May 22, 2002 -

Ottawa -- On the Verge...2002 is the place to be to catch a sneak preview of playwrights who are "on the verge" of defining the future of Canadian Theatre. Ten emerging playwrights from across the country (Whitehorse to Halifax) will have their work showcased in readings by professional actors at the Arts Court Theatre from May 28 to June 2, 2002. This year's festival is timed to coincide with the Canadian Theatre Conference which will take place in Ottawa May 29 through June 1. (For detailed Conference information visit the CTC web site at www.theatreconference.ca. On the Verge...2002 will also include a reading of Night Zoo, by acclaimed French author Michel Azama, in English translation by Linda Gaboriau. This reading is part of a special collaboration with The Banff Centre's France-Canada-Banff reciprocal translation project.

A panel of respected theatre professionals from across the country made recommendations on the final selection of plays to be read at On the Verge...2002 to festival coordinator and NAC Literary Manager and Artistic Associate, Lise Ann Johnson. The ten plays were chosen from among the over seventy plays submitted for consideration. Marti Maraden, NAC English Theatre Artistic Director is delighted that this year's writers represent a broad cross-section of talent from coast to coast.

Tickets for On the Verge...2002 are available at the door 45 minutes prior to each reading on a pay-what-you-can basis, with a suggested minimum donation of $5; Festival passes are available at the National Arts Centre Box Office and at Arts Court (562 7240) and are $50. All proceeds will be donated to Canadian Actors' Equity Fights AIDS, managed by the Actors' Fund of Canada.

For more information, see reading schedule, synopses and bios attached or contact:
Laura Denker,Publicity and Media Relations Coordinator,
NAC English Theatre
613.947.7000 ext. 389;
ldenker@nac-cna.ca

The line-up for On the Verge...2002 is:

DOWN MAIN DRAG
by Steve Laplante (Montreal)
Translated by Crystal Béliveau
Directed by Micheline Chevrier
Presented in association with Le Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD).

Tuesday, May 28 @ 19:00 AND
Saturday, June 1 @ 21:00

Can death curb the inevitable boredom of small-town life, if only for a day? Maybe so for the town gossip and the local entrepreneur, but not for Him, who is stunned by his father's death and craves something more than flower arrangements and funeral sandwiches.

Crystal Béliveau (Translator)
Crystal Béliveau is a writer and translator. She has published two short stories: Quatre Jours (in Liberté) and A Potato for Papa George (in Prairie Fire). She recently collaborated on Dialogues, a CEAD / Playwrights' Workshop Montreal publication on theatre translation. She currently works as an English copywriter at BCP. Down Main Drag is her first play translation. She lives in Montreal.

Steve Laplante (Playwright)
Steve Laplante graduated from the French language acting programme of the National Theatre School of Canada in 1996. Since then, he has appeared in numerous plays in Montreal and on tour. He has appeared in five plays by renowned Quebecois author and director Wajdi Mouawad, including Littoral, Willy Protagoras and Rêves. Recent acting credits also include Francois Archambault's La nostalgie du Paradis and Martin McDonagh's Beauty Queen of Leenane. Steve has written four plays. He is completing his fifth play, which will be produced this summer in Carleton, Quebec.

THE PLUM TREE
by Mitch Miyagawa (Whitehorse)
Directed by Michael Clark

Tuesday, May 28 @ 21:00 AND
Saturday, June 1 @ 14:00

The overgrown berry farm in the Fraser Valley isn't just where Frieda Wagner raised her family... it was also the home of the Mirukami family before the Japanese internment of WWII. Family histories collide in this thoughtful and tender drama as a young Japanese Canadian man and a German Canadian widow struggle for ownership, justice and harmony in the country that belongs to all of us and, at times, none of us.

Mitch Miyagawa (Playwright)
Mitch Miyagawa has lived in Whitehorse for four years. He has worked as a conference organizer, ESL teacher, and community development consultant. He recently returned from a year in Ecuador, where he and his wife Angela Walkley worked as environmental planners. Produced by Nakai Theatre in 2002, The Plum Tree is his first professional production. After being read at On the Verge, it will be produced at Alberta Theatre Projects' playRites Festival in 2003. His play Five Days In Havana won the Nakai 24-Hour Playwriting Competition in 2000. He has published stories in the Yukon News and in Urban Coyote, a collection of Yukon writing.

