Playwriting
Tailored to the learning goals of your class.

Crafting Theatre for Young Audiences – Discovering Your Story
In this fun and low stakes workshop, students will work with facilitator and playwright, Chelsea Woolley, to mad-libs their way into crafting a unique (and likely zainy) theatre for young audiences story, while learning the components that go into creating engaging work for children and youth. Suitable for all, this workshop would be particularly excellent for students in the early stages of brainstorming or writing TYA work at school.

Altered News – Current Events as Creative Inspiration
Contemporary news can be a source of overwhelm and stress, but it can also be inspiration to speak out, reclaim, and discover. In this workshop, students will work with facilitator and playwright, Chelsea Woolley to mine current events for story and writing inspiration that feels personally meaningful, and powerful. Students will work to develop their own creative perspective and voice within our current global landscape.

Laban Movement
After developing her practice at the National Theatre School of Canada, Chelsea will lead participants through the basics of this unique movement technique and explore its uses as a tool in developing dramatic characters, body specificity, and a sense of play on stage.

Feminist Theatre in the Contemporary Canadian Landscape
In this workshop, students will explore excerpts from feminist Canadian plays that have premiered within the last ten years. Students will unpack the structure, themes, and the limitations of these plays, and discuss the role of theatre in justice, intersectionality, and representation.

Text Based Video Game Design: Write Your Own Adventure
Left or right? Into the jungle, or through the cave? Chelsea Woolley offers a workshop on creating a “design your own adventure” text based video game. She will lead workshop participants through story boarding, writing, and basic coding using the interactive program TWINE.

Writers will develop characters and craft multiple plot lines for readers to choose from, as well as learn how to add other interactive components. This workshop is perfect for writers and coders between the ages of 12 and 17. This workshop requires all students to have access to a computer that is connected to the internet.

Please note this workshop is designed to be delivered virtually.

Why is ‘playwright’ spelled so weirdly? How is writing a play different from writing a novel? This workshop for grades 8 – 12 will introduce students to basic principles of playwriting, and introduce them to the tools a playwright uses to create a blueprint for a performance. In a set of short, fast-paced exercises, students will explore character, plot, dialogue, and other basic principles of drama, create short original works, and expand their definition of what a play can be.

Nathaniel Hanula-James (he/they) is a theatremaker who collaborates on new work as a dramaturg, playwright, administrator, and performer. In his writing practice he facilitates the Local Young Playwrights Unit at Tarragon Theatre, freelances with artists across Ontario, and worked alongside Brian Quirt and Gloria Mok at the dramaturgical company Nightswimming for three years. They are a Staff Writer at Intermission Magazine and are working with Dr. Karen Fricker to develop a new open-access course in Equitable Theatre Criticism. In Nathaniel’s object theatre piece Untitled Flamingo Play, a stuffed flamingo dispenses questionable advice to two queer children in search of their authentic selves. His play A Cloud of Ink in the Shape of Herself, commissioned by ZeeZee Theatre’s National Queer and Trans Playwriting Unit, follows an archivist who descends to the Underworld in search of three Black queer historical figures who consume her research and imagination. Nathaniel is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s acting program, Humber College’s Arts Administration Program, and McGill University (BA Drama & Theatre.)

Intro to Clown

An introduction to clowning techniques that encourage students to tap into their impulse and imagination, and open themselves up to the risk, surprise, and joy that can arise with connecting with their peers (and audiences) through play.

Taught by multi-award-winning drag clown Justin Miller (aka Pearle Harbour), this class aims to equip its participants with the skills to tear down (or at least peek around) the fourth wall and authentically listen to their audience, and respond urgently to hug the calamity in the room.

Justin Miller is a queer performer, producer, and Fool. As his darkly comic drag persona, Pearle Harbour, he has been called “one of the most engaging and thoughtful performance artists around” (NOW Magazine).

His award-winning original works have been presented to rave critical and audience response across Canada, published in Canadian Theatre review, and featured on the CBC. As a screenwriter, he has developed work for NBC-Peacock.

As an educator, he has taught at Queens University, University of New Brunswick, Randolph College for the Performing Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University, and has been the drag consultant at the Stratford Festival for three seasons running.

Selected accolades include Audience Choice Award (SummerWorks), Oustanding Solo Performance (My Entertainment World Critic’s Award), 3 Dora Mavor-Moore Award nominations (Outstanding Performance, Outstanding Costume Design), Finalist for the Playwright’s Guild of Canada John Palmer Award, and Winner of the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Award for a Canadian Stage Performer.

See more at www.pearleharbour.com.

Acadia is a costumer with many years experience in Theatre, Film, Television, and Dance. Graduating from York University with a BFA with specialized honours in Set and Costume Design, she has had the opportunity to bring her passion for costumes to many mediums. Some of her previous work includes Come Home: The Legend of Daddy Hall (Tarragon), Da Kink in my Hair (Soulpepper), Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (Peacock TV), and Murdoch Mysteries (CBC). Going into her second season as Tarragon’s Head of Wardrobe, she brings not only a passion for new work but a belief in positivity and learning.

Through guided playwriting exercises with award winning playwright/adaptor, Jeff Ho (cockroach, Antigone, Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land), students will engage with adaptations as a source of new play creation. Through colliding the personal with the political, to diving into the messiness of new writing, students will be invited to challenge what they know, what they expect, and what they wish to see transformed in classical European works such as Shakespeare.

