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CALL FOR PLAY SUBMISSIONS

Submission Deadline:
Nov 1, 2024

Touchstone Theatre is on the lookout for plays (scripted or devised) by established playwrights/devisors from Canada/Turtle Island for consideration in future seasons.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

–   as a playwright(s) you have previously produced and/or published at least 2 works.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

– Please send a synopsis of your play, one page maximum, including a brief list of characters (if it has characters) and core collaborators (if any). In addition to basics of story (if there is one) and themes, let us know whatever you feel is most important to communicate about the play. Feel free to include information about its style, its relationship to your body of work, and/or the work of other theatre-makers, and/or its development or production history. You likely won’t be able to cover all of this, so choose what feels most important to you.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Writers who are short-listed will be invited by the curatorial team to follow up by submitting full scripts (or devised documentation). Touchstone is committed to new plays that reveal, amplify, and explore diverse experiences and stories that are challenging, hysterical, reflective, provocative, transcendent, fantastical, traditional, or “never before articulated in this way”. We welcome playwrights who explore new content using pre-existing theatrical forms, as well as playwrights who reference story-telling structures outside of the western theatrical canon. We also welcome playwrights who create new theatrical forms.

CURATORIAL TEAM

Reneltta Arluk
Marcus Youssef
Lois Anderson

RENELTTA ARLUK

Reneltta Arluk is Inuvialuk, Gwich’in, Denesuline and Cree from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, recognized for her contributions to decolonizing theatre as an actor and director. Her identity as a multidisciplinary artist was shaped by her experiences while being raised on the trapline by her grandparents until she went to school. She established her theatre company, Akpik Theatre, in 2009 and it has since developed and produced a dozen works. Pawâkan Macbeth is Reneltta Arluk’s groundbreaking reimagining of Shakespeare’s darkest play into Cree history, legend and cosmology. In 2016, Arluk’s rendition of Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole at the Stratford Festival was recognized with an award for artistic direction. She supported the National Arts Centre’s decolonization efforts by helping to create its Indigenous Theatre section, and she supported the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival in establishing its Director of Indigenous Strategic Engagement position. Reneltta was previously the Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and currently works at the National Gallery of Canada, under Indigenous Ways and Decolonisation. She was recently granted an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from U of A.

MARCUS YOUSSEF

Marcus’ fifteen plays include Winners and Losers, Leftovers, King Arthur’s Night, Jabber, The In-Between, How Has My Love Affected You?, Incognito Mode, Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, Everyone, Adrift, Peter Panties, Chloe’s Choice and A Line in the Sand.  They have been performed at theatres and major international festivals across North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, including the Canadian Stage, Tarragon, Citadel, Arts Club, Factory, Theatre Passe Muraille, Citadel, Caravan Farm, the Dublin International Theatre Festival, Soho Repertory Theatre (Off-Broadway), Wooly Mammoth and the Kennedy Centre (Wash. DC), the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Festival Trans Amerique (Montreal), the PuSh Festival (Vancouver),   Citadel, Noorderzon (Netherlands), Brighton Festival (UK), LOKAL (Reykjavik), Ca’ Foscari (Venice), Brno Festival (Czech), Foreign Affairs (Berlin), Aarhus Festiva (Denmark), On the Boards (Seattle) and Magnetic North. His plays are published by Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press.    Marcus was Senior Playwright in Residence at the Banff  Centre for Arts and Creativity Playwrights Lab. He has also served as writer/artist in residence at Farnham Maltings (UK), the Sydney Festival (Australia), the National Theatre of School of Canada, Touchstone Theatre, Neworld Theatre and Carousel Theatre. Marcus received Canada’s most  prestigious theatre award, the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, in recognition of his body of work as a playwright.