 to you. Here we have five early career dramaturgs, each very different, each very skilled, and when I put the panel together I challenge them to do a few different things. One, I want them to introduce themselves because it drives me crazy when someone introduces the panel. I like it when people decide how they want to present themselves, so they will be introducing themselves. I ask them to choose three tactics or strategies for moving from the Academy into the profession, and then I ask them to highlight one of the projects that they're most proud of, the most excited about. Sound good? We're all on the same page? Yeah. Great. I've given them each 10 minutes maximum and they will be timed by our lovely timekeeper, so that if you see this, you're at nine minutes, if you see this, you need to stop talking. Yeah. And then that will leave us time for questions afterwards. Right, so anything, any questions before we begin? You're all in the right place, this is where you intended to be? All right, great. So Erin, let's go. Great, I'm Erin, he, I have a bio I'm going to read to you. I'm a Hamilton board theatre maker and I'm a graduate of York University's theatre studies program. I'm currently the dramaturgy internet cahoots theatre. I'm there on a PTTP grant, which is a professional theatre training program grant from theatre Ontario, so I'm getting paid for it, which is always exciting. I'm working on a bunch of things. I wear a bunch of hats. I actually started as a playwright and director. I only started dramaturgy very recently, because when I was in june's program in theatre school, I was just in as a playwright. My partner was in the program. She was a dramaturge. So this dramaturgy thing is kind of new to me, so I've been kind of thrust in it in the past year or so. So you asked us for three strategories. Wow, we're all off to a great start. You asked for three strategies out of the academy. I have more of a rambling story, so it might be good and it might be weird. So we'll begin. I'm from Hamilton, Ontario, which is a town an hour south of here that doesn't really have that developed theatre community. Hamilton is in a weird situation where you have an indie community, which is a community theatre, and you also have a regional theatre, which programs work sort of broad. So there's no real space for indie theatre. So the weird thing about Hamilton is a bunch of theatre grads go and they become hobbyists. They just vanish into the woodwork. They just do community theatre and they're stuck there forever. So my dramaturgy process in getting work is led by fear, because I don't want to go home. So because it's led by fear, in my final year of York, I was in a conundrum. I finished all of my theatre courses. I had a year full of science electives and I was like, I'm screwed. I'm going back to Hamilton. I'm going to be in Merrily. We were all along. This is going to be my life. So the first thing I did was I allied myself with a Fujian Asian-Canadian theatre. I messaged them. I got into their playwriting unit and I tried to volunteer at every single thing they did, because I really wanted to connect with a professional theatre company before I left school. So there'd be kind of a safety net the moment I left school. So that was the first really big tactic I had. My second tactic was doing the Fringe Festival. I discovered that the Fringe in Toronto at least is the general for theatre makers. I know artistic directors who scout dramaturgs, who scout lighting designers, who scout playwrights from the Toronto Fringe. More so than their actual general editions, which fascinates me. So after that I invited Nina Leakino to it and she met with me, gave me feedback, and then invited me into her director's training program. That director's training program then led to, at the end of the year, we had to direct a workshop of one of the artists in residence. From there, I kind of started getting a taste for dramaturgy, because I never thought I could direct new work. That wasn't my own, because I'm one of those directors who directs his own work, which is bad. Yeah, I'm going to let that one second. But yeah, and that's kind of how it started for me, because I had the hands-on training of Nina. And Nina was generous enough to continue the mentorship on for another year. So I got to shadow the production of Age of Arousal there. I got to shadow her on some projects. I got to attend master classes. And that's kind of where I developed, I'm not saying my toolkit, but just how I approached developing new work. After that, I met Marjorie Chan at a barbecue, and she offered for dramaturgy experience. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I have one skill. It's forming relationships with the 80s and being in the right place at the right time, and also not seeming like a parasite. I think that's one of the things I'm very aware that I intend to see to do this. It's how do you form authentic relationships with artistic directors and mentors without just asking them for help. Because I've had it happen to me, I've definitely done it to other people, and that's something I'm developing. So I guess my first point is from my strategy is do a fringe and invite 80s and curate relationships, because that's kind of what's paid my way and what's gotten me from opportunity to opportunity. My second thing is to seek out mentorships when I don't know what to do. As I said, I live in fear most of my life. I walk aside, it's raining, and I scream for a while and close my window. But also, more importantly, as a dramaturg of color, I know I'm invited to certain rooms that other dramaturgs aren't, because there's less of me. That being said, though, that means I have to be really, really, really good. Otherwise, I'm going to let those people down. One of the realities I've realized as a creator of color is that our work is often infantilized in that if you're any visible minority or any minority whatsoever, you always are seen as that play. It's like, oh, you're doing that Chinese play, you're doing that queer play, you're doing that black play. So in order to fight that, I have to be training in everything. So when a player approaches me with something, I can respond to that, or I know that department, or I can do enough sufficient research as to that forum to make sure it works. I'd say, see all those relationships, but also seek up training what you don't know. My friend told me a story recently. She was training with a salsa dancer, and she realized that he was no longer a good mentor for her, because they went to a sills class, she'd asked him if he wanted to go again. He was like, no, I'm tired of feeling like an amateur. And that was the moment she stepped away from him, because she realized he was no longer asking questions about his process, and no longer learning new skills. So I think that's something that like, because I live in this constant state of fear, I'm always asking questions and always trying to fill those holes. My third kind of strategy for getting work, I guess, is that I don't work for free. That was something I'm very, very adamant about. If no one's paying me, I'm going to find a way to get funding to support myself there. Going back to this Hamilton thing, I'm from a town full of hobbyists who work for free. If I get into that mindset, my to me my work doesn't have any value. And also, since I'm an incredibly lazy person, I need to trick myself into taking things seriously. One of the ways to trick myself into taking things seriously is asking for payment. Because then the person paying me is trusting me with their work on a financial level. So I have to up the ante by reaching them at that level. So I guess the long and short of it is my three steps for getting work are not being a hobbyist and finding ways to not return to my hometown, or if I do return to my hometown, finding a way to sufficiently pay myself and the artists I employ. Approximately working recently, I just kind of worked on it through there. I'm very impressed with myself. Approximately working recently was actually at this conference yesterday. The Mother Tongue project. I was their dramaturg yesterday, not yesterday. I was not here yesterday. But in May, I was brought on to dramaturg that project. I had produced that project with my collective then they fight theater as part of the development series. But they asked me to come back in May because they wanted to pitch it to ADs and pitch it to companies to develop them further. So what they presented me with was 10 hours of research, which they performed verbatim, which is a lot for a play. And they won my help to find a through life. That's a tangent. We're going to jump to another tangent. One