PTC’s Workshop Series is back!

Make May your month to rejuvenate, meet other community members, and inspire yourself for the summer 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.

Register for all of these workshops using the form on our workshops page! For more information or any assistance please email Alyssa Formosa at workshops[at]playwrightstheatre.com.

Learn more about each workshop below.

Writing From Real History — Including Your Own

Saturday, May 13, 2-5pm & Saturday, May 20, 2-5 pm (participants attend both sessions) on Zoom

Learn to work from archival documents, family history, personal memoir, and other “real” texts in this workshop with Joanna Garfinkel.

Joanna Garfinkel (she/any) is the Dramaturg, Creative Engagement at Playwrights Theatre Centre and co-founder, with Yoshie Bancroft, of Universal Limited. Joanna’s focus is in collaborative approaches to new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work; upcoming projects include dramaturgy with ZeeZee Theatre/VACT on My Little Tomato, and the Queer & Trans playwriting unit; UL’s development on To the Sea; PTC Associates Kamila Sediego’s Engkanto and José Teodoro’s Binary Star. She is also working on ongoing dance collaborations, including TCP’s Pants. She is the co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, which has been performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and in several locations in between. Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and commits to trouble those patterns through performance. Other notable credits include Berlin: The Last Cabaret at PuSh 2020, and the multi-award-winning Poly Queer Love Ballad, which toured to Theatre Passe Murailles in 2019. She has been nominated for three Jessie awards, winning one (Critics Choice for Innovation); was awarded the Pure Research grant from Nightswimming Theatre (Toronto), and has received the Sydney Risk award for directing. She moved to Vancouver to get her MFA in directing at UBC, and her focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York.

Testimonials:

“I just wanted to thank you again for an energizing, inspiring workshop. I came across the ad by chance and it was the right thing at the right time. It’s wonderful to be breathing new life into project I abandoned so long ago, and to have discovered new ways to approach the material so it isn’t so overwhelming.” – Sara Graefe

 

Fast Reads and Cold Takes 

Monday, May 15, 6-9 pm Online

Whether you’re taping auditions for new or unpublished plays or prepping for podcast or online play reading recordings, Cold Reads and Fast Takes on New Material will give you tools to make the most of a text.

Melanie Yeats (she/they) is a theatre maker living on the unceded stolen territories of the the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is committed to upholding spaces where people feel safe enough to do the challenging work of creating meaningful art. As an arts administrator, Melanie calls PTC home. As Creative Managing Director, she helps keep PTC running smoothly, with a special focus on creativity in capacity management, mentorship, and values alignment. She has worked in arts administration with organizations such as Indie Opera West, Gateway Theatre, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, and Firehall Arts Centre. She has also proudly served on the boards of several arts organizations, while being committed to dismantling the inequities inherent in this system.

As an artist, Melanie has worked with a broad range of companies, such as re:Naissance Opera, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Music on Main, Carousel Theatre,  Upintheair, Neworld, Mainly Dance, Joe Ink, Boca del Lupo, and Pi Theatre, collaborating on many new works, including interdisciplinary projects with theatre, dance, and music artists. She works as a performer, dramaturg, director, playwright, and intimacy director. Melanie has worked for more than 25 years in performing arts and holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU.

Testimonials:

“Melanie was a fantastic workshop leader with great energy. She established a very positive culture for the session, was very well prepared, and I would love to take any session with her. I felt really great about this session.”

 

Mapping a Creative Project: Out of your head and into the world 

Tuesday, May 30, 6:30pm-9:30 pm in person at 1422 William Street, Vancouver

Do you have a play, writing project, or creative project you’d like to understand better? Join dramaturg Heidi Taylor in a fun learning session to gain tools to apply to any creative project.

Heidi Taylor (she/her) is a dramaturg, director and performance maker, and Artistic and Executive Director at PTC. She makes sited, devised, and interdisciplinary work, developing performances from first idea through production. Recent projects with rice & beans theatre include Derek Chan’s yellow objects and Pedro Chamale’s Peace Country. She dramaturged for VACT’s MSG Lab from 2016-2020, including Zahida Rahemtulla’s The Wrong Bashir. She has also dramaturged for dance, most recently Amber Funk Barton’s How to Say Goodbye. Recent projects include world premieres of Carmen Aguirre’s Anywhere But Here, Kuroko and 1 Hour Photo by Tetsuro Shigematsu (Governor General Award nominee), Public and Private by choreographer Ziyian Kwan, and am a by Amber Funk Barton and Mindy Parfitt. Current PTC projects include process dramaturgy with The Public Swoon on Mermaid Spring, and Tanya Marquardt’s Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep at PuSh OFF. Heidi received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Contemporary Art from SFU, where she taught acting for 15 years. Her collective, Proximity Arts, created cross-disciplinary projects including podplays, sited dance performance, a community-run side show, chamber opera, cabarets, sound installation and a digital gardening project, from 2003 – 2011. Heidi served as Board Treasurer of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas 2017-20, and was the founding president of LMDA Canada. She is currently Secretary of the board for C-Space.