FABLES
by Jackie Torrens (Halifax)
Directed by Mary Vingoe

Wednesday, May 29 @ 19:00 AND
Saturday, June 1 @ 19:00

Fables is the story of four walking cautionary tales who have become onlookers in their own lives: A doctor, whose ability to analyse the experience of depression disconnects him from the pain of his marriage; a woman whose loss of her youth compels her to reconstruct a new self; a hypochodriac whose solution to loneliness is to donate his sperm ashis evolutionary gift; and a teenage girl who discovers that biology is not her friend and who needs fantasy to be the real truth of her life.

Jackie Torrens (Playwright)
Jackie Torrens is a Halifax writer and actor who began her writing career in poetry, studying under the mentorship of poets Brian Bartlett (Underwater Carpentry) and two-time G.G. Award nominee Don Domanski (Wolf Ladder, Parish of the Psychic Moon). Her critically acclaimed comic one-person plays include Live! Nude! Animal!, Strange Antiques and Tales From The Glockenspiel That Is My Heart. Her first "mulit-actor" mainstage production, Fables, premiered as part of Eastern Front Theatre's 2001-2002 season. For 2002, she has been commissioned to write a stage piece for Willpower Theatre and she is currently writer-in-residence for Two Planks And A Passion Theatre.

THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS
by Stephen Massicotte (Calgary)
Directed by Ian Prinsloo

Wednesday, May 29 @ 21:00

The Emperor of Atlantis is a play about an opera. The opera Der Kaiser Von Atlantis was written by Viktor Ulman and Petr Kien while incarcerated in the Nazi Concentration Camp Terezin during World War II. They were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 18, 1944. Stephen Massicotte's heart-wrenching new play tells the remarkable story of how music can survive in the midst of silence.

Stephen Massicotte (Playwright)
Stephen is a Calgary based writer and actor. His plays The Boy's Own Jedi Handbook and My Life of Crime have been performed nationally on the Canadian Fringe Circuit. A Farewell to Kings: A Banger Play and Looking After Eden have recently been produced by Ground Zero Theatre in Calgary and at the NeXtFest Next Generation Arts Festival in Edmonton. His play Mary's Wedding premiered this year at ATP's playRites Festival 2002 and in 2000 won the Alberta Playwriting Competition. His play The Emperor of Atlantis was the winner of the 24 Hour Playwriting Competion at playRites 2000. Stephen's feature length screenplay A Perfect Beast will be produced by Combustion Films in the Fall of 2002.

Stephen is the Writer in Residence at Theatre Calgary. He is a member of the Alberta Playwrights' Network, the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and the Playwrights' Union of Canada. Stephen has a Diploma in Graphic Design and Advertising from Cambrian College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from the University of Calgary and a black lab named Agnes.

THE MATKA KING
by Anosh Irani (Vancouver)
Directed by Rachel Ditor

Thursday, May 30 @ 19:00

The Matka King will take you on a lyrical ride through a landscape of betrayal and redemption in a story that pits human nature against chance. It is the red light district of Bombay, a colourful community of gamblers, prostitutes, and one very powerful eunuch, Top Rani. Top Rani operates an illicit lottery through his brothel, and when a gambler who is deeply in debt makes an unexpected wager, the stakes become life and death. Can a fortune-teller and a ten-year-old girl beat Top Rani at his own game?

Anosh Irani( Playwright)
Anosh Irani moved to Vancouver from Bombay, India, where he worked as an advertising copywriter. Since arriving in Canada, Anosh's writing has been published in the Vancouver Sun and will appear in the upcoming issue of the The Fiddlehead. He is also currently completing work on his debut novel, The Cripple and his Talismans.