of my favorite plays is played by David E. called Aquias, because David E's stage directions are amazing. One of David's stage directions says the main character's name is sin. And in one scene, the stage direction reads, the hole in sin's heart grows bigger. What does that mean? So then I went back to Mother Tongue and I was like, Oh, that's just how I anchor the way I work as a dramaturg. To me, if we're being a Western conflict driven plot structure, which is very different from an Eastern non conflict from plot structure. To me, it's a character with a hole in their heart, or a creator with a hole in their heart trying to fill that hole by going on a journey by doing things to successfully fill that hole or find another hole that exists. So going back to Mother Tongue now, 100 hours of research, they were really confused. I was really confused. I was very scared because I'd never draw much of your doggie piece. But then I realized I was like, Oh, just go back to that question. What's the hole? What's missing? So I asked them up front. I'm like, So, so why are you doing this play? What's missing? What what was missing from that hole in your heart that you're trying to fill with this play? And then everything just kind of figured itself out. So I think if to end my section, going back from a point of fear, which I'm in a constant state of fear, as I've said many times, I always go back to that whole thing whenever I approach a piece of theater. Why are why are those creators doing that play? Or so why is that character going on that journey? And what is missing from that character's heart that drags them to the journey? Which brings me back to a point I forgot. My fourth criteria, I guess, of how I secure work is that I only work in products that I really care about, which is kind of like a no brainer. But I also really believe that because I don't believe in patio resume, just because I think the reason I do get work and opportunities is because when people see one of my shows or show I've worked on, they know that everyone has been fully in that I've tricked myself into working on it with my fullest, but also that because I worked on that show, I believed in it. So in that way, because of those four criteria, I've kind of petered and curated the way I work. So when my name's on a project, people know it kind of doesn't follow an aesthetic, but follow something, a core principle that I believe in. So yeah, I guess you can take away anything from my 10 minutes. It's that I will not be returning to Hamilton. And I'm very afraid. But it motivates me because I think a fear for a lot of theater grads is that we become hobbyists, especially new out of school. We work for profit share. We work the Joe job and that consumes us. But I think as an early career dramaturg, if we demand payment, and if someone doesn't pay us when we leave the project, if we seek other ways to fund it, then it still makes us feel like we're doing the work because we are getting paid. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Colette Rado, and my pronouns are she and her. I'm originally from Alberta, where I grew up on a farm, one hour north of Calgary, and two hours south of Edmonton. I'm an emerging freelance dramaturg, as well as a performer and director. Last year, I graduated from York University, where I specialized in new play dramaturgy and devised theater. So three steps that took me to, that moved me from university to professional work were, number one, doing dramaturgy work before knowing what dramaturgy actually was. Number two, connecting with peers who wanted to write or create new work. Number three, connecting with a mentor in the industry. So step one, even if you haven't formally studied dramaturgy, that doesn't mean you can't start honing your cap. Even before I attended York, and I took the two year series of courses and you play dramaturgy taught by Judith. I was curious about it while I was studying acting at Red Deer College in Alberta. For acting practicums, we often had to do research projects on the play, playwright, and world of the play of whatever production we were acting in. My second year of college, my friends and I got into the Edmonton Fringe Festival. We wanted to do a devised show. My friend who was going to direct the piece asked me to be the dramaturg and I said, yes, having no idea what new play dramaturgy was and how different it was from production dramaturgy. But from this process, I learned that I have good instincts and observe an eye and I knew how to ask provocative questions. I continued to do new play dramaturgy while studying at York. Dramaturgy work in development by playwriting classmates as well as other peers and old college classmates who were submitting work to festivals. And what I learned was that you can't really know how to dramaturg until you try it. The best way to learn and see if it's something you really want to pursue as a career is to work with as many people as possible and practice, practice, practice. Even practicing your play analysis skills can be so helpful in learning how to articulate what you see as an audience member and what choices you think do or don't serve a piece is vital in developing your skills as a dramaturg. Step two, find people who are interested in writing or producing plays. Then let people know you're a dramaturg because, to put it bluntly, the writing process is hard and people want help. And then let word of mouth spread from there. For me being part of a playwriting dramaturgy program made it easy to create connections with peers who wanted to write plays. And thanks to that word of mouth I've been lucky in that most of the work I've done up to this point has been people approaching me looking for a dramaturg. I also had a lot of friends in devised theater courses at York who wanted to create new work for festivals but weren't necessarily in the playwriting program. So one of these festivals is the Playground Festival at York, which is a student-read festival of new works and development. And participating in this festival allowed me to collaborate with others and continue to practice my dramaturgical skills outside the classroom. I think continually building your resume even while in school can give you the upper hand of having practical experience to bring into the professional world. If you're an emerging dramaturg who's interested in new play development and dramaturgy, I can't stress enough how important it is to get involved with theater festivals. So many of these festivals are a fantastic platform for being able to experiment, collaborate, and try new things and get some production experience under your belt. And having a new play be put up in front of an audience and actually be seen and heard it can be one of the most useful development tools for playwrights and dramaturgs. Additionally working on plays that are 1530 or 45 minutes in length feels much less daunting than trying to develop full-length plays, especially as an emerging theater creator. What I learned was that creating these bonds early in your career is so important because people that you've worked with once will like more than likely end up being people that you'll work with again and again. Working on lots of different projects is great, but I think it's even better to find other people in school who have the same interests, aesthetics, and opinions on theaters you do and continue to work with them. Doing this helped me foster lifelong creative partnerships. Step three. During my last year of school, my professor Judith told me about the playwrights Guild of Canada's Creator Exchange, where emerging and established dramaturgs and playwrights could connect a network. I ended up connecting with Stephen Colela, dramaturg and associate artistic director at M People's Theatre here in Toronto. I had developed a relationship with young people's theatre over the years, having done an educational programming internship while I was in college, as well as having spent some time volunteering as a drama school assistant. After the Guild Exchange, I reached out to Stephen to see if he would be interested in taking me on as a script reader. By reading and discussing unsolicited script submissions with Stephen, I began to learn about the roles and responsibilities of a company dramaturg and how these are very different from being a freelance dramaturg. As well, Stephen invited me to sit on professional play workshops at YPT, which gave me insight into the new play workshop process, which I didn't have a lot of experience in other than our playwriting class when the players would bring in work and we would discuss it. Recently, I participated in a three-week workshop at