NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT

During its nearly 20-year history Workman Arts has produced 38 original new Canadian plays, toured to over 30 theatres across Ontario and Manitoba.

Highlights of these new Canadian works include:

• Innerspeak
• Iris the Dragon
• JOY: A Musical About Depression
• Vincent

Current Works In Development

Edward the Crazy Man

Edward the Crazy Man is a 70-minute work by playwright Emil Sher and dramaturge by Leah Cherniak, based on the book of the same title by Marie Day. The aim of the play is not just to entertain and assist children, their families, and educators in developing a better understanding of mental illness and creating a context for discussion. The play opened in June of 2008 at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, to be adapted as a shorter work for touring to public schools throughout Ontario.

Third Eye Looming

In the fall of 2006, Members of Workman Arts’ Theatre Collective Project Workshop embarked on the creation of a new work.

The Movement, Voice, and Improvisation theatre training programmes offered during the 2006-2007 Season focused on developing each participant’s personal creative skills. In each of the classes, themes relevant to the participants were collectively chosen. From these themes characters, scenes, and text were created through improvisation and movement. Each class culminated with a presentation of the material created by the Members. The presented material was documented by the Theatre Collective’s Director Ed Roy of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and became the source material for the project.

In May 2007 during an intensive two-week collective workshop, the material was further fashioned into a provocative text and movement based performance piece with a title at last -Third Eye Looming. One month later the project culminated in a series of performances to an invited audience. In response to the overwhelming success of this project, further development workshops and public presentations are scheduled for September 2007 and March 2008.

Mask and Madness in Macbeth

Created by a team of community and Workman Arts Members, a Mask and Madness in Macbeth is a collaborative creation using the tale of Macbeth and the language of Shakespeare as a basis for inspiration. The intention of the project is to explore, research, and develop innovative theatre practices that inspire new interpretations of the spoken word.

Macbeth is explored not only through the text itself but also through mask, music, movement and visual art as follows:

• Mask work is approached from three different levels to inspire both thematic and character exploration - the individual, the social & the natural
• Movement focuses on cues supplied by Shakespeare himself – the juxtaposition of very direct, simple, and visceral actions with immense poetic verbal imagery
• Drumming and its inherent primal feelings are used to complement the mask, character, and movement work.