In Celebration of 50 years, Playwrights Guild of Canada would like to invite you to our 50th Anniversary Reading Event. Five Decades of incredible stories! We will be picking a play out of hat for each decade that PGC has been around. Join us in person for an afternoon of readings, trivia, prizes, warm drinks and snacks. The Canadian Play Outlet will also be popping up! Bring your family and friends and celebrate with us!
Saturday November 19th, 2022, from 2pm – 4pm EDT.
Arts & Letters Club of Toronto
14 Elm Street, Toronto, ON, M5G 1G7
Please note, guests must be wearing masks in doors while attending this event.
Should you require any kind of accommodation, please reach out to marketing@playwrightsguild.ca.
Five decades of plays randomly selected and read by our incredible members!
Announcing our five readers . . .
Yolanda Bonnell (She/They) is a Bi/Queer 2 Spirit Anishinaabe-Ojibwe, South Asian mixed performer, playwright and multidisciplinary creator/educator. Originally from Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay, Ontario (Superior Robinson Treaty territory), her arts practice is now based in Tkarón:to. She is Co-artistic leader of manidoons collective, that she runs with Michif (Métis) artist, Cole Alvis. In February 2020, Yolanda’s four-time Dora nominated solo show bug was remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille while the published book (Scirocco Publishing 2020) was shortlisted for a Governor General Literary Award. In 2022, her play White Girls in Moccasins, was produced at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as well as at the frank theatre (in “Vancouver”). Yolanda was the Indigenous artist recipient of the Jayu Arts for Human Rights Award for her work and won the PGC Tom Hendry Drama Award for My Sister’s Rage. Yolanda has taught/facilitated at schools like York University and Sheridan College and proudly bases her practice in land-based creation, drawing on energy and inspiration from the earth and her ancestors.
Beverley Cooper is an award-winning playwright, dramaturge and teacher. She has written for TV, film and extensively for CBC radio drama, twice being nominated for Writers’ Guild of Canada Awards. Her plays have been produced widely across Canada. They include Thin Ice (co-written with Banuta Rubess, Chalmers/Dora Award), The Lonely Diner, Janet Wilson Meets the Queen (nominated for Prix Rideau Award) and If Truth Be Told. Innocence Lost: A Play about Steven Truscott was a finalist for the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award.Her most recent play: The Other: A Strange Christmas Tale was produced by 4th Line Theatre. Beverley trained as an actor and has performed in TV, film and in theatres across Canada. Beverley is a frequent director of audio books for Penguin Random House, including titles by Margaret Atwood, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Miriam Toews. Beverley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and has presented her work at Women Playwrights International conferences in Mumbai, Stockholm, Cape Town and Santiago. Beverley is the coordinator of The CASA Project, a charitable arm of the Playwrights Guild of Canada that supports women playwrights in South Africa. She is the 2022 recipient of the Bra D’or Award.
Judy Reynolds is a graduate of York University’s Theatre program, where she studied playwrighting under Canadian playwright Carol Bolt. She was also selected for the Soulpepper training program in their inaugural year. As an individual performer, Judy has acted, danced and choreographed for improv theatre, musical theatre and children’s theatre, including a season with an ASL company for Deaf and Hearing audiences. She founded a belly dance academy and served as Artistic Director for two Middle Eastern Dance companies. One of Judy’s greatest honours as a performer was dancing for Canada’s last WWI veteran.
