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This month, we welcome 12 artists to PTC as participants of this year’s Block A and Block D cohorts. BLOCK A is for emerging playwrights/theatre creators and established writers of other mediums excited to write for the stage to work together in a cohort to develop their writing with the…
September 9, 2024 Originally founded in 1970 (as the New Play Centre) PTC has gone from script reading service, to new play festival, to a year-round theatre-making company. More than 50 years on, PTC’s unique focus on dramaturgical practice has made an outsized impact in the Canadian theatre landscape. Stewarded…
Congratulations to Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy on the world premiere of Salesman in China at the Stratford Festival. The play began during Leanna and Jovanni’s time as PTC Associates with dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty. Date: Now to October 26Location: Avon Theatre (99 Downie St, Stratford)Price: $35-77 The Stratford production includes many Vancouver artists…
Congratulations go out to outgoing PTC Associate José Teodoro who’s play, Island, has been awarded the 2024 Lee Playwriting Prize for New Canadian Plays. Selection committee chair Kathleen Weiss had the following to say about the winning piece: “The jury responded to Island so strongly because of its mystery and…
By Jessica Lemes da Silva Winner of Playwright Theatre Centre’s Fringe New Play Prize and presented as part of the 2024 Vancouver Fringe Festival. Come as you are. Worship how you imagine. WHEN: Running September 6, 8-10, 13-14, 2024 WHERE: Waterfront Theatre (1412 Cartwright St., Vancouver, BC) TICKETS: https://www.vancouverfringe.com/events/gods-a-drag/ SOCIALS:…
A ritual, a sharing, a work-in-development. Come together to experience the auditory realm of the in-between. Through a guided sound meditation, a shrine, music, soundscape, food, and scenes from the play in-development, we travel from generation to generation, human world to engkanto kingdom, and the Philippines to Canada, and back…
Playwrights Theatre Centre is searching for mid-career and established playwrights proposing their most ambitious work to date for our Associates program. The program is specifically pointed at work of a scale and depth that couldn’t be completed without PTC’s support. The Associates is a three-year partnership, where each playwright works…
Playwrights are the heart of PTC. We take this moment to share the often invisible art of dramaturgy through our 2020 – 2023 Impact Report – to thank you for being part of the story, and to welcome you to support PTC and the artists who make their home with…
After 12 years as Artistic and Executive Director of Playwrights Theatre Centre, Heidi Taylor will be leaving her role at the end of the year. She will participate in the leadership transition through Fall 2024 and will officially leave her post on December 31st, 2024. PTC’s board of directors will…
Applications for our most popular program for emerging theatre artists and established writers interested in performance: Block A, is now open! Block A is for artists who write for all kinds of performance, including script-driven theatre, from spoken word to performance art to songs – we’ve even had a few screenwriters….
We’re excited to announce our WrightSpace 2024 participants: Chelsea McPeake Carlson and Joy Russell! In the upcoming year, Chelsea and Joy will investigate meaningful relationships to the land with PTC Dramaturg, Creative Engagement Joanna Garfinkel during their residencies. Learn more about the program here.
WrightSpace is where PTC welcomes a small group of professional Canadian playwrights to join us for a short-term residency to work on one of their projects. This year, we are inviting proposals for projects with a meaningful relationship to land. We encourage playwrights/creation teams who are developing as or in…
AED Heidi Taylor, Artistic Associate Alyssa Formosa, and Block D alums Jesse Del Fierro and Ashley Chodat took a dramaturgy road trip together to attend the LMDA Conference in Banff last month! Here’s a peek into their journey: 2023 LMDA Conference Reflection: The Power of Process Before the 2023 LMDA…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. Here’s Sangeeta Wylie’s: August 10, 2023 – “Happy anniversary PTC!! I had the immense pleasure of working with Heidi Taylor from 2017-2018 on my first draft of we the same, with the working title, The Boat People. PTC’s…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. Here’s Ashley Chodat’s: August 25, 2023 – My first collaboration with PTC was being apart of the Block A Cohort. It was there that I met a fantastic group of writers, including our wonderful facilitator, David Geary. Each…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. Here’s Savannah Walling’s: September 12, 2023 – Among my fondest memories of PTC’s residence in the Downtown Eastside were our annual get-togethers with Heidi and Kathleen, to confer and devise. We talked about emergent trends in Vancouver’s theatre scene,…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. Here’s Momentum 180 Collective’s: July 22, 2022 – This photo marks the first The Parallel Project workshop held in person at the PTC Office. Together with our dramaturg, Anjela Magpantay, Playwright, Natasha Chew, Actor, Sherine Menes, and Producer,…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. Here’s jkjk’s: We love PTC! Here [above] is a picture of jkjk and Joanna Garfinkel working on “Catalina La O Presenta: Now With Me”. AND here is a picture of a draft. Is it the first? Probably not….
