For two decades Alberta Theatre Projects has taken the once dead time period of mid-winter and filled it with exciting new Canadian works. The Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays runs from January 24th to March 5th, 2006 and will feature five new works by Canadian playwrights. To truly grasp what it takes to put on such a venture, GayCalgary.com spoke with current dramaturge Vanessa Porteous and playRites founder Michael Dobbin about the past, present and future of the festival.

“When I came to be the CEO of ATP in 1983 we weren’t in the Martha Cohen Theatre yet, we were based at the Canmore Opera House in Heritage Park. The original mandate for ATP when it launched in the 70’s was to produce new work based on Alberta history for children, and it had done that for many years and fostered the development of a number of other playwrights for adult material. When I arrived in 1983 the Board of Directors challenged me to change the scope of the company and return it to its original mission of being a play development company,” Dobbin said. “I didn’t think that the old way was going to be effective, so looking at models of some other major festivals in the world, I took the best of what I was seeing and crafted it into a Calgary model. We piloted it in 1987 with a special grant from Canada Employment under the innovations program, which allowed us to hire enough people to, in effect, add another season of plays onto the roster of what we were doing. The pilot was three shows over three weeks. We wanted to make this festival our contribution to the 1988 Olympic Arts festival. We were able to gather some major funding from Nova, and the ’Nova playRites Festival‘ was the longest and largest single component of the Olympic Arts Festival. There were five shows and it ran for seven weeks. It was a huge success and a wonderful experience because it was so well received.”

Twenty years later the focus remains the same.

”In the 20 years of the Festival it has never been a question of whether the play would be a Broadway hit, the play is produced because it is ready to be produced. During my leadership at ATP that was the criteria – if the play was ready to be produced, whether it was the best play in the world didn’t matter, it was giving it legs and putting it on stage and giving the playwright the credibility to put the production out there.”

The work involved in the festival is intense, beginning at the final “blitz weekend” of the festival, according to Porteous. She explains how the final product comes to life.

”Over the last few years we have tried to lengthen the development process because the results on stage are better. We select the plays for our festival on the final day of the previous years festival. We tend not to produce plays that are by somebody we have never heard of. The mythical way of getting your play produced by slipping it under the door doesn’t really happen. I think its because we pride ourselves on knowing everything that happens in Canadian theatre so its not likely we wouldn’t have heard of someone who would submit work. [During] the Sunday of the final weekend, called ’Blitz Weekend‘ the play development team gathers and picks the next years plays. That means that prior to that we have been reading about 200 scripts, going to workshops, talking to other theatres and play development organizations across the country to find out what playwrights we respect and love are up to. We are trying to get a sense of what we are going to do the following year. It’s 8 months from when we pick the scripts to when they open.”

Those eight months are busy ones for the ATP staff, the playwrights and the directors.

“Things start at the Banff Playwrights Colony in May at the Banff Centre where work is done on the scripts. Then there are usually a couple of drafts done over the summer and an in-house workshop in the fall. We start rehearsals in December; they rehearse for six weeks and open in February. We do ten plays a year and half of our programming is in playRites which is completely insane.”

The last twenty years has seen many plays sprout from the Festival to go on to international success, something both Dobbin and Porteous are understandably proud of.

“It is great, we brag about it constantly. We have varied statistics about the last four years. There have been sixty-five productions of plays premiered at ATP. We have a very high proportion of plays that get second, third and fourth productions that come out of the festival,” said Porteous. “That isn’t why we do it, it’s for our audience, but it is a beautiful and gratifying extra benefit to see plays picked up by other companies. We try to do what we can to see that happen. We are very proud of the quality of the plays that we premier. It is gratifying to have people turn to us when looking for programming.”

“That is the test of the festival’s success, how many times people choose to come to see the plays and then remount them or engage the playwright to do additional work,” added Dobbin. “It makes me feel good. I am very proud of the festival and it is one of the reasons that ATP has continued to flourish. If you speak to staff members at ATP past and present, they all say that one of the things that made it most interesting was the festival. It is very hard working in a theatre company, and when you are mounting four to five new plays at the same time, it is a tremendous amount of work. But it is really rewarding because there is so much focused energy and it is a great proving ground for all the individuals involved. What makes me feel great is when people talk about their experiences working for ATP and the festival is the favorite part of their experience, and to meet writers whose work started with ATP.”

Porteous has been involved with ATP for eight years, and although that is less than half of the time playRites has existed, she has seen a great deal of change.

“The acting community in Calgary has strengthened and deepened, and they bring more to the rehearsal process. Actors are more comfortable working in new work than they were a few years ago. Playwrights are less interested in shocking the audience; I came in at the tail end of pieces that revealed seething underbellies. It’s not that we have gotten squarer, we have gotten past that and now it is about telling a story in a different way. We are trying to get the audience to come along on a journey that is more complex, not as linear, and uses different theatrical styles. I love the diversity of work we get to produce now.”

As for Dobbin, although he is no longer actively involved with the festival, he takes a great deal of pride in having seen what his brainchild has developed into. In 1987, he had no idea that twenty years later it would be the premier new works festival in Canada.

“I don’t think I ever imagined it would last this long. It was frequently a question of if we would survive this year and the next. We took it one year at a time, and it is now a vital part of the theatre matrix in Calgary and in the National theatre scene. There were many times in the 17 years I was with ATP that we thought it could be the final year because of funding issues or resources or play quality not being as high as we would like. It is surprising to see it reach its 20th anniversary, but it is a wonderful achievement and there are thousands of people who have made that achievement a reality who are now spread out across the globe. That is really rewarding.”

As for the future, Dobbin thinks it looks bright.

”I am an observer now so it’s not my job to think about its future, but I think it will continue to be a very important source of invention. The theatrical form in Canada and English speaking theatre is about to see some major revision. As the theatre form evolves I think the playRites festival will become more important as a workshop where experimental transition can be undertaken in a safe and optimistic environment with enough money to make things work. From the beginning I have said we should be putting the resources and money into Canadian plays as we would for Shakespeare or another dead playwright whose work we revere. Those productions cost a lot of money, why wouldn’t we spend that on Canadian writers and their new work in order to tell our stories. That is where the future of the festival will remain important, is in making sure our stories are seen.”

Look for an extensive preview of the shows of the Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays in the February issue of GayCalgary.com Magazine..

Alberta Theatre Projects
The Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays
January 24th – March 5th, 2006
215 – 8 Avenue SE
Phone: (403) 294-7402
www.atplive.com