Anusree Roy is a Governor General’s Award-nominated and four-time Dora Award winning writer, actor, and director. For theatre: Anusree’s plays include: Through the eyes of God, Sisters, Trident Moon, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, Sultans of the Street, Brothel # 9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, and Pyaasa. For television: Anusree has worked on Remedy (Global TV), Killjoys (SyFy), Nurses S1 & S2 (GlobalTV/NBC), Transplant S2 (CTV/NBC), Fanger (Netflix), along with being the current Supervising Producer/Writer on SkyMed S2 (Paramount Plus/CBC) She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, RBC Emerging Artist Award, The Carol Bolt Award and The Siminovitch Protégé Prize. She was the 2018 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her plays have appeared in various anthologies along with being published by Playwright’s Canada Press. Anusree is currently developing a feature film inspired by her Audio Play: Sisters as well as Directing and premiering her short films: The Birthday Party and God’s Plan (winner of Best Performance & Best Editing at WIFF). Recently, her new TV pilot Part-Time Disabled was selected to be a part of AccessCBC’s program. Currently, she is an Adjunct Professor, teaching playwriting at University of Toronto.
Andrea Scott’s play, Eating Pomegranates Naked, won the RBC Arts Professional Award, and named Outstanding Production at the 2013 SummerWorks Festival. Better Angels: A Parable won the SummerWorks Award for Production and was published in 2018. Don’t Talk to Me Like I’m Your Wife, won the Cayle Chernin Award for theatre ran at SummerWorks in 2016. 2019 saw her co-written play with Nick Green, Every Day She Rose wow audiences at Buddies in Bad Times. Her play about Viola Desmond, Controlled Damage, had its sold-out world premiere at Neptune Theatre in 2020 and will open at The Grand Theatre in 2023. She won the Magee Diversity Screenwriter’s Award for her first TV script, Dust to Dust. Her dark comedy ‘Bad Habits’ landed her a job as the Story Editor on ‘The Porter’ (BET/CBC), which she followed up with snagging a spot pitching to Netflix with her supernatural drama ‘Cassidy Must Die. 2021 saw her winning $10,000 from Amazon and the Indigenous Screen Office, pitching her coming-of-age dramedy ‘DONE!’ She’s just completed working in the writers room on the 16th season of Murdoch Mysteries.
Announcing the Playwrighting Panel!
Keith Barker is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. He is a playwright, actor, and director from Northwestern Ontario. Keith is the Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program at the Stratford Festival, and the former Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. He is the winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Playwrights Guild’s Carol Bolt Award for best new play. Keith was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English Drama in 2018 for his play, This Is How We Got Here. He received a Saskatchewan and Area Theatre Award for Excellence in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change. His new short zoom play, in a little plastic bag, in a tiny little jar, on a mantel in the house will premiere as part of the Stratford Festival’s Viral Transmissions Series that will be found on the stratfest@home site. His audio play, Every Minute of Every Day premiered as part of Factory Theatre’s You Can’t Get There From Here podcast play series in March 2021.
Judith Thompson is a playwright, artistic director, director, actor and teacher. She has been deeply involved in making theatre since debuting her first play, The Crackwalker, in 1980 at Theatre Passe Muraille. Since then, she has had some fifteen plays produced all over the world, and published, by Playwrights Canada Press, Faber and Faber, and in one case, Sirocco. She is proud to have won two Governor General’s awards, Toronto Arts Award, Epilepsy Ontario award, B’nai B’rith award, Dora award, Chalmer’s award, the Walter Carsen Performing arts Award, and many others, including being inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is most proud of having won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award for her play Palace of the End. She wrote two feature films: Lost and Delirious, (cite amerique) and Perfect Pie (rhombus media) She is currently working on revisions to her first novel, which will be published by Cormorant Press no later than 2025! She has been a Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph since 1993.
Makram Ayache is a multiple award-winning writer, actor, director, and producer. His playwriting explores representations of queer Arab voices and aims to bridge political struggles to the intimate experiences of the people impacted by them.
In 2022, Ayache’s “The Green Line” (co-produced by Downstage and Chromatic Theatre) was nominated for four Betty Mitchell Awards, garnering two awards, including Outstanding New Play. Ayache is also the 2020 PCG’s Tom Hendry Award recipient for his play “Harun.”
Coming up, his play “The Hooves Belonged to the Deer” will have its world premiere at Tarragon Theatre, with support from Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, in the spring of 2023, directed by Peter Hinton-Davis.
Find him at: makramayache.com and insta: makramrayache