PTC PRESENTS UNSCRIPTED: Engkanto by Kamila Sediego A moving research expedition and celebration, a journey to the inbetween. Discover the sensations of interstitial spaces. Isang naglalakbay na ekspedisyon at pagdiriwang, isang paglalakbay sa pagitan. Tuklasin ang mga sensasyon ng panggitnang lawakan. Date: Friday, June 16, 2023 @ 7:00 pm PT Petsa: Biyernes, Hunyo…
Every PTC artist has a story of their “first” with the company. To kick things off, an origin tale from AED Heidi Taylor, who started as Associate Dramaturg in 2005. When I think back to the year that I joined PTC, it feels like a different world. It was 2005,…
Take June and July to rejuvenate, meet other community members, and inspire yourself for the autumn to come. We love to meet folks in the community who are interested in trying a new skill or refreshing their practice. All workshops are pay what you choose. Registration is on a first come basis, no experience required.
Learn to work from archival documents, family history, personal memoir, and other “real” texts in this workshop with Joanna Garfinkel.
We are pleased to introduce you to the Block A Fall 2023 cohort. These 12 writers will work with mentors David Geary and Nicola Harwood for ten weeks starting this October. Join us in welcoming Tanya Banerjee, Véronique Darwin, Cara DiGirolamo, Chloe Edbrooke, Randi Edmundson, Araceli Ferrara, Tristen Foy, Winona…
Welcome to our new Block D 2023 cohort! These 6 artists will be working with Dramaturg, Creative Engagement Joanna Garfinkel over the next 10 weeks in a small and supportive cohort to expand their dramaturgical tool kits and breadth of experience. Join us in welcoming Victoria Bell, Chelsea Carlson, Ashley…
UNSCRIPTED: It Lives in My Bedroom (ILIMB) is excited to invite you back in-person to PTC on Friday, February 17, 2023 at 7:30pm PST at Progress Lab! Playwright, director and researcher Mily Mumford, with design collaboration by Chimerik 似不像 – Lighting, Projection Design & New Media Art Collective, brings you into the world of It Lives in my Bedroom.
Are you an artist interested in boosting your dramaturgy skills? Applications for PTC’S Block D are open! Whether you identify as a dramaturg or are engaged in dramaturgical and devised performance work, we welcome your application! Block D is for artists who help to shape, nurture and create all kinds…
Be part of the development and explore the UNSCRIPTED: Mermaid Spring online! PTC and The Public Swoon invite you to enjoy a taste of the development of Mermaid Spring, a new work of interdisciplinary music theatre focused on deep co-creation, slow process and social handcraft. Witness textile artist and representative…
PTC Platforms is a space to explore the worlds of five projects in development. The playwrights and their collaborators are bringing their themes and imagery into film, audio, illustration, music, and interactives, following their ideas into new online spaces. It’s an invitation to think of theatre as a springboard that…
We are pleased to introduce you to the Block A Fall 2022 cohort. These 12 writers will work with mentors David Geary and Nicola Harwood for ten weeks starting this October. The writers working with David are Andy Kalirai, Ashley Chodat, Jessica Harvey, Krystal Kavita Jagoo, Marya Folinsbee, and Reese…
PTC is thrilled welcome Amy Amantea to the team as Accessibility Consultant!
PTC welcomes Lili Robinson as our Community Engagement Producer.
Maraya Franca joins us as the PTC Platforms Assistant.
PTC is thrilled to announce our 2022 ECD cohort of playwright-producers: Emmet Hanley, Argel Monte de Ramos, and Alexander Zonjic, with external mentor June Fukumura and dramaturg Joanna Garfinkel.
PTC is pleased to welcome Kit McKeown as our new Communications Manager
We are pleased to introduce you to the Block A Winter 2022 cohort. These 12 writers will work with mentors Joanna Garfinkel and Veronique West for ten weeks starting in January 2022.
Meet our Fall 2021 Block A cohort, a group of emerging theatre artists matched with mentors David Geary and Fay Nass.
We are thrilled to welcome participants in the Vancouver leg of the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative. The cohort will meet September 20-25, 2021 to explore digital dramaturgy for theatre on- and off-line.
We are pleased to announce that we have chosen four playwrights as PTC Associates 2021-24! Find out who they are and learn more about their fabulous projects.
A tribute to Indigenous artist, actor, advocate, poet, and playwright, Taran Kootenhayoo, who passed away suddenly on New Year’s Eve 2020.
We are pleased to announce that as our Fall 2020 cohort wraps up, we welcome another group of wonderful emerging writers coming into Block A in January 2021.
PTC welcomes three artists joining us January to June, 2021 as part of our Dramaturg Launch Pad, funded by the BC Arts Council’s Early Career Development program.
