Call for Submissions: National Queer & Trans Playwriting Unit
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The following is excerpted from Zee Zee Theatre.
Zee Zee Theatre is leading a consortium of ten national producing companies searching for five playwrights working towards their best and most ambitious work to date for this first ever, entirely 2SLGBTQQIA+, virtual playwriting unit resulting in a canon of new Canadian intersectional plays being developed for production.
The consortium is made up of Gwaandak Theatre (Whitehorse), Zee Zee Theatre (Vancouver), the frank theatre (Vancouver), Theatre Outre (Lethbridge), Persephone Theatre (Saskatoon), Theatre Projects Manitoba (Winnipeg), Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto), Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto), Imago Theatre (Montreal), Neptune Theatre (Halifax). Learn more about the consortium partners here.
Each playwright will work in collaboration with a dedicated dramaturg identified from their own needs assessment. They will meet weekly alternating between their dramaturg and the full unit, thereby offering each other collegial insights and support.
The unique length and depth of the program as well as a significant financial investment allows the playwright to manage the trajectory of their play with committed and long-term dramaturgical, administrative, and communication support from the consortium as well as a commitment by the individual companies that each one of the five plays created will be picked up for brief additional development and ultimate path to production in a future season.
Over the course of the ten months, you will have opportunities to engage with each of the ten companies, having access to the artistic leadership as well as being asked to provide one Community Offering (workshop, artist talk, reading) per month to one of the companies via Zoom.
At the end of each month during the unit there will be an Open House artist discussion with the full unit and their dramaturgs welcoming in audiences and stakeholders to look back on the month’s work.
The program provides:
$2,000/month for the 10 months of the unit,
Dramaturgical support,
One week workshop with a cast of actors and director,
Hybrid public reading of the play in person (as public health orders allow) with stakeholders Zooming in from other cities,
A consortium of theatre makers developing their networks, creative practices, and projects in conversation with each other, to provide a more comprehensive support and feedback network than any one individual as well as deep connections to ten producing companies and their audiences across the country.
The deadline to apply for the program is July 5, 2022. To learn more about the program, click here.
