Writing From Real History — Including Your Own

To sign up for this online workshop, please email Melanie at workshops@playwrightstheatre.com!

See the Facebook event here: https://fb.me/e/36qwAM21n

Please note that this event is from 2:00 PM — 5 PM on Saturday June 11 and Saturday June 18.

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

Joanna Garfinkel lives and works on the the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation). She is grateful, as granddaughter of refugees, to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this land. Joanna is the co-founder of collectively and socially-driven play development company Universal Limited. She is the co-creator, with Yoshié 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. Previously, she co-created and directed the pedicab adventure Tour for HIVE 3, produced by the Electric Company, Universal Limited, and the Cultural Olympiad. That site-specific escapade was reinvented for Victoria (Theatre SKAM), and Toronto (SummerWorks). Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and to troubling those patterns through performance.

Recent dramaturgical credits include Berlin: The Last Cabaret at PuSh 2020, multi-award-winning Poly Queer Love Ballad, which toured to Theatre Passe Murailles in 2019, and Mx, which premiered in 2021 at the Cultch. 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. Her focus since has been in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work; she also has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Upcoming: The Fringe New Play Prize-winning Catalina La O Presenta: Ahora Conmigo, and development of To the Sea.

Testimonials:

“Joanna was terrific. Very knowledgeable with a wealth of relevant experience. I felt completely welcomed and valued although I have never published anything and this project is my first foray into creative writing since junior high school.”

Workshop Information:

Date: Saturday June 11 & Saturday June 18, 2022
Time: 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Location: Online via Zoom
This workshop is pay what you choose.

To sign up, please email Melanie at workshops@playwrightstheatre.com!