Meet the WrightSpace 2020 cohort, who will be investigating and applying different means of increasing access under COVID, “Beyond the Zoom.”
We are pleased to announce that, once again, the number of playwrights submitting to Block A, PTC’s popular program for emerging writers, has been plentiful, so four sessions are being convened, two in the fall and two in winter.
Kathleen Flaherty, PTC’s Dramaturg since 2012, will retire on October 1, 2020. We celebrate her illustrious career and future endeavours.
PTC is proud to welcome Joanna Garfinkel to the team in the new position of Dramaturg, Creative Engagement. After a robust search and in consultation with the community, Joanna’s excellence in engaged practice, her deep connections in the community, and her significant producing and management knowledge made her the unequivocal choice.
PTC is recognizing the exceptional leadership contributions of Melanie Yeats, our Operations Manager, as she moves into the new position of Creative Managing Director.
PTC’s Artistic and Executive Director acknowledges and provides context for her acceptance of the Vancouver NOW Award.
PTC is thrilled to welcome Davey Calderon as our new Dramaturg, Public Engagement. In this position, Davey will lead on our Unscripted program, our Blocks, and our ongoing commitment to engaging communities in the development of new work. He will also continue his own active dramaturgical practice. Learn more about Davey.
We are excited to share vAct’s announcement of the 2020-21 MSG Lab Playwrights. The MSG Lab is vAct’s Playwrighting Theatre Program for developing new Asian Canadian work. Over the next eight months, the MSG playwrights will be receiving development support for their new scripts and working with PTC dramaturgs.
In the coming weeks, PTC will be amplifying some of the community leaders who are supporting our community’s essential needs. Whether you can share their story or contribute resources, we invite you to celebrate the resilience and solidarity of our friends and neighbours. For six years, PTC called Vancouver’s Chinatown…
This spring, PTC will be hiring a new dramaturg to join Kathleen and Heidi. It will be a part-time staff position based in Vancouver. Are you a dramaturg, engaged with community, and with skills for producing and planning? Watch this space in April for a full job description and application details.
As a precaution in light of rapidly developing measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 in our community, our office will be closed until further notice. PTC staff are working remotely and some of our programs and workshops will proceed virtually. We are sending much love and compassion to our community. We are compiling an ongoing list of resources to help you through this.
We are pleased to announce the participants in the Block P 2020.
PTC and the Vancouver Fringe Festival are pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Fringe New Play Prize.
We are pleased to announce that, once again, the number of playwrights submitting to Block A, PTC’s popular program for emerging writers, has been plentiful, so four sessions are being convened, two in the fall and two in winter.
This year’s PTC WrightSpace residency (January 10-19, 2020) welcomes Catherine Joell MacKinnon to Vancouver to develop her bilingual (ASL-English) play, Inaudibility World.
PTC is convening our thirteenth annual 10-day residency, WrightSpace, in Vancouver, BC, in January of 2020. This year, we are interested in creating an opportunity for creative exchange with Deaf artists.
We are pleased to announce the participants in this year’s Block P (Producing for Theatre): Mairy Beam, Kagan Goh, Rebecca Walters and Ilana Zackon, join the producer of the Fringe New Play Prize 2019 winning project (Mx) Shanae Sodhi.
PTC and the Vancouver Fringe Festival are pleased to announce that Lili Robinson has won the Fringe New Play Prize with her work Mx.
PTC is pleased to announce that Jess Amy Shead joins us as our Community Engaged Producing Intern from October 2018 – July 2019.
Where does our food come from? Who grows it? Who is nourished by it? Join playwright Pedro Chamale for words and music from his play-in-progress that brings temporary foreign farm workers centre stage – the unseen people who plant, tend, and harvest. Share food and stories in a family-friendly event that reveals the links in Canada’s food chain.
We believe in the creative impulses of our artists. Help PTC say, “Yes, let’s” to new Canadian plays by WrightSpace 2018 playwrights Barbara Adler, Tai Amy Grauman, Robert Hamilton and Yvonne Wallace. Our goal is to raise $3000 by November 15 to ensure these artists have cultural consultants, designers, actors and space to dream! Donate at CanadaHelps.org today.
PTC is pleased to welcome our longtime friend and colleague mia susan amir into a co-mentorship with Artistic & Executive Director Heidi Taylor. As PTC’s Dramaturgy Research Associate, mia will advise on inclusive process design for our upcoming WrightSpace residency, and bear witness to the residency in December. Heidi will support mia’s development of access protocols and visioning for future projects.
