Jury. Duty.

Sitting on an arts jury is humbling, demanding, and almost always thankless. But this year’s Siminovitch Prize for playwriting was the most agonising and exhilarating jury I've ever been a part of.

Agonising because we were presented with a large number of unique and exceptional writers, each of whom is eminently worthy of recognition and encouragement. And because, since I am a mid-career artist myself, with ties to multiple communities… many of this year’s candidates are my friends.

Exhilarating for the exact same reasons. With all the current challenges to our art form and in the world, here is a whole generation of extraordinary storytellers at the top of their creative powers who continue to pour their sweat and their genius into the theatre. Each candidate had multiple champions who cared enough to write fervent support letters; assemble well over a hundred pages of documentation; build a case for why a particular individual and their work should be lifted up to the nation. And many of them are my friends.

On the heels of my encounters with aspiring and emerging playwrights while teaching last year at UBC, this cross-country relief map of brilliance has left me further heartened and inspired.

Our jury combed through the applications; we pored over the criteria; then we talked passionately for days. It was painful. It was electric. Someone had to do it. While there will inevitably be disappointment as well as elation as the names are announced, the artists on that jury demonstrated great integrity and, I think, took this on as an act of love for this community. I am extremely proud of our list: I am deeply in awe of many writers who are not on it, too. I so appreciate the Siminovitch Foundation's monumental generosity to our community as a whole, and also the chance to shine a light on just a few of the indelible voices across this occupied land. If I could send one message to all of the remarkable artists who were in contention this year, it would be this: "We see you. You matter. Keep going."

https://siminovitchprize.com/jury/

Graduation

Today was a rite of passage for thousands of UBC students, including the graduating MFA and BFA candidates from the School of Creative Writing, where I have been the Assistant Professor (Playwriting) for the past year.

I was there to honour my students, of course, and I was delighted that I got to offer most of them a quick word of congratulation as they went by. They all smiled or clasped my hand in return, justly beaming with pride in their own accomplishment. I had been offered a chance to gown up and join the faculty procession, but with my one-year interim appointment now drawing to a close, that just didn’t feel right to me: I was happier to cheer them all on from afar, including colleagues Annabel Lyon and Stephen Heatley who have been so kind and helpful to me.

As the students hit the designated photo spots, I was amused by all the heavy-metal finger gestures and tongue-out posing, and delighted by those who managed to memorably express their individuality in a sea of black robes (a head of brilliant orange-and-white cornrows; a gown topped by a vibrant ribbon of flowers). I was also deeply moved by the teen sitting at the back who shouted “Go, Mom!” and, later, the student who carried her toddler on her hip, all the way across the stage.

It felt in a way as if I were graduating, too. This year, I pushed myself to do endless numbers of things I have never done before. I redesigned and taught 3 university courses, including 2 with a mix of graduate and undergraduate students: this involved developing, scheduling, weighting, explaining, and grading assignments as well as developing dozens of workshops/lectures/craft talks. I redesigned and co-led a new play festival, with the help of some of the most brilliant and generous artists in the Vancouver theatre community and the incredible support of the Arts Club Theatre and Playwrights Theatre Centre, as well as a hard-working team of student producers who pulled out all the stops. I learned new software, AV systems, academic and human resources policies, pedagogies, decolonising and anti-racist strategies, resources for students in distress… and unfortunately, what to do when a student tries (in a few cases very, very hard) to manipulate you. Hell, I even taught a class on data storytelling to 200 people!

I soon learned that, in my first year, I was never going to do all of it perfectly (or even particularly well), but that I had to keep doing what actors must do whenever we make a mistake: own it, learn from it, forgive ourselves for it, and move on. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I sweated blood and worked my ass off to make this year a positive and meaningful experience for these students. I truly gave it everything I had.

I’m a better teacher because of everyone I taught and worked with this year. I am also a much stronger person! Still, it was gratifying that the grumpiest customers were more than balanced by those bright sparks who let me know that my classes left them feeling inspired by theatre, emboldened to tackle new media, invigorated by meaningful exchanges with senior artists, more confident and competent within their own voice. Honest criticism is crucial in learning to do better: appreciation, connection, and growth remind us why we try at all.

Congratulations, UBC School of Creative Writing Class of ‘23. May you go out and enrich your world as you have already enriched mine.

