“Right Here, Write Now”
3 Playwrights Respond to our Altered World
“Right Here, Write Now”
YPT’s New Online Play Festival
“…we are in for some
WONDERFUL THEATRE RIGHT IN OUR HOMES.”
– OnStage Blog
Dec. 7, 8 & 11, 2020
YPT’s YouTube channel
Right Here, Write Now, a new play festival introduced in June, returns with its latest series of live-streamed readings, featuring contemporary playwrights responding to these extraordinary times. The series includes playwright/actor Jeff Ho (YPT’s Antigone:方; Ophelia in Why Not’s Prince Hamlet); Icelandic playwright/author Andri Snær Magnason (YPT’s Blue Planet); and playwright/actor Makambe K Simamba (Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, b current performing arts; Artist in Residence, Tarragon). The Festival takes place Dec. 7, 8 & 11 at 7PM. A recorded version will be made available to schools with optional pre- and post-show workshops.
Monday, December 7 at 7PM
The Livestream
Staying home can saves lives. So might going out in the streets.
Written by Makambe K Simamba
Directed by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Dramaturg: Stephen Colella
Featuring Filsan Dualeh & Hodan Dualeh
Recommended for ages 12 & up
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
Tuesday, December 8 at 7PM
f
T0SKA has never met his friend irl. Now he’s gone.
Written by Jeff Ho
Director/Dramaturg: Stephen Colella
Assistant Director/Dramaturg: Karthy Chin
Featuring Anthony Perpuse
Recommended for ages 13 & up
Content Advisory: some strong language.
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
Friday, December 11 at 7PM
Unboxing Grandmother
This holiday, only a fairy tale may save the day.
Written by Andri Snær Magnason
Directed by Allen MacInnis
Featuring Maja Ardal & Sadie Laflamme-Snow
Recommended for ages 6-12
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
The Playwrights:
Jeff Ho
Jeff Ho is a Toronto-based theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong. Favourite acting credits include: Hana’s Suitcase (Tour: Toronto/Montreal/Seattle/YPT); trace (Factory Theatre, NAC); Box 4901 (Buddies in Bad Times); Ophelia in Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre National Tour: Canadian Stage, PuSh Festival, National Arts Centre); Unknown Soldier (lemontree/Architect Theatre); Murderers Confess at Christmastime (OutsideTheMarch); Kim’s Convenience (CBC); The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu); Orphan Black (BBC America).
As a playwright, his works include Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land), produced by Saga Collectif; Antigone: 方, produced by YPT; and trace, produced by Factory Theatre/b current performing arts/National Arts Centre. He has held residencies with the Stratford Festival, Nightswimming, Cahoots, the Banff Playwrights Lab, Factory Theatre and Tarragon Theatre. His works are published by Playwrights Canada Press.
Jeff is the Company Dramaturge with OutsideTheMarch. He is grateful to have been honoured with a Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play (Iphigenia); nominated for four Dora Awards, thrice for Performance (Box 4901, Prince Hamlet, Hana’s Suitcase) and once as a Playwright (Iphigenia); the Bulmash-Siegal Playwright Award (Tarragon Theatre); the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Award for a Young Canadian Playwright, and a Harold Award (House of Nadia Ross). He is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
Andri Snær Magnason
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer, born in Reykjavík in 1973. Andri has written novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays and films. He is known for his imagination, humour and activism and as a popular public speaker. Magnason’s latest book, On Time and Water, is coming out in 22 languages soon. His book, The Casket of Time was published in English in 2019 by Restless Books. The Casket of Time won the Icelandic Literary Award and was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016, along with books by Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. His novel LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France, and “Novel of the Year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. His book Dreamland, a self help manual for a frightened nation, has contributed to a new energy policy in Iceland and the vision of the Highland National Park in the Central Highlands of Iceland. He also directed Dreamland, a feature-length documentary film based on the book. Known for his unusual approach, his second book of poetry, Bónus Poetry is one of the most sold volumes of poetry in Iceland, published by Bónus Supermarkets. Andri appears in the Oscar Award winning documentary “Inside Job” by Charles Ferguson. Andri Snær Magnason also ran for president in Iceland in 2016 as an independent candidate and came third in the election. He currently lives in Reykjavík with his wife Margrét, and four children.
Makambe Simamba
Makambe K Simamba is a Dora Award-winning playwright and actor for her solo work, Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers (b current performing arts). She recently co-directed inVISIBLE (Too) at the University of Lethbridge. Selected acting credits include Winners and Losers (Chromatic Theatre); A Chitenge Story (Handsome Alice); GIANT (Ghost River Theatre); Bea (Sage Theatre); SIA (Pyretic Productions); inVISIBLE (Handsome Alice); Burn Your Maps (Cinelou Films); Grand Army (Netflix); and Young Drunk Punk (Citytv). Makambe is a national award-winning playwright whose work includes Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, A Chitenge Story, Makambe Speaks, MUD and The Drum Major Instinct. She is the 2020/21 Urjo Kareda Artist in Residence at Tarragon Theatre. Makambe is a proud Zambian whose intention is to be of service through her ability to tell stories.
