Rosebud Playwriting festival showcases emerging (Canadian) playwrights

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Rosebud School of the Arts hosts the annual Budding Playwrights Festival, May 14-15. The festival features readings of new works from six emerging playwrights, students of the school’s playwriting course.
“(The students) are from all walks of life … but they all have these burning stories to tell,” said Lucia Frangione, the course instructor, who teaches by e-mail correspondence. “Our stories reflect our nation’s values and what our immediate issues are. And I really felt that to be true this year … it’s all pretty timely.”
Marcia Laycock, an award-winning journalist and novelist from Alberta, is writing a play called For Dear Life, about how people and their faith respond when a disease sweeps the country. Christina Elizabeth Muldoon, an actor and recent graduate of Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA), who’s currently living in Ireland, is writing With Hearts More Proof than Shields, about the effects of war, and the role of art and culture in healing from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Laycock and Muldoon are advanced students, writing full-length plays. A 30-minute portion of each play will be read during the festival.
Frangione’s four introductory students have written 30-minute one-act plays, which will be read in their entirety.
Meghan Hanet, a fourth-year RSA student from British Columbia, is writing Blue Herring, about a young teacher who goes to northern B.C. and learns to integrate her ideals with those of the First Nations people.
Anita Bonstrom-Mast, a farmer from Alberta who “reads plays while on the tractor,” has written a play called Peaches and Grapes. Angela Klassen, a schoolteacher, is writing Walking Her Home. Bonstrom-Mast’s and Klassen’s plays are both about protecting elderly people, and helping them to live and die with dignity.
Barbara Phillips from Kamloops, a mother of young children, is writing Lunacy. It’s “a very beautiful play,” Frangione said, about two sisters coming to terms with mental illness.
The work of three new playwrights will be read on each day of the festival. On Saturday, Frangione, playwright of 28 works, will also read some of her own new work.
Hearing their plays read is a valuable support to a writer’s growth, because writers don’t know how good their work is until an audience responds to it, Frangione said. And the Budding Playwright Festival in Rosebud is a special place to do that.
“I work across the country and in many different forms …. and I find it very rare that religion or politics are freely discussed on stage,” she said. “What I love about the festival (in Rosebud) is that there aren’t any censors … so (the students) tend to write about faith under fire. And either they’re lighting the fire and testing it, and really challenging religion, or they’re looking at what happens to ideals when a person is in crisis.”
Budding Playwrights Festival is held in Rosebud’s Akokiniskway Gallery, May 14 from 4 to 6 p.m., and May 15 from 7 to 9 p.m. Both performances include mature language and content, so an audience of age 13 and older is recommended. Admission is free. See the Budding Playwrights Festival 2016 page on Facebook for more information.