In The Aeneid by Olivier Kemeid, translated by Maureen Labonté, the classic tale of searching for a new home is reimagined into an urgent modern-day refugee story.
 Settling Africville by George Elliott Clarke is a dedication to the African American refugees of the War of 1812 that settled in Nova Scotia.
 The Tashme Project: The Living Archives, a documentary-style play, carefully pieces together the experiences of Japanese Canadians who were in the internment camps in the 1940s.
 Foreign Tongue: The Musical represents the mark that accents place on immigrants.
 In My Name is Dakhel Faraj, the true story of a refugee of the Iraq war is presented in English, English Sign Language, and Arabic.
 And In Sundry Languages is a collection of multilingual skits on immigrant experiences.

Scripting (Im)migration: New Canadian Plays

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

Playwrights Canada Press

Upon the death of King Edward VI, the thirty-eight-year-old princess Mary—daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon—wrests the throne from Edward's deemed heir. But Mary's mother appears from the vaults of memory, and adamantly questions the motives of Mary's cousin Jane and her half-sister Bess, despite Mary's affection for them both. As the kingdom splits along Roman Catholic and Protestant lines, Mary walks a gauntlet of squabbling ethics and politics, and is forced to make some tough decisions. Should she execute her opponents before it's too late, the way her father did? Should she scramble to find a husband who can give her a rightful heir? And can she trust her mother, her sister, or even herself?

Mother's Daughter

Hennig, Kate

Review\n“As I embarked on my first playwriting commission, I felt lost, underqualified, and afraid. The Blunt Playwright became a companion to me during my playwriting journey, and filled in the gaps in my knowledge and training. It was simple but significant, easily digestible, and gave me the tools I needed to put my fear aside and start writing!” (Emily Dallas, author of Brave Girl)\n“I use The Blunt Playwright for all of my playwriting classes and for myself because it’s a system of writing that works, is easily understood, and clearly makes sense about process and structure.” (Aaron Bushkowsky, Creative Writing Instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and award-winning author of After Jerusalem and My Chernobyl)\n“The Blunt Playwright is a great resource for both emerging and established playwrights. I have kept a copy on my desk for the last ten years where it can easily be found when I need it ... which is often.” (Meg Braem, Co-director of the Alberta Theatre Projects Playwrights Unit and award-winning author of Blood: A Scientific Romance and The Josephine Knot)\n“Clem Martini is blunt, all right — and passionate, challenging, deadly serious, and wryly witty. He covers all the techniques that a playwright might need at any stage while ardently championing this muchmisunderstood art form, and from a welcome Canadian perspective.” (John Lazarus, Associate Professor at Queen’s University and award-winning playwright of Babel Rap and The Grandkid)\nThe 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 scenes to study; outline clever exercises to strengthen writing skills; and so much more. Highly regarded and used in schools everywhere, this updated edition cements its place as one of the best resources for playwrights. 
From organizing the structure of a script to developing characters’ voices, from employing visual effects on stage to writing comedy, or from self-promotion to getting produced and published, this guide has something for everyone, no matter the stage of their career.

The Blunt Playwright: Second Edition

Arts & Photography

Martini, Clem

Performing Arts

Four female panelists face off in a wild, whip-smart televised debate about the intersection of religion and misogyny. On one side, there's Maryam, a progressive Muslim lawyer, and Yehudit, an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader. The other has Liz, a lesbian antitheist pundit, and Margaret, an excommunicated nun. The debaters wrestle with themselves and with each other: Can you be a feminist and believe in religion? What can or can't be forgiven? Why do we have faith to begin with? Between the arguments, each of the debaters return to a seminal and secret moment in their past that represents a crisis of faith, leading the debate to become more and more personally charged, until it climaxes in an epic battle, culminating in a possible leap of faith.

Unholy

Flacks, Diane

Lowell Garrish has lost everything--his parents, his grandma, the music the waves make on the shore in Nova Scotia. Desperate to hold on to real sound, Lowell sets off on a road trip across Canada with a tape recorder, capturing something from every person he meets and his observations along the way. But as he drives, strange occurrences and mass disappearances imply that something terrible is happening, and Lowell begins to realize that time for humanity may be running out.

Fortune of Wolves

Griffith, Ryan

Whimsy State: (or The Principality of Outer Baldonia)

Demers, A.J.

After spending ten years in international Directors Lab programs--first in New York and Chicago, then co-founding Directors Lab North in Toronto--Evan Tsitsias has amassed an extensive amount of advice, examples, and notes that prove essential reading for theatre creators and artists across disciplines. Combined with master classes and interviews with established, emerging, and mid-career directors, this manual is an artistic, logistic, and pedagogical exploration into the mechanics of theatre creation through the lens of a director. With so much useful material, readers become honorary "labbies," ready to leave their own mark on the theatrical landscape. The book includes a foreword by Anne Cattaneo and writing and interviews from Peter Hinton, Akram Khan, Daniel MacIvor, Morris Panych, Andrea Romaldi, Kat Sandler, Judith Thompson, Vincent de Tourdonnet, and many more.

The Directors Lab

"Luck is like irony. Not everybody who thinks they got it, got it." Theo has been named Time Magazine's Luckiest Man Alive. For twenty consecutive years he has successfully bet double or nothing on the Super Bowl coin toss. And he's getting ready to risk millions on the twenty-first when he is confronted by Cynthia, a young woman who claims to have figured out his mathematical secret. Stem-cell researcher and professor Dr. Guzman is on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery. She's also learned that one of her students has defied probability to get all 150 multiple-choice questions wrong on his genetics exam, but it's not until he shows up to her office in the middle of the night that she's able to determine if it's simply bad luck. The two narratives intertwine like a double helix of DNA to examine the interplay between logic and metaphysics, science and faith, luck and probability. Belief systems clash, ideas mutate, and order springs from chaos. With razor-sharp wit and playful language, Sequence asks, in our lives, in our universe, and even in our stories, does order matter?

Sequence (Second Edition)

Lakra, Arun

Can a lesbian couple find Mr. Right? Helen and Paige really want a baby. Maybe even two. They've decided they want to use a sperm donor, but because of Paige's own upbringing as an adopted child they want the donor to at least be known to the child. This challenge makes the normally anonymous favour even harder and more intimate than they expected. And then there are the options for donors. Through the fast-paced "dating" of several candidates, all of whom come with their own warning labels, Helen and Paige's relationship is strained to a point where they must remember why they set out on this journey together in the first place.

Speed Dating for Sperm Donors

Meisner, Natalie

Acha Bacha

Baig, Bilal

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Playwrights Canada Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Playwrights Canada Press