YPT, developing a new play by Mary Ellen McLean about dyslexia. This was a really valuable experience for me in that I was able to work with a playwright like Mary Ellen who uses device and physical theatre methods to create her work. Working with a professional mentor in the industry is one of the best ways for any emerging artists to bridge the gap from school into their profession. And if you hadn't had the opportunity to train a dramaturgie like I did, I would highly encourage you for your next step to look into non-institutional training and mentorship programs. This type of experience can be so valuable in a profession like dramaturgie where having practical knowledge and experience is vital to the work. So recent professional dramaturgie project I did this year was dramaturging and co-directing Midnight Toronto, which premiered at the Sears-Rubar Festival at Buddies and Bad Tanks Theatre. This process began at the end of last summer when my colleague from York, Curtis Tbrink, asked me to dramaturg and co-direct a play he had written with the best phone line. His concept for the show was to create a post-apocalyptic concert with storytelling by a three-person band about the end of Toronto as we know it. The festival focuses on producing new experimental art in a variety of mediums and genres, with most pieces being about 25 minutes in length. He wanted the piece to involve live music and soundscape created by the actors in an integral way, which was something that neither of us had much experience or knowledge in, but something we were both excited about. Rubarb seemed like the right kind of setting to take this sort of creative risk in our work. Having almost no music training, I had no idea how to dramaturg or direct any kind of music element, but I've always loved live music and theatre that incorporates live soundscapes, which brings you back to step one about doing stuff they have no idea how to do but just trying it. As both dramaturg and co-director, I had to bring in more of my production dramaturgy skills and think about how to create a script where the texts and sounds would complement each other instead of just repeating information we already knew. With a doomsday type of text that includes sounds of sirens and helicopters, as well as romantic clear scenes and allowing you to return to a pastoral pre-industrial world, we had to figure out how to balance gentle acoustic underscoring alongside indie rock songs composed by Daniel Vick for the show. During rehearsal when we come across a word or a sentence and vote to sound, or if we wanted to underscore monologue, we would experiment with our limited instruments of a keyboard, guitar, and microphones and figure out what mood or tone we wanted to achieve. Working within a 25-minute time frame was also challenging, but luckily I had the experience of step two working on new plays with other emerging artists, mainly in festival settings, to guide me. And this was by far one of the shortest time frames I've had to work in to get a script ready from page to stage to be developed for a scheduled production, which required both new play dramaturgy and production dramaturgy simultaneously. This was a new experience for me and something I would love to continue doing in the future. By far this was the most creative and artistic I felt as a dramaturge. What I learned as I continued to shape my dramaturge career is that I really want to continue developing works like this that involve me from start to finish during the creative process. I'm excited to see what the feature has in store for me as I continue to emerge as a dramaturge. Thank you. Sabah Haak, I like to use the term creative producer to describe the kind of work I do because I'm one of, like everyone else here, I've got like just a bunch of hyphens next to my name. I found it very exhausting to keep repeating them. And creative producer is a term I learned very recently in a training program I did at Generator called the Artist Producer Training Program, which is a year long paid intensive mentorship program that's offered to six to eight emerging or new producers who want to create new work in Toronto. So I've done very similar things to Erin and Collette, so I apologize for repeating some of my advice. So before I came into York and started Judas class, I did a lot of youth programs with Shakespeare and Action Theater, Soul Pepper Theater, and the TDSB Arts Co-op. So I took every opportunity I could to make some art in whatever way I could. In high school, I did the Sirius Drama Festival where we devised our own work. So a lot of creative collaboration is in my background. And it was just very clear to me what I wanted to do, so I continued to pursue that at York. I thought I wanted to be an actor for a while and I very quickly realized that there was not much for me to act in as a performer of colour and like I just didn't want to be casted as the maid or the servant or the sister who doesn't have any lines or the best friend. And I got very exhausting, so I started investing more of my time in devised work. So I started the device theater specialisation with Elise and we also started the new play dramaturgy and playwriting program together. And I did that program as a playwright. Concurrently with my degree, I produced work with Paprika Festival which is a youth-led, year-long mentorship festival that culminates in a week-long performing arts presentation of new work. So every year, I collaborated with new ensembles, with new mentors in the professional industry and tried new things. And in second year, before I started the class of Judith, I led my first, my very first creative process that I produced. I led and I gathered my people and it was just a total dumpster fire. It's just a terrible mess because we just didn't know what we were doing and a lot of dramaturgical questions came up and we didn't know how to answer it. Thankfully, I had Elise to help me. She really saved the day and we managed to bring something beautiful together. But even as I think about it, I just think of all the stupid things we did. And to this day, Elise and I cringe about that show. So I noticed at York, there were a lot of white creators around me and it didn't feel like a big deal until after I graduated and I realized the rest of the world is pretty white, too. And I really, well, I felt very safe and very supported by Judith and Elise in my playwriting journey. They helped me create my first play, which I'm still developing. For two years, they were my support system and so I really owe the beginning of my playwriting career to Judith and this class and the support system we made. And then graduating, that support system just existed back here and moving forward. I didn't know how to navigate those spaces anymore and I didn't know what I needed as Elise got super busy and invited me to do her master's, which we'll hear more about later. So I kind of put a hold on my dramaturging and my new playwriting and started supporting other artists of color to make their own work. And that kind of became this thing that lived more outside the rehearsal room, which is something that I saw happen in the classroom with Judith. Not only did our dramaturgs dramaturge our work, they also produced the events where we got to share it. So that's what I like to call creative producing. And I learned that from Ashlyn Rose, who is the creative producer at the Theater Center and she had come and guest lectured at the Artist Producer Training Program at Generator. If you're interested in producing work and that producing is a big, big term that has multiple meanings, I would super encourage you to check out Generator Toronto. They're an amazing resource for independent artists. And so a lot of my training lives outside of formal institutionalized training and really lives within mentorship. I'm really glad I went to York despite how challenging I found to work in a university because I found so many mentors and collaborators I could create work with. But I'm also really glad that I found institutions outside of the university model to teach me and to give me practice rather than just talk about things. Like I did a lot of things and I learned on the job pretty much. And I think that's how a lot of indie artists learn in Toronto. And it sounds weird. It sounded weird to me but then I realized as I went on pretty much everyone does that. So aside from pursuing alternative education and mentorship opportunities I sought out people that I really wanted to work with and continue to work with and organizations that I identified with. So one of those organizations is Little Black Afro Theatre and they do every year a program called the Emerging Artist