Wildfire at La Chapelle, and my origin story

Just one more little update. Reviews for Wildfire in Montreal have been phenomenal and it closes this weekend. Two-time Governor-General’s Award winner David Paquet has been produced in a dozen countries and languages, but this is the first time the English-speaking public in his own hometown has ever had access to his work… with French surtitles and ASL interpretation to widen the circle even more. Kudos and gratitude to the entire company.

Meanwhile, if you want to know how a unilingual kid from Bewdley, ON becomes a theatrical translator: it’s all in this article!

"Wildfire was sublime! Such an incredible and inspiring piece. The text is layered, complex, innovative and human and the performances are so unique, rich, full and stunning."
--erinjlindsay, 2023-01-16.

montreal rampage : "The performance by the actors is... outstanding. [...] Wildfire is devilish and delightful. ... The result is satisfying and the production is a great success."
--Rachel Levine, 2023-01-17.

Sur les pas du spectateur : "'Consumed' (!) and very satisfied by Wildfire. [...] The text is rich, the exchanges lively and, even if it is in English, I am very, very attentive, and often laugh too!"
--Robert St-Amour, 2023-01-17.

atavu.ca : Wildfire "Hats off to the artists!"
--Jérôme Bouclet, 2023-01-18.

CJAD iHeartRADIO  : "Wildfire is a biting, witty surreal romp, with a spare but gorgeous staging, and delicious acting."
--Sarah Deshaies, 2023-01-20.

mcgilltribune.com : "Wildfire is a blazing success... sardonic humour and twisting, cyclical storyline will offer audience members on both sides of the aisle plenty to talk about."--Dana Prather, 2023-01-24

UBC. Watch This Space.

Life = change.
Theatre = change.
Pandemic = change = life = theatre.

Straight out of University of Calgary’s MFA programme, I am working for one year as Assistant Professor (Playwriting) in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

I’m back in Vancouver.
My hair is blue.
My life is a constant state of discovery.
The students are remarkable.
I have no time.
When I have time, I have no more brain cells.
But it’s good.

One day soon I will write about what I’m doing and experiencing here. In the meantime, here are some photographs of the wonderful Amy Chartrand, Creative Director of Montréal’s internationally renowned immersive multimedia studio, Moment Factory. She’s giving a phenomenal workshop this week and next, to my New Media class and also Professor Jennifer Moss’s. I’m proud and grateful to have brought her and some of my favourite artists and creators in to talk to/work with my students: Carmen Aguirre, Chirag Naik, Joanna Garfinkel, David Yee, and Jovanni Sy. Much more to come this semester.

I have a show on in Montreal getting wonderful reviews, and am involved in two more – Red Phone and Clémentine – coming up this month in Vancouver. This fall, as I started this job, I published I Am William and Wildfire & The Shoe, premiered a play, and won a Dora. Broke my foot. Moved.

Stay tuned for real updates. Right now, the new stuff is a firehose, and these students come first. Thanks for checking out the site.

Banff Playwrights Lab 2021

Banff Centre for the Arts 2021 Playwrights Lab, all-digital for the first time ever. This was meant to happen in person in 2020, but I need it even more now. I’m working on co-writing the play Salesman in China with Jovanni Sy.

I am disappearing into this marvelous opportunity from May 3-May 14, 2021. If you need me urgently during this time, please contact my agent. Thanks, and I’ll be back shortly.

I AM WILLIAM at the Stratford Festival!

Very excited that the cat is finally out of the bag! Rébecca Déraspe is one of Québec’s leading dramatists and, having developed the translation of I Am William with the wonderful Théâtre Le Clou and Sylvain Scott, I am thrilled that Esther Jun is bringing this witty, funny, surprising and deeply felt play to Stratford audiences.

Online Reading of Philippe Soldevila's AN EMIGRATION TRILOGY

Philippe Soldevila’s Tales of the Moon was inspired by his own family’s history in post-Civil War Spain as well as by the stories of Catalan writer Pere Calders. It was, in fact, my first-ever translation; Tales of the Sun is my most recent one; and in between comes the wry first-generation Canadian tale, Tales of the Snow. All together, they comprise An Emigration Trilogy, which recounts the Soldevilas’ epic journey from Valencia to Montréal and back again… told through the eyes of four generations of children. Join us for one or for the whole hugely ambitious saga: the plays all fit together but also stand alone. Once again, John Jack Paterson of BoucheWHACKED! Theatre is bringing us a completely different vision of what theatre for children is capable of. Phenomenal cast, too. Thanks, by the way, to Playwrights Workshop Montréal for facilitating Moon and launching me into theatrical translation. The other two translations were commissioned by BoucheWHACKED!, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. The readings will take place March 14, 21, and 28.

