News Releases - 2002
Playwright and theatre director John Murrell wins Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts
Ottawa, 25 September 2002 - John Murrell, one of Canada's most distinguished playwrights and Artistic Director/Executive Producer of Theatre Arts at The Banff Centre, is the winner of the 2002 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts. The $50,000 prize, administered and presented by the Canada Council for the Arts, recognizes the highest level of artistic excellence and distinguished career achievement by Canadian artists who have spent the major part of their career in Canada in dance, theatre and music.
The prize will be presented to John Murrell by Jean-Louis Roux, Chairman of the Canada Council for the Arts, at a reception in Calgary on Monday December 9th at the Martha Cohen Theatre at EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts, 215 8th Avenue S.E., from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Representatives of the media are welcome to attend the presentation.
Presented for the first time in 2001, the Walter Carsen Prize was created as a result of a generous donation of $1.1 million to the Canada Council by Toronto businessman and philanthropist Walter Carsen. The prize is awarded annually on a four-year cycle: dance, theatre, dance, music. Last year's recipient was choreographer, director and dancer Brian Macdonald.
Mr. Murrell was selected by a peer assessment committee consisting of Montreal actor Monique Mercure; Bill Millerd, Artistic Director of Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre; and Don Shipley, Artistic Director, World Stage, at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. In awarding the prize to John Murrell, the committee said:
"Over the course of his outstanding 30-year career in the theatre, John Murrell has created an immense body of work of breathtaking scope and artistry. He is a playwright, a director, a librettist, a composer, an actor, an inspiring teacher and mentor, and an advocate for the central role of creativity and the arts. He is a gifted writer whose nuanced linguistic knowledge has allowed him to give the theatre world fresh translations of classic works from many cultures, and he has been instrumental in making Canada's reputation in this field.
While emphatically Canadian and deeply attached to his Alberta roots, the force of John Murrell's creative vision continues to stir the hearts of audiences around the world. We honour him for the quality, diversity and significance of his creative output."
John Murrell
John Murrell is one of the most highly regarded and frequently produced of all Canadian playwrights. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages and performed in more than 35 countries around the world.
Mr. Murrell completed his university education in Calgary and has chosen to keep his home base in his home province, even though his work life and his reputation as an artist now extend to several continents. He first began writing dramatic material for his students when he was a teacher in public schools in Alberta, in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Mr. Murrell's works for the stage include Memoir, Waiting for the Parade, Democracy, The Faraway Nearby, Farther West, New World, and Death in New Orleans. He is a three-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award and has also won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama, the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Play Award and the Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Writing at the 1998 Edinburgh, Scotland, Fringe Festival.
He is also nationally and internationally prominent as a translator of classic theatre texts into English, including Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. All these translations, and a number of others, have gone on to become the "standard versions" for English-language theatres around the world. A recent article by Globe and Mail theatre critic Kate Taylor credited Mr. Murrell's prominence in establishing Canada as a source of world-class theatre translation.
Mr. Murrell has served in a wide variety of positions of public trust and advocacy, including Literary Advisor to both Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects, Associate Director of the Stratford Festival of Canada, Co-director of The Banff Centre Playwrights Colony, Head of the Theatre Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, and currently Artistic Director/Executive Producer of Theatre Arts (including the disciplines of drama, dance, and opera) at The Banff Centre. He has also served on innumerable advisory committees, juries, and boards of directors for artistic and arts-related institutions and industries.
John Murrell takes considerable pride in his ongoing work as a teacher/mentor, director, occasional actor and advocate of the central role of creativity and the arts in any vital culture. In 1998 he received the Gascon-Thomas Award, given by the National Theatre School of Canada, in recognition of an outstanding lifetime of service to arts education in this country. In 2001, he completed an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey for young audiences, co-commissioned by The Banff Centre and Manitoba Theatre for Young People, which had its world premiere at the Banff Arts Festival. Also in 2001, he completed the book for Ballet British Columbia's acclaimed production of The Faerie Queen and continued to collaborate with choreographer John Alleyne by creating the books for two new dance works: Ballet British Columbia's Orpheus (based on the myth of Orpheus and Euridice) in 2002 and Tristan and Isolde for The National Ballet of Canada in 2003. He is currently writing a new play about Friedrich Nietzsche for the Shaw Festival (the first ever such commission of a Canadian author); and has completed the libretto for a new opera, Filumena. This work, co-commissioned by the Calgary Opera Association and The Banff Centre, will be set to music by the outstanding young Canadian composer John Estacio and concerns a controversial murder trial in the early days of Italian immigration to the Canadian Rockies. Filumena will premiere at the Calgary Opera in February 2003 and will be staged at The Banff Centre during the 2003 Summer Arts Festival.
Walter Carsen
Walter Carsen is completely self-made. He started his business in the importation of photographic and optical goods from the basement of his home, gradually growing and eventually becoming the largest Canadian independent distributor of these items. A respected philanthropist with a well-known love of the arts, he has provided major support to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Shaw Festival and the National Ballet of Canada, as its most important and faithful benefactor. Because of his passion for dance and the National Ballet, he provided financial backing for four productions, including The Firebird (2000) by choreographer James Kudelka. A man of culture and compassion, he also established the Walter Carsen Fund for the Homeless. At the 2000 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, Mr. Carsen received the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
General Information
The Canada Council for the Arts, in addition to its principal role of promoting and fostering the arts in Canada, administers and awards nearly 100 prizes and fellowships in the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences and engineering. Among these are the Killam Prizes, the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prizes, the Governor General's Literary Awards, and the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Other theatre prizes awarded by the Canada Council include the John Hirsch Prize and three annual prizes for Theatre for Young Audiences.
For more information about these prizes, including nomination procedures, contact Carol Bream, Director of Endowments and Prizes, at (613) 566-4414 or 1-800-263-5588, ext. 5041. E-mail: carol.bream@canadacouncil.ca or Janet Riedel, Endowments and Prizes Officer, at (613) 566-4414, or 1-800- 263-5588, ext. 4116. E-mail: janet.riedel@canadacouncil.ca