e-bulletin 02
August 2004

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For more on the 79
Order of Canada nominees, click here.

Brian Drader New Coordinator of
NTS's Playwriting Program

Sherry Bie, Artistic Director of the English Section of the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS), is pleased to announce the appointment of Brian Drader as the new Coordinator of the NTS’s Playwriting Program, starting August 2004.

An accomplished actor, writer, dramaturge and artistic administrator, Brian Drader has been working with young playwrights for the past 13 years as both facilitator and dramaturge for the Young Emerging Playwrights Program and Playblitz (both programs co-sponsored by Manitoba Association of Playwrights and Prairie Theatre Exchange). He has written a number of plays, including PROK, which recently won him the Governor General’s Award; it has also been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year.

In addition to his responsibilities at the School, Drader will continue to work on his own writing projects. “Being guided by someone who is very much involved in his own creative process will be vitally instructive and motivating for the students,” says Bie. “He will be an inspiration to them all as a role-model.”

For more information, click here.

Summertime
and the Living Is Easy

Not at NTS – there is always something going on, and though the School may not be bustling (summer vacations tend to do that) NTS administrative staff is steadily preparing the “back to school” activities.

Summer is most definitely a busy time of year for many NTS grads, and more often than not, for 2^nd and 3^rd year students as well. NTS grads can be found centre or back stage at festivals such as Shaw, Stratford, and Blythe; at the outdoor Shakespeare events across the land; at the coast to coast Fringes, at summer theatres, at off-subscription venues and at Toronto’s SummerWorks, whose associate artistic producer is Ruth Madoc-Jones (Acting 1993).

Sixteen alumni are participating in this year’s event which runs from August 5 to 15. 2004 Acting graduate Anita Majumdar’s solo show Fish Eyes, presented at the School in April 2004, was picked up by SummerWorks and has also been commissioned by Theatre Passe-Muraille as part of their Playwriting Collective. Gregory Prest (Acting 2004) directs her at SummerWorks.

2005 graduating class students also participating this year (busy lot aren’t they!) are Livia Berius (Playwriting), Krista Colosimo, Megan Flynn and Evan Webber (all Acting).

For complete SummerWorks programming, click here.

Not one to miss out on a performance opportunity, 2005 graduating student (Acting) Ian Langlois’ NTS solo show, The Cutting of Things, was presented at Toronto’s Alchemy Theatre this past June.

HEMLOCK
at Geordie

HEMLOCK, an end of year play presented during NTS’s 2003 New Words Festival and written by Stephanie Alexander (Playwriting 2003), has been picked up by Underdog Productions and will be playing in Montreal at The Geordie Space from September 23 to October 3, 2004.

Think Tank on Cultural Policy
and Creative Communities

July 5 to 7, a dozen leading Canadian and international thinkers and arts practitioners met at Mount Engadine (Alberta) to discuss a new vision for cultural policy in Canada. The event was sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage. The group consisted of Simon Brault, Director General of NTS and Vice-Chair of the CCA; Charles Landry (UK), author of the book The Creative City; Robert Palmer (Belgium), independent international cultural advisor; Patricia Quinn, former director of the Arts Council of Ireland; Bill Ivey (USA), former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts; Michael Century, founder of the Banff Centre’s Media Arts Division; Colin Jackson, CEO of the Epcor Centre (Calgary); Sharon Lewis, actress and broadcaster; Alison Sealy-Smith, director of the Obsidian Theatre Company (Toronto); Yazmine Laroche, Head, Cities Secretariat, Privy Council Office; Cathi Charles Wherry from the First People’s Heritage, Language and Culture Council; and Burke Taylor from the City of Vancouver. Two main questions were posed to guide the discussion: “What needs to happen to ensure that cultural policy becomes a more central and integrated element of public policy in Canada?” and “Who are the key partners and what are their relative roles and responsibilities in building and advancing creative communities?”

At the end of this retreat, recommendations were drafted and a paper will be published and presented to the new minister of Canadian Heritage, the Honourable Liza Frulla.

For more information on ENSATT (in French only), click here.

NTS Program Directors
in Demand

The upcoming school year will be doubly busy for several NTS directors. In addition to their responsibilities at the School, they will also be working on projects in the professional theatre milieu. Denise Guilbault, Artistic Director of the French Section of NTS, will direct Shakepeare’s The Tempest (La Tempête), in collaboration with multimedia artists Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon. This work will be presented at Montréal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM) in February 2005.

Danièle Lévesque, Director of the Set and Costume Design Program, will create the sets for Une adoration by Nancy Huston, directed by TNM’s artistic director, Lorraine Pintal and premièring there in April 2005. In the last couple of years, Danièle has designed the sets for L’Asile de la pureté by Claude Gauvreau and L’Hiver de force by Réjean Ducharme (also presented at the Odéon in Paris), also under the direction of Lorraine Pintal.

Michel Gosselin, director of the French Production program, will reunite with Robert Lepage and assume the technical direction of the opera 1984, premiering at London’s Royal Opera House in May 2005. Robert Lepage directs and the celebrated Lorin Maazel conducts his own setting for this much anticipated new work.

Play a supporting role! - Update

The Play a Supporting Role! Campaign is a year old and over $660,000 has been raised to date. This summer, the campaign really heated up with an anonymous donation of $200,000. We are thrilled to see this support and hope for much more as we raise the other $1.5 million that will make Play a supporting role! a success. Money raised will help us to expand the national outreach of the school as well as to further develop the bursary funds, update technology and strengthen the directing program. We are hoping the summer stays hot and the National Theatre School of Canada remains a cool option.

Inspired by the fabulous successes of Toronto’s National Ballet School of Canada’s fundraising efforts, which has recently received a stunning anonymous donation of $15,000,000, NTS is multiplying its efforts to convince more and more individuals, foundations, and corporations to Play a supporting role!

If you would like to make a donation to the School, please contact Catherine Rideout - (514) 842-7954 ext. 141.

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Tel.: (514) 842-7954
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