Schoolhouse at Two Planks and a Passion

I am proud that Schoolhouse will be opening Two Planks and a Passion’s 30th season at the beautiful Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in Canning, Nova Scotia. Ken Schwartz has been scheming away at producing and directing this play for several years now, and thanks to the beautiful outdoor setting and the success of the “Atlantic bubble”, it looks like it may finally be a go! The production is scheduled June 24- August 14, 2021. I do hope I am able to attend: I have lovely memories of seeing The Odyssey there when Acadia brought me in for their production of The Vic… and later, of dropping in while on our way to Cape Breton, where we spent our honeymoon!

Turbulence at the Alchemy Festival, Feb. 27

A half-hour excerpt of my new play, Turbulence, is getting an online reading at the University of Calgary on Sat. Feb. 27, 2021. The wonderful Clare Preuss is directing a cast of undergraduate students. You are welcome to sign up for a spot and join us.

Turbulence has had a turbulent history. A documentary play by the same name was commissioned ten years ago by Lighthouse Festival Theatre, the 4th Line Theatre, and the Blyth Festival, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. I then embarked on an epic quest to chronicle the roiling wind power controversy that redrew the political map of Ontario; created a grievance-driven rural protest movement (which led ultimately to the election of an anti-environmentalist right-wing populist to the premier’s office); and divided communities and even families.

I interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of people, went to wind power conferences and Conservative party policy conferences, criss-crossed hundreds of miles, gathered thousands of documents, and created mountains of transcripts (including almost a hundred hours’ worth that, overwhelmed, I paid other actors to do for me). Seven different artistic directors have led the three original companies since I got that three-way commission… and I’ve had notes from all of them. I was later helped by the Banff Centre, Hedgebrook, and the Playwrights Theatre Centre, including brilliant dramaturgy by Kathleen Flaherty and Christine Sumption. So many people have thrown their support behind this piece over the years that it’s almost embarrassing.

Especially because the project was ultimately a failure.

It humbled me as a writer. It soured longstanding artistic relationships. As for the people I interviewed for the piece over a two or three-year period: some of them were friendly, warm, and welcoming; others were so aggressively hostile, rage-filled, distrustful, and borderline menacing that I would come back to the theatre office white as a sheet and utterly drained. I transcribed so many hours of interviews – inefficient hunt-and-peck typist that I am – that I damaged nerves in my wrists. I won’t get into details on this, but one particular draft caused me to be dumped by my best friend.

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that I have PTSD about this project. The minute I open those transcripts, books, or articles, my back seizes up, my heart pounds, my ears ring, and my hands hurt.

I should probably have taken a hint from the universe that it was time to move on. The brilliant Marcus Youssef even told me at one point: “You know, there’s no shame in quitting.” And he’s right. However, if I’ve survived this long in the theatre, it is primarily because I am stubborn as fuck. And last year, as the pandemic was setting in and the Trump presidency was drawing to a shameful close, I had a flash of insight: I am not Annabel Soutar. I am not Anna Deavere Smith. I do not know how to make a doc play.

But I do know something about how to tell a story. So maybe I should just do that. Because, if I can get this right, it’s a hell of a story to tell.

And then I suddenly had an inspiration about how to tell it. In a way that felt like me. So I threw out everything I had written, stopped looking at the damn Google alerts, and started over.

This is just a first draft of this complete reimagining of my play, and I’m a long way from home. But thanks to my supervisor Clem Martini and everyone in my playwriting class; to Clare Preuss and her young cast; and to all the people who’ve believed in me, I am more determined than ever to get this script across the finish line… be it kicking and screaming, or singing and flying.

Fanny Britt's Benevolence: January 8 Reading Online

This fantastic group of people is workshopping my new translation of Fanny Britt’s dazzling, Governor-General’s Award-winning, jet-black comedy, culminating in a free online reading. The Zoom address will, of course, be released closer to the day. The fun will begin at noon Pacific Time. https://www.rubyslippers.ca/current-season/

Just in time for Christmas...

