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Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre

Playwright-operated organization, founded in 1983, and located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Among its thirteen founding members were playwrights Rex Deverell, Connie Gault, Eugene Stickland, and Ken Mitchell. Its mandate is to develop Saskatchewan plays and to promote the province’s playwrights and plays nationally in their relationships with government agencies, theatre producers, and the public. It features annual workshops of new plays, and staged readings in a Spring Festival of New Plays in Regina or Saskatoon.

It serves approximately 100 Saskatchewan playwrights, and employs local and national playwrights, actors, directors, and dramaturges. The current Creative Operations Director is James Avramenko.

Past Festival dramaturges have included: Yvette Nolan, DD Kugler, Stephen Heatley, Paula Danckert, Bob White, Michael Springate, and Frank Moher.

Among the plays it has nurtured, which have subsequently been produced are: Bannock Republic and Thunderstick, both by Kenneth T. Williams (Persephone Theatre 2009); Kohkoms In Toyland: A Rez Christmas Story VIII by Curtis Peeteetuce ( Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company 2009); Dry Streak by Leeann Minogue (Grand Theatre, London 2009); The Walnut Tree by Geoffry Ursell (Persephone Theatre 2009); Special by Kelley Jo Burke ( Dancing Sky Theatre 2009); Homecoming by Leeann Minogue (Station Arts Centre, Rosthern, 2009); Gimme Shelter by Andy Carlson McNab (Saskatoon Fringe Festival 2009; Bite The Hand by Mansel Robinson (Persephone Theatre 2008); The Selkie Wife by Kelley Jo Burke (Dancing Sky Theatre 2008); At the End of Her Rope by Cheryl Jack (Persephone Theatre 2008); Dry Streak by Leeann Minogue (Persephone Theatre 2006); Random Acts by Sean Hoy (Dancing Sky Theatre 2006); Picking Up Chekhov by Mansel Robinson (Alberta Theatre Projects playRites Festival 2006); MacGregor’s Hard Icecream and Gas by Daniel Macdonald (Persephone Theatre 2005); Foyer by Madeline Dahlem (Troupe du Jour 2005); Pageant by Daniel Macdonald (playRites 2003); Red Lips by Connie Gault (playRites 2001); The Heart as it Lived by Mansel Robinson ( playRites 1997); Otherwise Bob by Connie Gault (Northern Light Theatre 1996); Blowfish by Vern Thiessen (Northern Light Theatre 1996); Serpent in the Night Sky by Dianne Warren (25th Street Theatre 1991); Sky by Connie Gault (25th Street Theatre 1989); Gone the Burning Sun by Ken Mitchell (Guelph Spring Festival and Magnus Theatre (1984).

Website: www.saskplaywrights.ca

Further reading: Pam Bustin. "Between the Bottles and the Knives: Celebrating Twenty-five Years with the Saskatchewan Playwrights Center," West-Word: Celebrating Western Canadian Theatre and Playwriting. Ed. Moira J. Day. Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 2011.

Profile by Anne Nothof

Last updated 2021-09-28