Jeff Ho is a theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong. He is Tarragon Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director. As an actor, he has toured as Ophelia in Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet across Canada and the US for over five years.  As a playwright, his works include cockroach (曱甴), Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land), Antigone: 方, and trace. Jeff is a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Drama, the Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for Best New Canadian Play, the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Award, has been a finalist for the Playwright’s Guild of Canada Drama Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and has been nominated for four Dora Mavor Moore Awards. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and currently lives in Toronto.

This workshop dives into the foundations of puppetry – wholeheartedly believing that everyone can be a ‘puppet person’ – in pursuit of the magic we find in the silly, collaborative, and emotional world of puppets. 

We will explore the crucial basics of breath, eye contact, movement, and voice as we investigate what it means to embody another being through an object.

Madeline McKinnell (she/her) is an educator and a maker of many things. 

Since finishing her Masters of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Madeline has explored teaching in classrooms, theaters, school yards, rivers, and the occasional laneway. She currently teaches drama, geography, and outdoor education in the TDSB and is happiest when all three subjects find their way into the conversation. 

She draws from her extensive experience as a puppeteer, production manager, designer, and artist educator to facilitate accessible, safe, and inspiring places both within and beyond the classroom. Madeline centers imagination and experimentation with every workshop and the goal is always for her learners to find inspiration, take creative risks, and, most importantly, enjoy the incredible process of creating. 

This academic workshop will go over how the voice physiologically works. Students will learn the various pitch and resonance in their voices, the areas of articulation in the mouth, the respiratory muscles and organs involved in releasing the natural voice, basic phonemes and vowels of the English language, and the factors that affect releasing a free, natural voice.

This interactive workshop will cover beginner voice training for students interested in a future of professional training for actors. Through vocal, articulation and breath warm-ups, students will get a well-rounded idea of professional theatre vocal training as they begin to find their free voice.

This can cover script analysis from a Director’s perspective or an Actor’s perspective. Through a close reading of scenes from a script of the teacher’s choice, students will go over the steps of play analysis from a director’s point of view: scene-breakdown, consideration of transitions, dramaturgy, and the audience’s role.

Workshop Questions: Why here, why now? What are the themes of the play? What can be a staging concept/ adaptation? What is the world of the play?

Through games and exercises, students will learn the building blocks of how to improvise a scene as an ensemble. They will learn the tools they need from what they can bring into a scene, to brainstorming on the spot, and raising the stakes!

Workshop Questions: What can I bring into a scene? How can I work with my scene partner to move the story forward ? How do I keep the audience in mind? What do I do if I get stuck? How can I raise the stakes?

This workshop covers character analysis and development from an Actor’s perspective. By creating a character of their own or analyzing a well-known character, students will go over what elements are needed to develop a full-fledged character. Students will learn to look out for, or come up with, character physicality, identity, history, objectives, relationships, environment, and obstacles within the script.

Workshop Questions: What elements make-up a character? How do characters describe each other? What is the characters’ objective and super-objective? What are the stakes and obstacles?

Rahaf Fasheh (she/her) is a passionate stage director, educator, and producer, placing integrity, community, and play at the core of her work. With a “let’s try it” attitude, she fosters a safe space for playful exploration of ideas with collaborators, actors, and students. Rahaf is dedicated to amplifying under-represented communities, especially focusing on Arab, immigrant, and new-comer experiences. She holds a BSA from UofT specializing in Theatre and minoring in Psychology. Her training includes Paprika Directors Lab (2021), Nightwood Theatre Innovators Program (2022), and Factory Theatre’s Training Enhancement Program for Directing (2023). Her directorial debut saw a sold-out two-week independent run at Theatre Passe Murraille (2019), and she since has continued on to direct a handful of staged readings, as well as a kids show with SIA (2022). As an educator, Rahaf teaches improvisation, ensemble work, text-analysis, and devised theatre to students aged 6-16 at Young Peoples Theatre, Stage Coach, Tarragon Theatre and Shakespeare in Action. She began teaching adults through the City of Mississauga (2023) and is grateful to have been offered a Principal/ Theatre School management position with Stagecoach this coming fall.

How do you make a living doing theatre? How can you turn your dreams into a reality? In this 90 minute seminar, theatre director, playwright, producer, and educator, Aaron Jan will walk through various career paths in theatre, give a realistic vision of how much each of them pays and discuss how to actually make this career work!

(photo by Graham Isador)

What IS a producer? What do they do? How do you raise money for a project to make sure everyone gets paid?

In this 90 minute interactive workshop, participants will act as producers and compete against each other in how to pitch their projects to funders in the most appealing and exciting ways to get that money! Prizes included!

What is table work? How do you prepare a text for performance as an actor? In this two hour workshop, participants will work through a short script as actors and learn how to organize the information in a script to make strong acting choices in a workshop styled after theatre director, Aaron Jan’s own table work process.

How do we create theatre without being stuck in our heads (or even writing!)? How do we just get up and create incredible stage pictures without talking about it?

Through a series of exercises, students will build choreography from images we draw from existing source texts and strategies. No movement training required! Let’s get up and make some theatre!

Aaron Jan is a playwright, director and dramaturg. He has worked as a creator with Factory Theatre, Canadian Stage, Theatre Aquarius, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre, Soulpepper, Boca Del Lupo, The School of Performance, York University, Theatre Sheridan, Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Erindale, the University of Winnipeg, and most recently with Theatre Direct. Aaron is the 2019 winner of the Ken McDougall directing award, the 2021 co-winner of the Rita Joe Playwriting Award, a 2021 co-recipient of Musical Stage Company’s Aubrey and Marla Dan Fund for New Musicals, a 2021 Johanna Protege Recipient, and the 2022 winner of Tarragon Theatre’s Urjo Kareda Award for Emerging Artists. aaronchihojan.wixsite.com/home