Covid may have cancelled our April premiere… but the Ruby Slippers/Gateway Theatre production of Sébastien Harrisson’s gorgeous intergenerational two-hander From Alaska lives on in this handsome cover for the version just published by the Playwrights Guild of Canada, featuring Jason Sakaki and Kelli Fox and with photography by David Cooper. You can get it on its own for $12, or with a bundle of this year’s Tom Hendry Award nominees for a mere $25!

Two Nominations for the Tom Hendry Awards

I am thrilled to be recognized in this illustrious company by the Playwrights Guild of Canada… and delighted to see some recognition of this brilliant new generation of Francophone playwrights, who so deserve to be seen and known in the English-speaking world! Congratulations for all the nominees. I am crossing my fingers for the ceremony next month…

WILDFIRE Premieres in St. Louis

Nearly a century ago, St. Louis, Missouri was the town that artists like Josephine Baker and Tennessee Williams couldn’t wait to leave… now it’s a town I can’t wait to get back to.

The quality of the work that Upstream Theater put into the world premiere of Wildfire, my translation of David Paquet’s Le brasier, was thrilling. The St. Louis-based cast was first-rate, and Philip Boehm has a distinguished team of design collaborators who regularly come from all over the States because they are so passionate about the work his company is doing to open up the American theater to voices from the rest of the world…… as well as young local team members fired up with the love of theatre. The thing I found most personally gratifying? Too often in a new production, the translator (sometimes even even the playwright) is treated as an irrelevance, a hindrance, or even a direct threat to the director’s vision. Philip, for all his many accomplishments, treated me like a collaborator and even a resource. He welcomed me to his rehearsal hall and made time to listen. Almost as if he believed we were on the same side!

This production’s universally stellar reviews reflect the passion and rigour of this team in interpreting David’s lucid, humane, hilarious dialogue and audacious theatricality.

I hope that other producers take note, because this Wildfire is officially scorching.

“Minimalist and mesmeric, Wildfire is the first must see theater event of the year.” – Broadway World

More reviews and production details here.

On my last day in St. Louis, Philip Boehm took his old friend and frequent collaborator Steve Carmichael and I on a tour of the city: here we are under Eero Saarinen’s iconic arch. In ten years of working with Upstream, it was Steve’s first day of sightseeing and his first time downtown, so we Canadians have our uses! I also explored the National Blues Museum… and enjoyed talking to the wonderful Ron Himes after seeing him in an outstanding production of August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING at his distinguished company, the Black Rep.

Meanwhile, in a pyramid in Texas...

Well, this was an offer that doesn’t come along every day… This summer, I was invited to translate a massive cutting-edge multimedia opus for kids, to be performed in a travelling pyramid that doubles as a super-trippy nightclub! No, I still haven’t met Guy Laliberté, whose new company Lune Rouge is producing this whole PY1 experience. In fact, I still haven’t met anyone face-to-face! However, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to collaborate with writer/director Annie Grenier (a.k.a. Annie Brocoli, one of Québec’s most beloved children’s entertainers) on realizing one piece of her vision for Stella and the Time Machine Journey. I wish her and the team all the best with it. And man, I would work with her again in a heartbeat.

Hedgebrook. They care. You write.

Thanks to the generosity of my friends Ann and Frank Lawler, I was able to take a miraculous third trip to Hedgebrook, a women writers’ retreat on Whidbey Island, in Washington State, that has attracted some of the finest writers in the world. Hedgebrook is a place where you can disappear into your cabin in the woods with no expectations or duties beyond your nightly dinner with the other writers. This was my first time in a residency with non-playwrights: I enjoyed the company of women writing fiction (including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and romance) and creative non-fiction, and I think they enjoyed having someone who is not remotely shy about sharing work with a group! I drew tremendous strength from the cottage journals, where (over a thirty-year period) writers have confided the fears, insecurities, and triumphs they experienced within those four walls… and they felt so very much like mine. For one thing, I am apparently not the only adult woman who, despite every encouragement and inducement in the world, frequently struggles to feel as responsible TO her own writing as she does FOR other people. For the first time in years, I was able to take time to write something that was not a translation, a libretto, a co-written piece, a doc play… something that was purely my own. As a result, a new play is on the way.

