The Blunt Playwright

By Clem Martini
Subjects: Western Playwrights, Alberta, Theatre Studies, Playwriting, Nonfiction / Essays

The Blunt Playwright won’t tell you everything there is to know about playwriting. It won’t even try. What it will do is examine process, structure, dialogue, and character; provide classic and contemporary ...

Th'owxiya

By Joseph A. Dandurand
Subjects: Indigenous Playwrights, First Nations, Western Playwrights, British Columbia, Theatre for Young Audiences, By Age — 8–10
Casting: 3 f, 3 m
Duration: 50 hours

When you take something from the earth you must always give something back.

From the Kwantlen First Nation village of Squa’lets comes the tale of Th’owxiya, an old and powerful spirit that inhabits ...

Category E

By Belinda Cornish
Introduction by Ruth Bratt
Subjects: Women Writers, Western Playwrights, Alberta, Horror, Science & Scientists
Casting: 3 actors
Duration: 90 hours

I didn’t think we got to have names.

Two human test subjects—Corcoran, a half-blind paraplegic, and Filigree, a clinical psychopath—coexist in a laboratory cell. They are sterilized, property of ...

New Canadian Kid & Invisible Kids

By Dennis Foon
Introduction by Marcus Youssef
Subjects: Western Playwrights, British Columbia, (Im)migration, Canadian Classics, Theatre for Young Audiences, By Age—8 to 10
Casting: 2 f, 2 m | 2 f, 3 m

Two of the most produced, popular, and important Canadian plays for young audiences are back in an updated edition.

In New Canadian Kid, Nick has just moved to Canada from a country called Homeland, where ...

Of Human Bondage

By Vern Thiessen
Afterword by Heidi Janz
Introduction by Tracy Bealer
Subjects: Adaptations, Award Winners, Community Theatre Picks, Large Cast, Western Playwrights, Alberta
Casting: 4 f, 7 m

When Philip meets Mildred, a disarming tea-shop waitress, he finds his yearning for art and experience consumed by his intense attraction to her. Mildred, for all her teasing, isn’t all that interested ...

The Josephine Knot

By Meg Braem
Foreword by Amiel Gladstone
Subjects: Women Writers, Western Playwrights, Alberta, Community Theatre Picks, Death, Grief & Loss, Family Life
Casting: 1 f, 1 m

After Samantha’s baba dies, her fractured family is summoned to pick through the house full of belongings and trash, leaving taped notes on whatever they want to take. Between old napkins, a closet ...

Vimy

By Vern Thiessen
Subjects: Anthologies, Western Playwrights, Alberta, Death, Grief & Loss, Award Winners, Community Theatre Picks, Large Cast, Theatre of War
Casting: 3 f | 1 f, 5 m

France, 1917. Four wounded Canadian soldiers recover in a field hospital in the wake of the battle for Vimy Ridge, waiting to find out where they’ll be sent next: back home or back to the front. Along ...

In Spirit

By Tara Beagan
Subjects: Indigenous Playwrights, First Nations, Theatre for Young Audiences, By Age — 15–18, Women Writers, Western Playwrights, Alberta, Solo Shows, Death, Grief & Loss
Casting: 1 f

Twelve-year-old Molly was riding her new bicycle on a deserted road when a man in a truck pulled up next to her, saying he was lost. He asked if she could get in and help him back to the highway, and ...

The Bombay Plays

By Anosh Irani
Subjects: Anthologies, Family Life, Western Playwrights, British Columbia, South Asian Canadian Playwrights

From renowned author Anosh Irani comes an updated edition of The Bombay Plays featuring two plays that explore the depths of the back alleys of Bombay. Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding ...

Indian Arm

By Hiro Kanagawa
Subjects: Rural Settings, Asian Canadian Playwrights, Adaptations, Western Playwrights, British Columbia, Award Winners
Duration: 120 minutes

Rita and Alfred Allmers live in an isolated family cabin on native leasehold land overlooking Indian Arm, a still untamed glacial fjord just north of Vancouver, BC. With Alfred—a formerly promising ...