Collider is a new play development festival that celebrates and helps bring to life new stories and scripts for larger stages showcasing a mix of local artists and artists from across the country and beyond.
2023 Schedule
THURSDAY MAY 11
COLLIDER LAUNCH: A PGC and Playwrights Mixer
MAY 11 2023 5:30 PM
ZEIDLER HALL LOBBY
Join us to meet and mingle with playwrights, fellow artists and theatre lovers who are passionate about new play development. This is also a chance to check out our Pop-Up Theatre Bookstore which carries plays by many of the playwrights involved in Collider.
MAINSTAGE PERFORMANCE PRESS NIGHT: PRISON DANCER – WORLD PREMIERE
MAY 11 2023 7:30 PM
SHOCTOR THEATRE
HIGHWIRE PERFORMANCE: 1ST METIS MAN OF ODESA
MAY 11 2023 7:30 PM
RICE THEATRE
FRIDAY MAY 12
The 3.7% Initiative YEG+ Mixer
MAY 12 2023 5:30 PM
ZEIDLER HALL LOBBY
Join us to meet and mingle with members of Alberta Chapter of The 3.7% Initiative, a national program that promotes women and non binary artists of colour as they look to build artistic leadership skills in the performing arts.
KEYNOTE AND WELCOME
MAY 12 2023 7:00 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
Join us for the launch of our 2023 Festival with Nina Lee Aquino, newly appointed Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre and director of Prison Dancer, who will take us through her vision of where things are moving in the development of new Canadian work. Nina Lee Aquino is an award-winning Filipino-Canadian director and dramaturg who has tirelessly advocated for new play development and the representation and flourishing of IBPoC voices in Canadian theatre. She was the Founding Artistic Director of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company and former Artistic Director of both Cahoots Theatre and Factory Theatre in Toronto.
READING #1: EVENING TRAIN by Ursula Rani Sarma and Mick Flannery
MAY 12 2023 8:00 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
Christmas, 1961. Baltimore, County Cork, Ireland. The end of the train line.
With the last train leaving town on New Year’s Eve, Grace’s dreams of escaping the suffocation of small-town life for bright opportunities abroad rapidly dim. As she navigates her competing affections for brothers Luther and Frank – and contemplates a future with each – the secrets and revenge of their feuding families fuel desperate, irreversible choices.
In the new musical EVENING TRAIN, a cast of seven spin a yarn of ambition, loyalty, and rivalry in a small town at the end of the world.
MAINSTAGE PERFORMANCE: PRISON DANCER
MAY 12 2023 7:30 PM
SHOCTOR THEATRE
HIGHWIRE PERFORMANCE: 1ST METIS MAN OF ODESA
MAY 12 2023 7:30 PM
RICE THEATRE
SATURDAY MAY 13
WORKSHOP #1: MAKING A MUSICAL – Instructor Joe Slabe
MAY 13 2023 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM
LOCATION: TBC
Musical Theatre is an art form that has roots in operetta, vaudeville and the great songwriting tradition of Tin Pan Alley. In the past century, musicals have evolved their own set of conventions and audience expectations that every writer should know. This three-hour session will explain these conventions and expectations, and show how they affect the subject, structure and style of successful musicals. The workshop will also provide an extensive list of practical questions that will help guide prospective writers through the process of creating a new show. Filled with examples and Broadway lore, this session promises to be entertaining for anyone who loves musical theatre.
PANEL
MAY 13 2023 6:30- 7:30 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
Join us for an invigorating in person discussion of how new musicals are born. Featuring national and international guest artists from across Canada and the U.K.
READING #2: THE TAKEOFF by Collin Doyle
MAY 13 2023 8:00 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
After 42 years of marriage Joan decides to separate from her husband Frank. Frank thinks it’s a joke, until Joan starts dating the bus driver of the route she’s ridden for the last 20 years. Meanwhile their daughter, Emily, is pregnant. The problem is the father of the child isn’t Emily’s husband of fourteen years Allan, but Ajay. Their son, Paul, is madly in love with Margo and wants to marry her. But Margo isn’t sure. Then there’s Grace and Joe, Joan’s aunt and uncle, married for over sixty years. Joe was an airline pilot until a brain tumor grounded him. Now in his late eighties, he hopes to fly again. The Takeoff travels through three generations of one family, following the couplings and un-couplings of new love, old love and broken love.
MAINSTAGE PERFORMANCE: PRISON DANCER
MAY 13 2023 7:30 PM
SHOCTOR THEATRE
HIGHWIRE PERFORMANCE: 1ST METIS MAN OF ODESA
MAY 13 2023 7:30 PM
RICE THEATRE
SUNDAY MAY 14
WORKSHOP #2
MAY 14 2023 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM
LOCATION: TBC
READING #3: JUST LIKE PARIS by Marcia Johnson
MAY 14 2023 2:00 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
It is 1943. Gwendolyn is a Jamaican nurse who, as a loyal British subject, answers the call for help during the war. She lands in Lethbridge, Alberta where the largest German Prisoner of War camp in Canada is located. Can she find the strength to look after people who believe that she belongs to an inferior race? The point is moot because Black nurses are forbidden to work within the armed forces. But, there’s a secret that prevents her from going home. She must find a way to stay. Also in Lethbridge, in another, more well-known camp, Byron and Sakura try to make the best of life while being interned. They are expecting their first child. This gives Byron endless joy while causing Sakura endless worry. The two stories connect in an unexpected way.
READING #4 THE ENGLISHMAN'S BOY: A MUSICAL
based on the novel by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Created by Ian Cusson, Allan Gilliland, Josh Languedoc, Yvette Nolan, Vern Thiessen & Royce Vavrek
CO-PRESENTED WITH SCRIPT SALON
MAY 14 2023 8:00 PM
ZEIDLER HALL
Hollywood. 1920. Harry Vincent has come to the Tinseltown from small-town Canada to make his name in the exciting new business of silent pictures. But Harry soon finds himself on the hunt for a mysterious old stuntman who holds secrets to the opening of the West. When Harry finds out the truth about the Cypress Hills Massacre in his home province of Saskatchewan, Hollywood power and Colonial oppression combine to create an explosive and deadly movie. What is Truth? What is Art? And who gets to tell a Story? Guy Vanderhaeghe’s award-winning novel is reimagined in this unique musical written by a team of Indigenous and Settler creators.
MAINSTAGE PERFORMANCE: PRISON DANCER
MAY 14 2023 1:30 PM
SHOCTOR THEATRE
CLOSING HIGHWIRE PERFORMANCE: 1ST METIS MAN OF ODESA
MAY 14 2023 1:30 PM
RICE THEATRE