next weekend’s PlayWorks Ink conference.
Brooks, whose credits include co-writing and staging such hit solo performances as MacIvor’s Monster and Cul-de-sac, and Miller’s Bigger Than Jesus, will be giving the keynote address at Alberta’s annual fall theatre gathering, as well as conducting a workshop on the one-person show.
"We’ve been after him for awhile and this year it finally worked out," says Ken Cameron, executive director of the Alberta Playwrights’ Network, which co-hosts PlayWorks Ink with Theatre Alberta.
Brooks is, understandably, a wanted man. The artistic director of Toronto’s Necessary Angel Theatre Company, he’s also a director that playwrights would kill to work with. Case in point: he staged the première productions of two of the five plays up for Governor General’s Awards this year, Cul-de-sac and John Mighton’s Half Life.
But Brooks’s appearances aren’t the only highlights at the three-day, four-night conference, which features workshops, panels and public readings of new plays. Calgary’s Sharon Pollock, one of Canada’s most distinguished (not to say indefatigable) playwrights, is also front and centre, with the launch of the first volume of her collected plays as well as a preview of her latest one. Kabloona Talk, a drama based on the 1917 trial of two Inuit men accused of murdering a pair of Catholic priests, will wrap up the mainstage reading series on Sunday afternoon. The play, commissioned by Yellowknife’s Stuck in a Snowbank Theatre, will be read in conjunction with the release of Sharon Pollock: Collected Works, Volume One, by Playwrights Canada Press, which contains such major early Pollock plays as Walsh and Blood Relations.
The three other mainstage readings include this year’s winners of the Alberta Playwriting Competition, Abigail in Twilight by Edmonton comedian Cathleen Rootsaert (recipient of the Grand Prize) and After Vermeer by newcomer Catherine Walsh (which took the Discovery Prize), as well as The Fly Fisher’s Companion by Halifax playwright and screenwriter Michael Melski.
This year, PlayWorks Ink is using the Glenbow as its primary venue and the readings will be presented in the museum’s theatre. Cameron says the partnership grew out of a natural tie-in with one of the plays, After Vermeer, which deals with the 20th-century Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren. That reading will be accompanied by a talk on art forgery by one of the Glenbow curators.
The workshops on offer this year range from acting and improvisation strategies to designer-director collaborations, writing for teenagers and writing for radio. They’ll be led by an array of Calgary and Edmonton artists, including playwrights Clem Martini and Eugene Stickland, actor-writers Chris Craddock and Steve Pinot (creators of last year’s surprise High Performance Rodeo hit Faithless) and CBC arts producer Allan Boss. The Brooks workshop, as well as ones on acting with Kate Newby and directing with Doug Curtis, have already sold out.
"This is the first year we’ve had sellouts this early," says Cameron, which he sees as a sign that the four-year-old conference has become an important date on Alberta’s theatrical calendar.
The PlayWorks Ink mainstage readings are open to the general public. For more information, call 1-888-422-8160. To download a conference brochure and registration form, go to www.albertaplaywrights.com. |
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