Project where they take on one or two emerging artists and produce a workshop of their new play. And they're supported by dramaturgs, a production manager, designers, actors and Little Black Afro funds everything and one of our mandates at the theatre is to pay everyone for their work. So no one has to feel apologetic or insecure about the work that they're doing in the room so everything around them is taken care of by the producers and then the artists can focus on the art. Yeah, so between those experiences I really sat down in the arts management world and started building my grant writing skills and my marketing skills and all those administrative skills we used to make a show happen and over time they became really, really good. Like I can write a really good grant because I practiced and I had a lot of support in editing those grants and I think it's such an important skill for new artists to have because that's how you're going to get your work funded and if you don't get your work funded you don't get your work up and working for free is such a such a terrible thing I totally did and then decided to stop doing after I graduated that's a hard line I put up but during graduate like during my undergraduate degree I really did a lot of things for free I asked a lot of people to do things for free and I mean we feel kind of uneasy except for knowing that yes we we will get experience from it but like you people need to live so that's something I put a hard I made a hard decision about after I graduated so I've worked with Elise I talk about Elise so much because I love her I've worked with Elise since we've graduated and she's continued to help me develop my play and we've really like again I feel very safe with Elise because she's a very and this is going to be my example a work that I'm really passionate about which is my work as a playwright because I think Elise is one of the few white dramaturgs that I have encountered who are really conscious about the power they wield and about how they support art that doesn't necessarily align with their experience and I've seen in the industry a lot of playwrights of color who've had their stories changed or stepped on because of collaborators who are white who don't necessarily who make who make the story about themselves rather than the playwrights so I think Judith did a really wonderful job making space for us to recognize that and I think it's really lovely that it's like Colette and Elise are very conscious about how they work and what they will work with yeah thank you My name's Adam Corrigan-Hullowicz I'm a director, dramaturg, and playwright and I'm the founding artistic director of El Vigo Roup Theater in London, Ontario and I'm in my I'm going into my fourth year at York I'm actually technically blind-credited away from qualifying for the degree but and in the fall as well is kind of one of my final year projects I'm the student dramaturg for Rochdale by David Yee and being directed by Nina Leakino and I'm currently directing and adapting The Boy with an R in His Hand in London, Ontario by James Rainey so so my first introduction so these are my three tactics my first introduction to working in theatre were with artists who were making their own work and were generating their own work this is when I was in high school and even a bit of grade school I'd kind of go and be the kid who would hang out and watch people working and so generating my own work has kind of become my mode of operation as well it's become it's what I knew and it's what I know so I was really fortunate that I had that background and when I was in high school and as well in university and in college I was producing my own work under the company LVGL Root which has been growing since I was young and is starting to become a more mature entity at this point so the benefit of that is that over this time I've been able to build some really good relationships with producing partners and with funders to support our work and I think it comes to a point that Saba made a bit as well which when you're producing your own work it's so important to be making sure you're funding your own work when you're producing it so that's kind of my first step my first step I've been really conscious about is making my own work and the mandate of LVGL Root Theatre is to produce and develop plays by London Ontario and Southwestern Ontario playwrights and what I'm really interested in is presenting the voice and aesthetic of Southwestern Ontario which is the region really south of the GTA Toronto south of Kitchener Waterloo that kind of from you know south of Kitchener Waterloo to Windsor to the border that area is is kind of the area I'm interested in it's the area I grew up in I'm from London and it's where I draw a lot of my inspiration from as a playwright as well as a dramaturge and a director so what's changed for the company really is since I completed my preliminary dramaturgy training is looking at running this company now from the point of view of a dramaturge opposed from a director-producer and that kind of brings me to my my next strategy that I've been really aware of this spring especially which is slowing down as I move out of the academy out of training and into the professional realm slowing down my producing my development cycle both as a playwright and as a dramaturge on the projects I'm working on you know sometimes the work I've been part of creating the past when you're in school you have limited time you have limited resources sometimes so the outside projects you create sometimes about six months of development which is a very very compressed time depending on the project but for me it feels a compressed time so what I've been really aware of is slowing down the development of the works I'm working on and next year that's leading me right now to decide that the works I'm going to produce are mostly going to be works that we have previously done the revivals of previous productions or the presenting of other people's work or the a new production of a previously produced and previously written play just to slow us down in that development time I feel like when I come out of school I'm going at this speed and I just need to go back a little bit and slowing down and then my third strategy is more of a mindset that I've been thinking of and it was whatever described in Hamilton it's a similar dynamic to the dynamic of London and I would think I would go on a limb and say I think it's a similar dynamic to a lot of mid-sized to small Canadian cities where you can come out of school and it's very easy to become a hobbyist or not get started get paid for your work so one of the the minds that I've been really conscious of is as I work in London is that I say I'm based in London but I'm not stuck in London I have friends who can who have fallen into that trap and realize they're in that trap of going oh boy I'm only doing work in this little enclave of people I'm not getting out I'm not traveling I'm not doing work elsewhere and I'm not even and sometimes if you're in that stuck mentality you get to the point where you're not even really looking for opportunities outside of your little your little bubble so I've been really aware of looking for work opportunities education opportunities across Canada because it's really I think important at my stage and those I think often when you're emerging as a dramaturge to really be aware of the theatre cultures across the country especially for me my work is really about regionalism so if I'm going to do a good job hopefully doing regional dramaturgy I need to be aware of what the other regions are like what's happening across the country so the project a project that I've been really excited about that I'm working on currently and been working on since November will continue to be working until probably around next November is with another company in London new professional company that's starting in London called Troubadour Theatre and I've been working as the co-dramaturg on their inaugural playwrights unit and when I was invited to join Troubadour one of the things that I said right away was I want to focus on on dramaturgy resources for London this was really important to me and that was one of the reasons I came on board to be part of that company and this is partly because of my appreciation of the cultural past the artistic past of the London area in the late 50s and in the 60s London was a really epicenter of counterculture art especially visual art people like Jack Chambers and Greg Kernaux who you can if you're not aware of their work you can google and see some really amazing visual art also the pioneering Canadian dramatist James Rainey lived and worked