New Play Tuesday
Tuesday, February 14 at 7:00pm
A staged reading of plays-in-progress, offering audiences a first look at new work by Ottawa playwrights. This year’s feature reading is White Lion, Brown Tiger by Vishesh Abeyratne. It will be preceded by short new works by Sanita Fejzić (a companion to Why Worry About Their Futures from week one of the festival) and francophone playwright Alain Lauzon.
Join us early (at 6:00pm) for our Playwright & Director Industry Speed Dating! Do you have a script that you’ve dreamt of seeing performed, but need a director to bring your vision to life? Are you a director who loves taking new works and shaping them for the stage? Join us this Valentine’s Day to find your perfect (artistic) match!
Click here to register for the speed dating event.
This year, New Play Tuesday is made possible by the generous support of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada and Dominion City – who will be offering samplings during the event!
Burnout by Sanita Fejzić
[a companion to Why Worry About Their Futures from week one of the festival]
Burnout focuses on the lives of other-than-human beings, the creatures that are paying the price for our industrialized and digital ways of life.The play wants us to consider whose children matter as a burnt-out, depressed and grieving conservationist faces a psychologist. A fictional fire not unlike the one that killed or harmed 3 billion animals in Australia sent him over the edge.
This is a piece about interspecies love and care, and ultimately serves as a mirror to our [lack of] response-ability, not only as individuals but as members of a species responsible for climate disasters and ecocides.
En sortant de Cochrane by Alain Lauzon
[English Captioned Reading]
En sortant de Cochrane est un récit autobiographique qui prend la forme de théâtre documentaire. La mère de l’auteur a survécu à un accident de la route, survenu il y a deux décennies dans le nord de l’Ontario, mais n’en garde aucun souvenir. Au fil du temps, un silence s’installe et chacun affronte l’accident et ses conséquences à sa manière. À travers divers entretiens, menés sur une période d’un an, l’auteur arrive à reconstituer le fil des événements et à mieux comprendre pourquoi, dix-huit ans plus tard, il ressentait soudainement l’urgence de briser ce silence.
Remerciements : Merci à tous ceux que j’ai interviewés dans le cadre ce projet. Sans votre participation, ce spectacle n’existerait pas. L’auteur tient également à remercier Théâtre Action et Ottawa Fringe (under development) pour l’appui au développement de ce projet.
Leaving Cochrane is an autobiographical story presented as documentary theatre. The author’s mother survived a car crash in northern Ontario two decades ago but has no recollection of it. In the years since, a blanket of silence settled over the family as each member reckoned with the crash and its aftermath in their own way. Now, through a series of interviews, the author reconstructs the sequence of events and better understands why, many years later, he suddenly felt the urgency to break this silence.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to everyone I interviewed for this project. Without your participation, this show would not exist. The author would also like to thank Théâtre Action and Ottawa Fringe (under development) for supporting the development of this project.
White Lion, Brown Tiger by Vishesh Abeyratne
In a thrift shop in British Columbia, a heated exchange between two Sri Lankan employees breaks out into a fight. Their manager tries to defuse the situation, bringing intercultural tensions and charged racial politics to the fore. But there may be more to the conflict than the two men are letting on…