SPRING 2020
Written by award-winning playwrights Kevin Dyer, Anita Majumdar and Christine Quintana over the past two months, these new plays in development respond to the challenges faced by young people living in a world altered by a global pandemic.
“Part of YPT’s programming vision is ensuring we create artistic works that speak to the contemporary lives of young people,” said Artistic Director Allen MacInnis. “This rapidly-created, online play festival responds to that need for relevance. We are in the midst of a time of enormous change and the writers of these short plays have all been asked to consider what might we make of this moment?”
Monday, May 25:
The Girl, Her Mum and The Raccoon With No Name
Is it worse to be stuck alone or trapped together?
Written by Kevin Dyer
Directed by Stephen Colella
Featuring Nina Lee Aquino & Eponine Lee
Recommended for Ages 9-13
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
“…what a way to kick off a new online play festival.‘The Girl, Her Mum and The Raccoon with No Name’ is a smart introduction to the Right Here, Write Now Festival…a fantastic story of a young person dealing with life during quarantine. If this is any indication of what is to come, we are in for some wonderful theatre right in our homes.” – OnStage Blog
Wednesday, May 27:
Flower Girl
Saving the planet is more important than a really great party, right?
Written by Anita Majumdar
Directed by Stephen Colella
Featuring Nicco Lorenzo Garcia & Anita Majumdar
Recommended for Ages 14 & Up
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
“Don’t miss the opportunity to see a show that poses some difficult questions as we start the process of getting back to normal, or a new normal.” – OnStage Blog
Friday, May 29:
hey you
Be how others perceive you or be…just you?
Written by Christine Quintana
Directed by Stephen Colella
Featuring Rhiannon Collett
Recommended for Ages 12 & Up
Click here for the play synopsis, discussion questions, activities and more.
The Playwrights
KEVIN DYER
Kevin Dyer lives in Wales. He is Artistic Associate at Farnham Maltings and Associate Writer for Action Transport Theatre. He writes, directs, leads writing courses, is a poet and a story-teller. He has been awarded the ‘International Inspirational Playwright Award’ by ASSITEJ at their World Congress in Cape Town, won the UK Writers’ Guild Award for Best Play for Young People, and has been shortlisted a dozen times for other awards. His adaptation of The Hobbit won the UK Theatre Awards ‘Best Production’. He has a long association with YPT. He wrote The Monster Under the Bed, Minotaur and Under the Stairs for them. YPT is currently developing his latest play The Fixing Girl – an adventure in a shed with pirates, buttered toast and a man who isn’t there.
ANITA MAJUMDAR
Anita Majumdar is an acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and holds a Bachelor of Arts at the University of British Columbia in Theatre, English and South Asian Languages. A student of kathak, odissi and bharatanatyam classical Indian dances, Anita has danced and choreographed contemporary hybrids of these forms for over two decades alongside her playwriting work. As a playwright, Anita was awarded Canada’s Governor General’s Protégé Prize in playwriting where she was mentored by John Murrell and was one of 50 artists invited to celebrate the Canada Council for the Arts 50th Anniversary. She has also been a writer in the Tarragon Writer’s Unit, the Cahoots Hot House Writer’s Unit, playwright in residence with Nightswimming and been invited to attend the Banff Playwright’s Lab on multiple occasions. Her most produced and toured work, the Fish Eyes Trilogy, is published with graphic illustrations by Playwrights Canada Press and in 2017 she completed her Master of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. As well, she was the recipient of Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance (Boys with Cars, Nightswimming/Young People’s Theatre) that same year. Recently, Anita completed a recording of the Fish Eyes Trilogy for CBC Radio’s PlayME. Currently, Anita is working with Nightswimming in Toronto where she is commissioned to write a new work, The Exercise Play.
CHRISTINE QUINTANA
Christine is a playwright, actor, and co-artistic director of Delinquent Theatre (delinquenttheatre.com). She has recently appeared on stage for Electric Company Theatre, Caravan Farm Theatre, Gateway Theatre, Ruby Slippers Theatre, and Theatre Replacement. Christine is currently working on plays for Young People’s Theatre, Neworld Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, the Belfry Theatre and the Arts Club Theatre Company. She is a founding member of CALTAC, graduate of UBC’s BFA Acting Program and the 2017 Siminovitch Protégée Prize winner for Playwriting. christinequintana.ca.