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New Play Development at Theatre Passe Muraille

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New Play Development at Theatre Passe Muraille NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT AT THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE SAMANTHA E. SERLES A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN THEATRE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO MARCH 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-80489-6 Our file Notre r6ference ISBN: 978-0-494-80489-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1*1 Canada ABSTRACT The following thesis process paper, entitled New Play Development at Theatre Passe Muraille is submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. This thesis process paper discusses the author's dramaturgy internship at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto from December 2009 to March 2011. The paper includes an overview of Theatre Passe Muraille's history and current mandate, analysis of the author's dramaturgy internship duties and the company's new play development initiative the Buzz Festival. The paper also considers how the traditional role of a company dramaturg or literary manager could be adapted to work within alternative models of developing and producing theatre. IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thank you to Andy McKim and the staff at Theatre Passe Muraille for all of the support, encouragement and opportunities they have given me over the last two years. Thank you to Judith Rudakoff for her guidance throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies. Thank you to Lisa Wolford Wylam for her valuable insight and encouragement. Thank you to Mel Hague and my parents, Kathy English and Gregg Series, for their endless love and support throughout this process. v Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgement v Table of Contents vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: Theatre Passe MuraiUe's Past, Present and Future 3 CHAPTER TWO: The Company Dramaturg 17 CHAPTER THREE: The Buzz Festival 31 CONCLUSION 45 Work Cited 49 vi INTRODUCTION From December 2009 to March 2011 I completed a dramaturgy internship at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto to fulfill the practical component of my studies for the Master of Fine Arts in Theatre at York University under the supervision of Professor Judith Rudakoff. This internship provided me with the opportunity to develop my dramaturgy skills by fulfilling some of the duties of a company dramaturg or literary manager, primarily reading script submissions and communicating my assessments to the artistic director, Andy McKim. A dramaturg working within a theatre institution often helps to shape the evolution of the company by seeking out new artists and plays that the company may present in future seasons. As I developed an understanding of McKim's vision for the future of the Theatre Passe Muraille I recognized that my script reading duties were often separate from the process in which McKim selected the plays that Theatre Passe Muraille produced. Since McKim became artistic director in 2007, Theatre Passe Muraille has been in a state of transition as McKim brings his mandate for the company to fruition. McKim has a vision for Theatre Passe Muraille to be a home for independent companies and collectives and multidisciplinary performance, a cultural institution that breaks down the wall between artists and audience. In this process paper I hypothesise how a dramaturg could ideally serve that vision. Chapter one of this process paper discusses Theatre Passe Muraille's place in Canadian theatre history and McKim's vision for the company's future. Chapter two details how my internship duties, which followed a traditional literary management 1 process of reading and assessing new scripts, deviated from McKim's methods of selecting new work for Theatre Passe Muraille. I also consider what the role of the company dramaturg at Theatre Passe Muraille might be by discussing how the skills that I developed during my internship could be applied to McKim's vision for the company. Chapter three theorizes how the position of the company dramaturg could be further integrated at Theatre Passe Muraille through involvement with the Buzz Festival. As my position at Theatre Passe Muraille was a temporary internship, the tasks I completed were fashioned with the primary intention of developing my dramaturgical skills, not fulfilling a vital role within the company, as a staff dramaturg. Through this internship I had the opportunity to observe an established theatre company while it was in a state of transition, amidst a larger transition occurring in the way theatre is developed and produced in Canada. Collaborations between theatre companies are becoming increasingly common for both artistic and financial reasons, and new theatrical works are increasingly "creator-driven" rather than "playwright-driven". Through this experience I was provoked to consider how the traditional role of a company dramaturg or literary manager could be adapted to work within alternative models of developing and producing theatre. 2 CHAPTER ONE THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE'S PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE My internship at Theatre Passe Muraille was my first experience working as a dramaturg within a theatre institution. Prior to this internship I had little experience in reading completed drafts of plays that had not been published or produced. As a student dramaturg I had worked mostly with playwrights who were in the process of completing a first draft. My central role had been to assist them in generating more material. My focus had always been on furthering the development of a script, not assessing a completed draft. In addition, whenever I had read a play previously, I had formed impressions about the script that were primarily based on my own artistic values and biases. In my internship position I was asked to read plays as a representative of Theatre Passe Muraille in order to assess whether the script could possibly be produced in a future season. In the early months of my internship I turned to Theatre Passe Muraille's mandate for a concrete explanation of the type of theatre the company intended to produce, aiming to assess how each script submission I read 'fit' within the mandate. A mandate, also referred to as a mission statement, delineates a theatre company's artistic objectives. A theatre company's mandate may refer to the form or content of plays that it produces, the support that it provides for professional or aspiring artists or the community that it strives to represent. A dramaturg working within a theatre institution needs to have a thorough understanding of the company's mandate in order to seek out and identify new works of theatre and artists. Michael Mark Chemers discusses this aspect of a dramaturg's role within a theatre company in his book Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy: Different theatres have different identities and different contexts, and the dramaturg must take these issues into account...A dramaturg ought to have a detailed understanding of the theatre's mission and how it was executed in past seasons... the dramaturg helps to contextualize the work in productions and with audiences within that larger view... But the dramaturg needs to work within the company, always striving to improve the mission and to refine and clarify its goals and practices. (Chemers: page 145-146) In order to understand Theatre Passe Muraille's current mandate I needed to be familiar with the work the company had been producing in recent seasons under the artistic directorship of Andy McKim. I also needed a clear sense of Theatre Passe Muraille's place within Canadian theatre history. Theatre Passe Muraille was founded at Toronto's Rochdale College in 1968 by playwright and director Jim Garrard based on principals of experimentation and inclusivity: There should be no walls of pre-conception about what theatre should and could comprise; traditional mores and methods are not necessarily the greatest; producing plays that are new and different and thought-provoking is more important than trying to increase the size and prestige of the organization; it is important to explore new models. (McKim and Neilson: 2007) Garrard directed Theatre Passe Muraille's first production, Tom Paine, by playwright Paul Foster, in the basement of Rochdale College using ensemble and improvisational techniques influenced by Ellen Stewart's Off-Off Broadway theatre company, Cafe La Mama.
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