This year’s PTC WrightSpace residency (Dec. 5 – 15, 2018) brings four writers together with dramaturgs, actors, designers, and language consultants to crack open four scripts through bespoke dramaturgical processes. Barbara Adler, Tai Amy Grauman, Robert Hamilton and Yvonne Wallace are exploring the content as well as the processes they…
We are delighted to announce that, once again, the number of playwrights submitting to Block A – PTC’s popular program for emerging writers – has exceeded our expectations, so four sessions are being convened, two in the fall and two in winter. The fall 2018 cohort has six writers who…
PTC is pleased to welcome Jiv Parasram as guest dramaturg for the 2018 WrightSpace residency. Each year we bring a new guest dramaturg into the fold to enrich the company’s dramaturgical perspectives and offer our writers the most interesting and dynamic theatrical collaborators possible. Jiv is no stranger to PTC-developed…
PTC is happy to announce the stellar group of participants in this year’s Block SAT.
We are pleased to announce the participants in this year’s Block P (Producing): Diana Bang, Kris Fleerackers, Matthew Horrigan, Ian Kent, Lenore Rowntree, Maria Zarrillo, and our Fringe New Play Prize winners, Anais West and Sara Vickruck.
Find out who is participating in the 2017-18 MSG Lab, VACT’s annual new play development program in association with PTC. Facilitating the creation and development of new theatrical work by emerging and mid-career Asian Canadian artists, this program is VACT’s commitment to the next generation of Asian Canadian theatre makers. The MSG Lab showcases stories from the Asian Canadian points of view, and develops new Asian Canadian work to a professional level for future production opportunities.
PTC and the Vancouver Fringe Festival are pleased to announce that the team comprised of Anais West and Sara Vickruck is the winner of the 2018 Fringe New Play Prize for “Poly Queer Love Ballad”. The Prize includes a free Mainstage spot at the 2018 Vancouver Fringe, the design and execution of a development process for the play with PTC’s Project Dramaturg Joanna Garfinkel, and a free spot in PTC’s how-to-produce-theatre seminar series, Block P.
We’re thrilled to bring Anjela Magpantay on board as Producing Intern for 2017-18.
This year’s WrightSpace (Dec. 6-16, 2017) brings four writers together with dramaturgs, actors, designers, and cultural consultants to crack open four scripts through bespoke dramaturgical processes. Tania Carter, Joseph Dandurand, and Taran Kootenhayoo are all from the greater Vancouver area, while Frances Koncan will come in from Winnipeg. This year,…
This year, we are delighted to announce that the number of playwrights submitting to Block A, PTC’s popular program for emerging writers, has exceeded the capacity by 500% so four sessions are being convened, two in the fall and two in winter. Check out our cohorts and find out who is the recipient of The Virago Play Series scholarship.
Setting Bones, winner of the Fringe New Play Prize 2017, premieres at the Vancouver Fringe Festival Sept. 9 -17, 2017.
The Fringe New Play Prize work-in-progress (Untitled) Boxes has undergone many transformations in the last few months, including a new title. Read about the playwrights’ progress.
We are pleased to announce the participants in this year’s Block P (Producing): lee williams boudakian, Moses Clyde Caliboso, Rachael Goddard-Rebstein, Peg Keenleyside, Jessica Leung, Ariel Martz-Oberlander and Anoushka Ratnarajah. Over the next six weeks these five artists will be learning the ins and outs of indie producing with UpintheAir Theatre’s Daniel Martin and Dave Mott. Read their bios…
PTC is pleased to announce that we have chosen five playwrights as PTC Associates 2017 – 20. We will work on their new plays over the course of the next three years.
PTC and the Vancouver Fringe Festival are pleased to announce that the team comprised of lee williams boudakian, Anoushka Ratnarajah and Kamee Abrahamian is the winner of the 2017 Fringe New Play Prize for (Untitled) Boxes. The Prize includes a free Mainstage spot at the 2017 Vancouver Fringe, the design and execution of a development process for the play with PTC’s Associate Dramaturg mia amir and production mentoring from PTC.
Join us for a conversation of how theatre contributes to the fabric of Vancouver’s Chinatown – where food and language intersect on Coast Salish territory. Come at 6:30pm for the DUMPLING CHALLENGE! Stay for readings in English and Cantonese from Jovanni Sy’s play A Taste of Empire/食盡天下, translated into Cantonese by Derek Chan. With Bob Sung, Jovanni Sy, Derek Chan and Andrea Yu.
This year’s Writers’ Colony (Dec. 6-16, 2016) brings four writers together with dramaturgs, actors, designers, and cultural consultants to crack open four scripts through bespoke dramaturgical processes. Peter Anderson (Vancouver), Sunny Drake (Toronto), Debbie Patterson (Winnipeg), and José Teodoro (Toronto) will spend ten days together to move their work to the next stage.
Announcing the participants in the 2016-17 Block A, PTC’s popular program for emerging writers.