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Vern Thiessen
Vern
Thiessen is fast
becoming one of Canada’s most produced playwrights. He has written
for stage, radio and television. His stage plays have been seen across
Canada, the U.S. and Europe, including Shakespeare’s Will,
Apple, Einstein’s Gift, Blowfish, and The Resurrection
Of John Frum. Thiessen has been the recipient of numerous awards,
including the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding New Play,
The City of Edmonton Arts Achievement Award, the University of Alberta
Alumni Award for Excellence, the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition,
and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, Canada’s highest
honour for playwriting. He has also been a finalist for the Siminovitch
Prize in Theatre. Thiessen is a graduate of both the University of Winnipeg
and the University of Alberta, where he received his MFA in Playwriting.
He has served as Playwright-in-Residence at Workshop West Theatre (where
he founded the Playwrights’ Garage program), the University of Alberta,
and the Blue Heron Theatre in New York City. For five seasons, he was
Artistic Associate at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, responsible for
play development. He is Past President of both the Playwrights Guild
of Canada and the Writer’s Guild of Alberta.
In 2008 Playwrights Canada
Press will be publishing Vern’s new play, Vimy, which premieres
at the Citadel Theatre in the fall of 2007.
“Every writer is unique,
and everyone has a different outlook on her profession and process
of creation. After all, that is our calling as playwrights: to show
an audience the way we see the world in a way that we alone can see
it and to communicate that in a dramatic, theatrical way.”
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