in London for most of his life he was a professor at University or at the University of Western Ontario and he did a lot of the development of his work in that area his most famous work and probably the most famous play to come out of London is the Donnelly Trilogy which is the documentation of the massacre of the Donnelly family not from a sensationalized point of view but from a point of view of asking why this happened what's this community like it's a very powerful piece of theatre and worth reading I think and worth seeing if you get the chance so in all of Rainey's work Rainey's work I get my inspiration from a lot because in all of Rainey's work even if it's not pronounced his plays are saturated with regionalism of southwestern Ontario and then again in the 1990s to about 2010 there was a kind of second wave of independent theatre being made in London often on a small budget and then as the resources weren't there for that work to develop further it moved away the artists moved away from that area so there's now a new wave of theatre makers who've kind of gravitated to London in the last couple of years young actors and directors who can't afford to live in Toronto or choose to live in a smaller centre we're a bit further away we're a bit more in our own place than the cities around the GTA so you get a sense of being somewhere a bit different so these artists I really felt was important to be starting to provide a dramaturgy resource for them so in the first dramaturgy in the first playwright unit for Troubadour we've approached we selected four playwrights from the application process who have been from emerging to to establish points in their career and a lot of the work they're doing right now the work that's being done in London right now is magic realism a lot of it I see is kind of being a rejection of the kind of commercial theatre that was being done in London both professionally and in the amateur realm kind of since that second wave of independent theatre stopped in the city so I've really been excited about starting to provide a resource for them for their development of these works which are really exciting and also to be being sure that in the workshopping of the plays we're hiring professional actors to be part of that process at that point so that's the project I'm really excited about right now I've been really excited about returning to London out of the academy and there's a lot of challenges and complications that also arise when you're doing work that's distinctly regional I'm being really aware of right now deciding what voices I'm actually document or giving resources to making sure that we actually are truly reflecting the community that is there and that's something that I'm just starting on and there's a lot of challenges and complications with that but that's what I'm excited about right now is Elise Lacroix I use she, her, hers pronouns I grew up in Vancouver and in Burlington, Ontario which is just outside of Hamilton and currently I'm finishing up my MA at the University of Alberta I am a dramaturgy intern with workshop West Playwrights Theatre in Edmonton the editorial assistant on the collection performing exile foreign bodies and I have presented my research on dramaturgy at the CATR conference at community association of theatre research conference this year and last year and I'm also a freelance dramaturg lots of things the topic of my thesis research is how intercultural development dramaturgy relationships are navigated with a focus on dramaturgs working in Toronto which I'm actually presenting about on a panel right after this at 3.30 like my colleagues up here with me I discovered dramaturgy in undergrad and it was a fantastic playwriting class at York University in Toronto where I had the chance to work directly with student playwrights to start developing my own practice the question of course became which is at the center of this panel's discussion how to move from working with fellow students in undergrad to the professional world directly out of my undergraduate degree I chose to enter grad school so now that I come to the end of my second degree I find myself in the middle of the process of building my own bridge between the academy and the profession but I did not just start this process now I have been pushing to get opportunities to work as a dramaturge beyond the academy for years now the first significant step I took to start doing dramaturgy outside of school began during my undergrad once I figured out dramaturgy was something I loved I made the title dramaturge part of the story I tell about myself to others I'm a lease I'm a dramaturge and in many cases this was followed by a brief explanation of what that means and how it could be helpful to whoever I was speaking with it's incredible how many opportunities can appear in and out of school just because people know you as a dramaturge and how that might help them besides simply telling everyone I encounter that I am a dramaturge and what that is the second significant step I have taken towards working in the profession involves active pursuit of opportunities I think about the dramaturge's role as relational which it is the dramaturge exists in relationship to artists and to their work what would the role of the dramaturge be without artists to work with part of my own journey of doing work outside of school has involved actively pursuing opportunities I'm interested in and not just waiting for someone to say hey I want to work with you and in some cases actually creating opportunities where they didn't exist before because I wasn't excited about what I was finding and the projects that were happening around me as a result of simply approaching people I want to work with and offering to be a support to their process I have worked on many friend shows with the emerging artist project a little black afro theater company and on a few main stage productions at the U of A by the second year of my master's program however I honestly was missing working with playwrights on new work production dramaturgy is much better known at the U of A and that's the opportunities that I was having out there so I approached the artistic director of the next stage festival a new works festival for current students and recent alumni at the U of A about possibly being the dramaturge of the festival the position was already filled so the AD and I ended up working together to create a playwright's unit as part of the festival which I coordinated and served as dramaturge for as well as the produce shows as part of the traditional festival format four playwrights were chosen as part of the unit who I worked with for several months culminating in the stage reading of the scripts in development creating my own opportunity gave me the chance to try things the way I wanted to to take everything I had learned in and out of school and attempt to create the best environment for the four playwrights to foster their work and to develop as artists on my own terms this kind of opportunity for emerging playwrights has not existed at U of A for quite some time and I'm happy to say that they're continuing the playwright's unit next year the third and perhaps most significant step I've taken towards professional career dramaturgy has been what I've done with my choice to go back to school and get a degree in which I conducted my own original research leaving my undergrad I wanted to make my graduate school experience part of bridging my dramaturgy work from school into the profession I knew I wanted to learn more about dramaturgy and to learn more about interculturalism and Canadian theater for my research I chose to interview six dramaturgs with experience working across cultures in Toronto I picked people with experience related to my topic and also people who I honestly just wanted to have a chance to sit down and talk to in the interviews I asked questions that related both to the theoretical side of my research but also to the practical side of the dramaturgy profession the six people I spoke with were incredibly generous I learned more about how to navigate the complexity of the profession than I could possibly have done just seeking out opportunities to work with my peers and I started professional relationships with some very accomplished people who I greatly respected admire Out of this I realized that I don't need to have the excuse of doing thesis research to talk to people Dramaturks are generally very generous people who are genuinely curious about the work that would like to talk to you if you're genuinely curious about their work Since last summer when I finished my formal research I returned to Edmonton and started approaching artists