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Anne Chislett
Anne Chislett was born and
raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She was educated at Memorial University,
St. John’s and the University of British Columbia, and taught English
in Ontario high schools before becoming a full time playwright in 1980.
Anne Chislett’s plays have
been widely produced across Canada, the United States, and Japan. Her
Amish play, Quiet in the Land (Blyth Festival 1981) won the Governor
General’s Literary Award for Drama and the Chalmers Award, and has
become a classic of modern Canadian theatre. It is one of the few Canadian
plays to be produced at the Stratford Festival (2003), and was produced
in a Japanese translation by Toyoshi Yoshihara, by Maple Leaf, Tokyo.
Flippin’ In (Young
People’s Theatre 1995) won the Chalmers Young Audiences Award.
Not Quite the Same (Theatre Direct, Toronto 2000) was nominated
for both Dora Mavor Moore and Chalmers awards.
Other plays include A Summer
Burning (Blyth 1977); The Tomorrow Box (Kawartha Summer Theatre,
Lindsay 1980), which won the Best Production Award at the Hiroshima
Festival; Another Season’s Promise (Blyth 1986), and a new
sequel, Another Season’s Harvest, both written with Keith Roulston;
Half a Chance (Lighthouse Festival 1988); Yankee Notions
(Blyth 1992); No Sweat; The Perilous Pirate’s Daughter
(written with David Archibald); and Glengarry School Days (Blyth
1994), written with Janet Amos .
From 1998 to 2002 she was Artistic
Director of the Blyth Festival, a theatre dedicated to new Canadian
works which she co-founded in 1975. Ms. Chislett has also worked extensively
as a dramaturge. She currently lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
and is Vice President of Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre, on the
National Council of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and on the Board
of Playwrights Canada Press.
Many of Chislett’s plays
focus on the farm communities of southern Ontario, and typically feature
strong, independent women struggling against stubborn men, or conflicts
between parent and child, conformity and individuality.
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