the frank is pleased to announce the plays and playwrights selected for Clean Sheets 2014:
–Nicola Harwood (Vancouver, BC): Buffalo Girls
–Bill Marchant (Vancouver, BC): Husk
–Rafael Antonio Renderos (Toronto, ON): Salvador
Thank you to everyone who submitted–it was our largest intake in years and the quality was exceptionally high, so narrowing it down to three plays was very difficult.
This year’s Advisory Committee included Christopher Cook, Michael Dobbin and Dorothy Dittrich.
Now in its 6th year, the 2014 Clean Sheets is the frank’s renowned national play-reading series of new queer-themed plays in development. We select 2-4 plays and pair the playwrights up with Vancouver’s top dramaturges, who develop the play with them for a period of three months leading up to a workshop and public reading
The plays will be given a public reading as part of the Queer Arts Festival on July 30, 2014 at the Roundhouse Performance Centre. Admission is free.
MORE ABOUT THE PLAYS:
BUFFALO GIRLS: Extinction threatens. Absurdist comedy and cabaret collide in a failing circus on the plains, where we find three mannish women performing as freaks of nature, doing acts whose entertainment value is questionable at best. In the day, the women perform their circus acts and at night they plot escape. But when the ringmaster decides to shut the circus down for good, the captives discover they may not be prepared for their desired freedom after all.
Nicola Harwood is a playwright, director and interdisciplinary artist. Recent directing projects include High Muck-a-Muck: Playing Chinese, an interactive media and installation project and The Squaw Hall Project, a multi-year community-engaged media and theatre project working with Aboriginal youth in the Williams Lake area. Recent writing commissions include Salmon Row and Letters From Lithuania, both site-specific works commissioned by Mortal Coil Performance Society of Vancouver. She was also recently commissioned to write the libretto for the opera KHAOS for the Amy Ferguson Institute of Nelson, BC. Nicola teaches Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and lives in Vancouver with her partner and two children. For full details see: www.nicolaharwood.com.
HUSK: Following environmental and social collapse, an urban hermit, Sully, hoards all he can to prolong survival, hiding from an emerging fascist regime. Parrot, an unwanted visitor, arrives at his door in distress, begging help for an injured friend. An unlikely alliance forms between the two men, both realizing that the secrets they each keep may prove to be the other’s undoing.”
A writer, performer, director, producer and educator, Bill Marchant has been making art in Canada for over thirty years. An accomplished actor, he is best know for recurring roles on Stargate-SG1 and Davinci’s Inquest. Marchant’s work as a playwright includes the award-winning play, Ashes, produced by Eyeheart Productions. Other plays, Gift of Screws and Clown Elections have received rave reviews and sold-out runs. His debut feature film as both writer and director, Everyone, toured the international festival circuit, winning dozens of awards including the prestigious Zenith D’Or at the Montreal World Film Festival and the AMEX Award for Best Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Everyone is distributed worldwide by TLA releasing.
SALVADOR: A mash of verbatim theatre, story-telling, and drag performance, Salvador follows a young man who travels to El Salvador to investigate gay rights violations and ends up discovering more about himself than he bargained for.
Originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Rafael Antonio Renderos studied musical theatre at the Canadian College of Performing Arts in Victoria, BC. In 2012, Rafael moved to Toronto, where he has since written two pilot episodes of preschool web series Miss Persona and the Marvelous Melodies (now available on batterypop.com) and written and directed a short film entitled Atop Coat Mountain, which premiered at the Sudden Impulse Film Festival and is now available online. Summer 2014 will see Rafael return to the stage at the Toronto Fringe Festival thanks to the TD Culturally Diverse Artists Program. Rafael is a proud recipient of a 2014 Theatre Creator’s Reserve Grant recommendation from Toronto’s Alameda Theatre Company which assisted in the writing process of Salvador. He plans to write and direct a second short, currently untitled, in the fall.
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