in the community asking if they would talk to me about their work Among those that I agreed to meet with me was Vern Teeson at Workshop West Playwright Theatre I met with him at the company office we talked about dramaturgy and Canadian theatre Unlike in my interviews where the focus was mostly on the person I was interviewing I had the opportunity with Vern to talk about myself What I love about dramaturgy I think about the work being done at Workshop West and what I want going into the theatre world after school as well as to ask Vern all the questions I wanted to ask him This led to the work I'm doing right now which I'm very excited about a grant funded dramaturgy internship with Workshop West that started in January and it's still ongoing Throughout the winter I was reading script submissions helping to support the season in various ways Now that I've defended my thesis my work with the company has started to increase What I'm working on right now is providing dramaturgy support for the first show in the 2018-2019 Season Matara by Connie Massing Fantastic As well as developing the outreach plans for the production and working to find funding and community partners for the production as well This opportunity being my first dramaturgy related work in an institution has given me experience working to support new works in development at the organisational level which I'm very excited about And just before I conclude what in this short presentation sounds like the very straightforward story of how I worked to enter into the dramaturgy profession I want to add that this process has been both very rewarding and extraordinarily challenging at times Part of why I feel at home in the role of the dramaturgy is that I prefer to ask questions and listen when talking to others Learning how to articulate my story to people especially people I have just met is an ongoing process Approaching people and asking them for their time or asking them for opportunities when they're not existent is terrifying Asking for what I want I have been told no countless times and every rejection is difficult but I have gained so much from asking and taking those risks As for right now as I move forward now that I am finishing my master's thesis I will continue focusing on the opportunity in front of Youth Workshop West And as well as the challenge of working and talking with people about my interests in dramaturgy and actively seeking out opportunities to practice what I'm most passionate about which is working with artists to develop new Canadian stories for our stages Thank you Super offering your perspectives all very different yet there are things that do spread through that you can recognize sometimes not articulated the same way but definitely that need to put a foot out into that profession no matter how scary it is and make contact with people actively not just have coffee but actually talk to them and reveal a little bit about what you want Is there anybody in the audience that has a question either for any of the panelists or something that they want to express about their own journey So I feel like I have one of the threats in terms of your experiences both just as New York University grads and also just actually mostly as sort of university grads that's really awesome that sounds pretty helpful in terms of your playwriting unit was the connections that you had there and so I just graduated from my undergraduate program at Boston University in May so I am like I'm like a month into early career but I went to a primarily performance based program that got into dramatic literature and text did something that I could focus on a little bit more in the upper years while simultaneously pursuing and creating affordable science so I'm sorry that I'm talking in niche but I'm interested in if you guys have any thoughts of where you're at right now of how I don't feel like I had I didn't take the opportunity I don't want to say what I'm saying I didn't have the internships over the summers in the same way that I feel like you guys have articulated and that's something that I'm still interested in pursuing but I'm worried that like my youth is done because I'm no longer in the university setting and so I'm curious like how you might navigate that if your experience with like introducing myself to professional companies in that way is already the post-grad stage does that make sense? Does that make sense to you school? I'm actually in the same boat because all my internships came after school okay because I trained as a playwright and dramaturgy was like just a year ago my big thing is I just meet with ADs and we shoot the shit and then I'm making at some point during the conversation things are going well I asked them for something specific and I think the fact that you're eager the fact that like you know a lot of the polycyt which is really exciting because like that's a big skill especially what's going down where you're from yeah but I'd say just like meet with them and do the ask age isn't anything one of my favorite actress in the city was working in an administrative job for much years she's like in her late 30s and she's like booking all of these things now and she had no action training beside Yolanda Bonnell is her name but yeah she didn't act before went to theater school at like 32 36 went to Stratford and now so age is not a factor and I also think just the fact that like your training is so you're in two different pots is really exciting especially for an AD or anyone who's looking at working on something in the political sphere so I'd say don't feel intimidated by that I would add to that that before you contact an artistic director learn everything you can about them and their theater so don't go in and ask high school questions it's like what does your theater do what's your mandate so you know we have this thing called the internet that's very helpful so and don't call them the day after or no thing right anybody else want to answer that can you speak to that I'm so same as Erin it's like political science I'm just like whoa that is something like very cool to advertise about yourself as a drama team like I think when you're you're going out into the profession like you have to identify what's special about you as a dramaturg like really like practice like writing like what is your descriptor as a dramaturg what are the areas you specialize in or what you can offer people as a dramaturg and it's a it's a lifelong career and like theater is like I know a lot of people really don't like they say overnight success but it's really like 10 years of writing in the work so you gotta be ready for a long haul try and figure out a way that if somebody says tell me about yourself you have an answer for it that has the beginning and middle and an end learn how not to be embarrassed to identify who you are and what you want right that's how you sell yourself yeah because they don't know and that goes so far beyond what's written on a resume or a cg what else yeah Lisa Lisa she heard from us and I'm curious because so many of you spoke about your hyphenates and the many roles that you sort of necessarily probably very much enjoy playing I was wondering if I could ask the panel at large how do you negotiate how do you advertise she's a terribly neoliberal word your hyphenates when when meeting new mentors when pursuing new opportunities because I imagine some can be leveraged in some situations and some cannot I'm coming from a very academic background right now and I feel like sometimes trying to advertise myself as the artist academic can be a bit of a drawback people hear academic names like oh it's going to come in and criticize everything and you tell me how I work is problematic and I mean yes I have but maybe that's what I can be doing to help so I'm just curious how you like you you mentioned that you'd like the term creative producer and I'm just wondering about you want to elaborate on that or if other people want to chime in with how they negotiate what their hyphens are what's on their business card and how that changes depending on what work you're trying to do in the moment and that again is my great thought um okay yeah I think it's a really challenging thing to negotiate and I struggled with that for a very long time especially like when Judith asked me to be here I was like am I a drama director? I'm not sure and then I realized I was and I think it really I think people have so many skills and I think we live in this climate where we put each other in boxes and those boxes don't exist anymore like we don't we don't make theater in in separate rooms like we all come together and we share ideas and so that's being reflected in