I love all of my many collaborators, in many projects and in many forms, and at the same time, this self-contained creation felt… deeply satisfying. As restorative, in its way, as the epsom salts bath (with wine and music and a book and candles, yes I was living a Cosmo article but don’t judge!) that I indulged in at our beautiful little bath house in the woods, on my final night, after I had a detailed outline and most of the first act of the new play.

The music I played was from my Hedgebrook sister Suzanne Vega, and it made me feel surrounded by all the brilliant women I have ever shared this place with, and the women and non-binary people who have been there before us. This is not a spa or a vacation resort: it’s better than that. Everything about this place has been designed and sustained with care and love and the sole goal of communicating to us that our voices matter, that what we bring to the world matters. It takes care of our needs and discharges us of our obligations. It lets us breathe, and rest, and then do the work we love.

Thank you, Hedgebrook.

THE SHOE Premieres in Ithaca

I was delighted by this month’s successful world premiere of THE SHOE (my translation of Governor-General’s Award-winning playwright David Paquet’s LE SOULIER, which won the 2019 Jessie Award for Best New Play). Samuel Buggeln of Ithaca’s The Cherry Artspace is one of the very few American theatremakers who has shown an openness to voices from outside the English language and outside the United States, where works in translation generally languish. I loved the imaginative design, the inclusive casting (“when you care enough to cast the very best”), the willingness to go all-in on David’s original and striking theatrical vision, his dark humour, his tremendous heart. David Paquet is a major talent and I am bound and determined to get English-Canadian theatres to open their doors to him… but it took a New York company to step up first!

I've been named as a Ruby Slippers Theatre Associate Artist.

From the time I came to Vancouver in 2012, Ruby Slippers Theatre has been there for me. They’ve commissioned my translations: Rébecca Déraspe’s You Are Happy and Gametes; Christian Bégin’s After Me and Why Are You Crying? They’ve produced my translations: After Me (which won two Jessie Awards and received six nominations including Best Production) and Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska (premiering this season at Gateway Theatre). They’ve supported my successful application to the Glassco Translation Residency. And they’ve hired me as a director, for the Advance series readings of Gametes and of Natalie Frijia’s Go, No Go. Ruby Slippers is a crucial part of the Vancouver theatre ecology and I think that these brilliant new hires and residencies make them even more so. Thank you, Diane Brown, for the opportunity. And thank you to outgoing General Manager Meredith Elliott for your years of support… keeping it all together behind the scenes, the way so many women have always done and continue to do..

https://www.rubyslippers.ca/current-season/?fbclid=IwAR3TwNV4y4BQvOAXkBJpvdBmdilrSqKEpoJVGB7OSq6pV20CdUIiFywepKE

10 Days. 4 Plays.

Q&A with the Arts Club Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director and New Play Festival curator Stephen Drover, after the reading of Gilles Poulin-Denis’ Outside. Photo by Pippa Mackie. Directed by Jovanni Sy, this reading featured some of the finest actors in Vancouver: Alessandro Juliani, Kayvon Khoshkam, Pippa Mackie, Kevin McNulty, Adele Noronha, and Alec Willows. Our SM was Liz King.

Sept. 12-14, 2019: At the Arts Club Theatre (Western Canada’s largest company) for a workshop of my translation of Gilles Poulin-Denis’ fierce and magical story of brothers at war over the family land, Outside. It’s funny that, as read by Pippa Mackie, the pivotal character of Virginia – whose incredibly specific bilingual argot seemed to present an almost insuperable translation challenge – is the one everyone connected to immediately. This tells me, I think, that I am on the right track with her.

Our Playwrights Theatre Centre Salesman in China workshop had yet another exceptional Vancouver cast. Back row L-R: Peter Anderson, Conor Wylie, Agnes Tong, Lou Ticzon, Chris Lam, and Tetsuro Shigematsu. Front row L-R: Donna Soares, Susan Hogan, and Hiro Kanagawa. Not pictured: Our dramaturg and workshop director Kathleen Flaherty; cultural consultants Xin Xuan Song, Steven Siyuan Liu, and Fang Zhang Helwig (who will also be translating our text into Mandarin.) Photo by my co-writer, Jovanni Sy.