how we talk about ourselves as artists and so this is why terms like creative producer artist producer and the term producer itself is being expanded it is because our practices are expanding so I think it's less about what you want to do specifically in a room and more about what your mandate is as an artist and what you stand for and who you want to work with and that's definitely how I got into rooms once I articulated what I stand for my career blew up and so it's like you can call yourself whatever you want but I'm going to work with you because I like you and we're going to do good things together I really feel like the three kind of titles that I always throw on my bio director, dramaturg, playwright they really are all equal thirds and they all inform what I do I learned so much about being a dramaturg from working with my dramaturg is when I'm a playwright and I'm in that space and then directing new work as well is something that informs that so like all three of those things it's interesting because I kind of thought for a while is there a better one word title I can give myself but they really do inform me and they're equally all things that I really really am passionate about I really love doing and I wouldn't be happy if I suddenly wasn't doing one of those three it's interesting though depending on the show I realize subconsciously I reorder the three and depending on who I'm about to talk to I reorder the three and I'm analyzing now why that is and because there's teams there appears to be on the surface no rhyme or reason but I'm realizing they're saying things about my you know insecurities or securities in certain areas that's what you're trying to sell yeah what I'm trying to sell the same way you don't you tailor a resume to pie for a job you're going to change your order of things depending on who you want to talk to yes my name is Ariane I'm going to follow up your question with the same thing at a different stage normally because after four other careers and creating couple of majors two students that now missed in the United States for citizen accountability on corporate responsibility you know climate change as a financial issue I was teaching that and discovered into a class an acting class and another and then a lot of directing classes and drama churches were in love and absolutely a drama church in the way I've done everything in my life you know and you know it's all about bridging and interpreting cultures and whether it's within a corporation or across foreign languages so but I just really add to it that my experience is when you have the opportunity to meet with someone in an 80-year-old or I blew one once but once she said let's meet it's for a longer conversation I then put my ass in the email and she close in the audience yeah she then just got together and then found the right specific thing so that was very painful much to learn and then the other thing is I've decided I can't do online internship at Pages because they always ask for a birthday and there's such an ageism and assumption that everybody applying is going to be very young and I want to show that I have a huge amount to offer especially in drama church you know study 10 languages and so and if they see my birthday it's just going to disqualify me right away so that's that's a strange thing so I need to understand how to do the network in a way particularly also I assume I'm a professor I have been a professor but but to sort of speak as it as it equal kind of socially and professionally and then find a way of working with them oddly instead of working for them so it's kind of interesting thing that's going on in my life for me because I want to work in this area and I can't go through the regular applications through or I just get turned I don't even answer thank you for sharing that it's it moves me deeply I think the best response I would have to that is try to get in if whether it's formal or informal meetings in person and share who you are you know I think there's there's going to be ages and we know it exists and it sucks and there's no way around that but I think you're probably absolutely right that if you're doing something on paper and you're just a piece of your name and a number then you're going to be dismissed a lot faster than if you're actually giving a space in the room to make your case and then you're going to sit down yeah I mean it's just me getting down off a wonderful producer in New York and she had actually just addressed the League of Professional Theatre Women saying you know women who've had children and had other careers and then go into this she was really urging that and that's what I had done so I spoke to her with a warm welcome but um they'd parted their lives how to we have to position how to ease in the way rather than being wanting to there's also the negotiation between positioning yourself as a sage and positioning yourself as a seeker yeah because it looks like you need to do both yeah and I don't know how to do that yeah but that's I'm learning yeah that's that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the I don't know that you guys have websites yeah yeah okay so I don't really you were to advertise yourself as like director like actor like something look with more material or like touch I like things if you can have photos and then image and then videos as a drama journey like how do you advertise your work because often it doesn't actually like it's not your specific like work that comes to fruition but it's like the process of the actual materials like how would you advertise as a portfolio area in like whatever terms I advertise it very visually with those photos and then I don't necessarily like write an essay about it on my website but I do whip up a paragraph about the artist the work that they're doing and how I helped I think that's enough for a website and those deeper conversations tend for me to happen in person with the people and I think a website is just a really handy tool to make a resume look really beautiful and so I have so I've thought very carefully about how I want to be seen and then whose work I've put at the top and in the middle in the bottom yeah and I think like less is more I just find it so powerful to say this really small thing about something I'm so proud of and then I think it speaks volumes so I've yeah so it's like presenting the menu rather than the whole meal yeah anybody else yeah um I just had a question about unpaid work don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't um in finding funding you can use something I've heard I was just curious about how how yeah how you get into it go ahead great cool well if I'm doing the occasional unpaid job sometimes I break my rule um it's what am I getting out of it that's the flip side like am I getting something that's rewarding that can my whole thing is like if I have a shift at my catering job which pays me $18 an hour and gives me a free meal what will stop me from going there to work in this unpaid project so I've been diagramming that if I'm doing unpaid work that's my that's my the model in terms of funding it depends on what you're what you're working on I know with theater Ontario I have a PCTP training grant which if you're an Ontario resident I don't know if you are ooh so this this advice might not be helpful for you at all but in Ontario there exists a training grant where you can several training grants where you design your own curriculum with a mentor in the city and you just say I want to get paid x amount of dollars for this amount of hours and the Ontario says yes or the Ontario says no there's a lot of other steps too but um that's kind of that's kind of the way I'm able to fund my training also the Toronto Arts Council Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council have where you can apply for workshop funding so you make sure you get paid a wage there I find and maybe it's like a tangent when we talk about grant writing but like a good grant to me is like a good story I haven't been on the TAC jury you're writing anybody can read grant speak I know when I was in the TAC jury we threw out the grants that were full of grants because they bored us it was like yes that you have seen competent yes but it's like you're there because you're a storyteller you're there because the story is important you're there because and there are a bunch of tangible things that they do help so don't totally throw out the grant speak but you're there to tell them a story and that's to me how you get funding and of course you have to do an after budget and you have to like actually figure out so you're not saying I'm going to make a million dollars tonight but yeah it's an interesting negotiation between making your your story stand out and then having the facts to back up why they should give you the money but if you can do that we are fortunate here and that we do have a lot of funding bodies I don't know how many of them we're going to last with current provincial provincial government which is slicing and dicing we call him Trump light what I was going to add to that is I the also I think is really important finding producing partners and that's what he gets in my experience at least I find the producing partner finding a partner comes before getting the grant because then you're able to show that you have that support already the network you have the network you know for the and it doesn't only have to be the obvious one either five years ago I struck up a partnership with a heritage museum in the London area that has an old barn now we do the shows in an old barn and all my friends said well this that's people are going to think it's stodgy they're going to think oh my goodness this is why are we going out to this you know place it was fairly around the place they I jokingly said it's a museum of waspiness because because it is it was but it's developed and it's growing and the work we've been able to get going there has been really different and really outside of what people expect in that setting so there was an there was an example that people were going well it's not even gonna work or is there gonna come they had a great venue they gave giving us so much support in kind and from there the funding followed and what we've been able to do is push what even was considered history and push what was considered content that could be seen in there in some really exciting places and that's that's still the beginning journey but I'm excited about that and jump on that too a partner makes the project more viable because it ensures that you have resources already ready to go so the moment you get funding you can run with it so definitely yeah I love the band what are some of the questions that you'd like to ask of people as you are looking into having a focusing relationship I hope to make sure it's going to be what to say an equal tenable good experience for you I once worked on a project where the producer was trying to build power to change things obviously you can have conversations early on to try to negotiate that before it becomes an issue but what's equal are some of the best ways to find people who will lead the best people for you it's a big question I think what I look for with anyone I want to work with is is if there's an element if they trust me and if I trust them and you can almost in a moment know if someone trusts you or not and as a director I've been in situations too where I realize the person wasn't trusting me wasn't trusting what I saw could be done with the work and in those places they say that was really good I don't think it's going to turn out so I think gay asking yourself after that first meeting do I feel like I'm being trusted by this potential partner to me that's the most important one I think I think there's also no guarantees I think we've all been in positions where we thought it was going to be a great partnership and three weeks into it it's like what the hell runs screaming into the night but are there particular things that you look for when you're putting together a partnership or when you're trying to figure out if this is this like if it's a first-time partnership I think contracts help and just absolutely like put it down on paper so sure if I'm working for free or on a rarium like I have to really like be honest about the amount of hours that you can commit to a project yeah I recommend that to anybody who's going out whether you're experienced or emerging is put down on paper what both of you have and what both of you have is your expectation whether it's in terms of hours duties and responsibilities money and sign it I mean it's probably not worth the paper it's written on legoi but it certainly gives you both something to document to work from anything else that you look for when you're trying to figure out if something's going to be a feasible partnership do you know what I do what do you do at least that's the question that's the question I ask oh is do you know what I do sorry do you know what I do sorry yeah that's one of the when I'm working with I hear this hello Luke I want to make sure that they know that what I do and what I can bring to them so that when and when we're that's where a contract comes really really handy because you can you can say this is what I can do so three weeks down the line and you're like I I really want my voice to be heard and you're like carrying me well you knew that I was going to be doing this why are you upset I'm doing this or you didn't I didn't say I was going to do that why do you think I'm going to so it's because there's so much misinformation misunderstanding about what a drama tour does but also every drama tour is so different so you can't assume that I'm going to bring the same thing to the process as anyone up here might bring for the process that is my addition to that I do coffee that's my thing we do coffee and we talk about anything but theater for the first three minutes I usually ask them what for their movies are what if your plays are so basically what do you date I date them it's speed date that's that's my process like we sit down and from that first meeting I can tell it within those 30 minutes just like any other date is this going to work or am I going to leave immediately just because like it's so personal like even if I really care about your project or like or like everything excites me about it if we're not going to click or if we're not going to get along that I'm not the right person for you because it's so personal even though when we are getting paid there's so much emotional labor into it potentially so I want to make sure that like it's a good experience even if we don't like the same movies that at least like we're cool anybody else yeah one more um this might be an oddly specific question but um like the program and the university that I come from is very it's very design oriented and and then performance oriented so there really wasn't a trauma-searchable concentration for say but I think one of the opportunities that it kind of afforded me was because it was more design oriented and I did start in the technical production concentration was as a dramaturge I kind of got a lot a lot of experience working directly with designers but as as I was kind of on my way out I was told that this isn't don't expect to kind of do this on a regular basis because there is a separation of designers and dramaters and and I'm and because the program isn't geared towards what I do I was just curious is that your experiences like is that in your experience or was is that something I just shouldn't believe because that's that's really been something that I've been having a difficult time trying to figure out as I navigate starting my professional career is I have a lot of skills that are geared towards aiding designers and so kind of hearing that was very jarring and kind of terrifying because I felt like that was probably kind of ripping the carpet out from under me right as I'm about to step into the career it's what makes you unique I mean you know the old expression you've got to have a gimmick I mean you you come with a training that not everybody has I would say that's a positive not a negative it may not work for each job but I would think that people would kill for that kind of experience I think it's well just last year at the Blythe Festival credit I think on almost every show was visual dramaturge was one person who is as their visual dramaturge did the video design as well but was I thought how brilliant this is a company and a directors who are really aware of thinking about what's being seen and I think one of Canada's great ones Robert LaPage there's someone who combines directing and visual or a dramaturgy of visuals that's that's what he does that's that's I don't personally I feel like we separate the visual and the design from the acting and the words so much but they're really all in one I love design I think it's combines together so much I mean I think you'll have to figure out when you're looking for work what are the companies and who are the artists who will acknowledge and accept what you're offering it's not going to be for everybody but yeah absolutely we have people here who do that as their primary job or anybody else I think that's time where it's 350 thank you so much for not going on the best tour that's what we're fighting with yes thank you