Sept. 16-22, 2019: At Playwrights’ Theatre Centre with Jovanni Sy for a workshop of Salesman in China, the original play we are co-writing about Arthur Miller directing Death of a Salesman in China in 1983. We have lots and lots and LOTS of work ahead, but we were really encouraged that this is a story worth telling… and that the things we felt particularly good about are the things that worked.

This translation workshop for Sébastien Harrisson’s lyrical and personal From Alaska took place in the London offices of Equity (the UK actors’ union), with me joining in by Skype. L-R: Director John Jack Paterson, James watterson, and Joan Blackham. You were all quite brilliant.

Sept. 17, 2019: Because we needed to work within Equity’s London office hours, this play workshop started at 06:00 Pacific Time. Yeah, you read that right. I was workshopping a play at 6 a.m… Blessed be the excellence of Vancouver coffee. And of British actors, because we got a hell of a lot done in our time together. Thank you, John Jack Paterson, for making it all happen.

This is the World Premiere Production of my translation of David Paquet’s The Shoe, at The Cherry Arts in Ithaca, NY. Directed by Samuel Buggeln. L-R: Amoreena Wade, Josh Witzling,

Meanwhile, I’ve been emailing back and forth with director Samuel Buggeln, fine-tuning the last bits of text for The Cherry ArtsSept. 27 world premiere at ) of my translation of David Paquet’s The Shoe [Le Soulier], which won the 2019 Vancouver Jessie Award for Best New Play. It’s a first for me, to have a world premiere with artists I’ve never even met… but judging by the production photos, the thoughtful correspondence, and the impressive resumés of the artists involved, we are in very good hands. David Paquet is going to see the show and has promised to tell me EVERYTHING!

So there you go. Three workshops + one rehearsal correspondence towards an imminent world premiere. Ten days. Goodnight!

August 2019: Stratford Festival Lab

Thanks to the generosity of the Stratford Festival Lab and the leader, the passionate and brilliant Ted Witzel, I got to support Jovanni as he led a unit at this year’s Stratford Festival Lab on “Decolonizing the Canon”.

Oy, that’s a big ask, especially from one roomful of artists. Even trying to introducing our performers to the vast range of contemporary works by East Asian playwrights and those from the East Asian Canadian diaspora, in the course of a single week, would be a fool’s undertaking. So we chose to focus on one play by of the great writers produced by China - Nobel laureate Gao XIngjian - as well as our own work in progress, Salesman in China, which is a backstage/culture-clash story set in the Beijing People’s Art Theatre in 1983, when Arthur Miller comes to direct Death of a Salesman.

What constitutes an East Asian or Asian Canadian play? Does Gao, an exile from China whose aesthetics and preoccupations are heavily influenced by both Chinese and European work as well as his own experiences in China, who sometimes writes in French, and who has never written what we’d call an “identity play”, still count as Chinese? Does my participation in the writing of this play (or in the leadership of this workshop) mean that it is no longer Asian Canadian or decolonizing? Do the Chinese even count as colonized? I was surprised by some of these questions, and I don’t have all the answers, but I think they are all useful ones to bring into the room and tackle.

I think Jovanni summed it the week up best: as individual artists, we can and must decolonize ourselves… but the people who can decolonize our canons and our spaces are the people who make the decisions about who and what gets into them. And the splendid plays that can change those equations are already sitting out there, well-known and well-recognized… and waiting.

For myself, I was most excited about working on our script and meeting the generous and open-hearted artists who joined us from the Festival company… and working with/ introducing the Festival to our four distinguished and remarkable guest artists: Jasmine Chen, Jeff Ho, Jane Luk, and John Ng.

Thank you to every one of you.

Le Soulier (The Shoe) Wins Best New Play

This is the play I translated three times: an early version for Théâtre la Seizième’s anglophone designers; a highly compressed surtitle version (because you don’t want the audience to spend the whole night reading instead of being able to look at the stage); and the complete and polished version that was read by the Jessie Award script jury. So I’m very glad this script will have more life this fall: La Seizième will be touring their beautiful production of Le Soulier to Ottawa’s Zones thêâtrales, and my translation, The Shoe, will have its world premiere at the exciting company The Cherry Arts in Ithaca, NY

Congratulations also to our absent teammates Joey Lespérance, nominated for best actor, and Esther Duquette and Gilles Poulin-Denis, who won collectively for Best Director. Esther also commissioned this play and steered it through three years of development, so it was a great night for my dear friends at Théâtre la Seizième as a whole.