MEDICI SLOT MACHINE
by Mark Brownell (Toronto)
Directed by Sue Miner

Thursday, May 30 @ 21:00

Medici Slot Machine is a "surrealistic" look at the peculiar life of American artist Joseph Cornell. Cornell is famous for his collage boxes of "found" objects. His genius lies in turning the ordinary into the sacred. Each box creates a magical "shadow play" out of the mundane world. For better or worse, Joseph Cornell is now believed to be the father of modern "disposable" pop culture. In real life, Joseph Cornell was a recluse who used his art to escape his family, his sterile suburban life, his celebrity, and his own psychological demons. Bringing precise order to his art was a way of triumphing over the chaos of his private life. This play chronicles that triumph.

Mark Brownell (Playwright)
Mark is a Toronto-based playwright and Co-Artistic Director of the Pea Green Theatre Group. In 2001, he won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for his Iron Road libretto and was also nominated recently for a Governor General's Literary Award for his play Monsieur d'Eon. Recently, Mark wrote a series of monologues for Tafelmusik Baroque Ensemble entitled Le Chevalier de Saint-George. This piece tours internationally with Tafelmusik in 2003. Some of Mark's other plays include The Blue Wall, Playballs, The Martha Stewart Projects, and The Venetian Elopement.

BANGKOK
by Lilla Csorgo (Toronto)
Directed by Micheline Chevrier

Friday, May 31 @ 19:00

Long after Faith and Steve are convinced there is no point, they persist in their yearly meeting by the pool of an over-priced Bangkok hotel. Drink-sodden and embittered, Faith compels Steve to remind her of the way they were.

Lilla Csorgo (Playwright)
Lilla's play, Babes on Bay Street, was produced by Theatre Passe Muraille as part of its 1999/2000 season. Her play, The Bigger World, was a finalist in the B.C. Theatre National Playwriting Competition and was recently publicly read at Nightwood Theatre's Groundswell Festival. Bangkok was workshopped at the 2001 playRites Colony in Banff. Lilla is a Toronto-based economist.

PAGEANT
by Daniel Macdonald (Regina)
Directed by Ken Gass

Friday, May 31, @ 21:00

The East Kootenay mountains of British Columbia are the setting for this dark comedy about beauty, loyalty, and the automobile. The towns of Deer Ridge and Preston come to blows over their most prized possession, Trudy; Beauty queen extraordinaire and daughter to Bud, the town drunk and the mountains' most brilliant car customizer. Trudy's rise to fame and fortune depends only on her will, ambition, and the mis-directed talents of a love-struck plastic surgeon. She hasn't lost a pageant yet.

Daniel Macdonald (Playwright)
Dan teaches drama and creative writing at LeBoldus High School in Regina, Sask. and when he can, writes. He has collaborated on numerous theatre projects with students and his high school improv team recently took first place in the Canadian Improv Games National Championships at the NAC. As a kid, he spent his summers in Charlottetown, PEI and his winters in Ste-Foy, Quebec where he penned his first play, Yolanda and the King at the age of 12. It was a smash. Dan is especially thrilled to have Amy, a former high school student of his, playing the role of Trudy here at On the Verge.

THE RED PRIEST
(Eight Ways to Say Goodbye)
by Mieko Ouchi (Edmonton)
Directed by Ron Jenkins

Sunday, June 2 @ 14:00

The Red Priest (Eight Ways to Say Goodbye) explores the relationship between a disillusioned countess and violin virtuoso and composer Antonio Vivaldi. Trapped in a loveless and abusive marriage, the woman is forced by her husband, a rich patron of Vivaldi's, to take violin lessons from the aging and desperate composer and within six weeks play a concerto for the court in Paris in 1741. All for a bet. A story of the healing power of music.

Mieko Ouchi (playwright)
Mieko works as a writer, actor and director in theatre, film and TV. The Red Priest (Eight Ways To Say Goodbye) is her first stage play in many years. It debuted as the six-minute piece Eight Ways To Say Goodbye, as part of Twelve (1999 Catalyst Theatre). Since then, the full length version has been presented at Springboards Play Festival (2000) and the Kaboom Performance Series (2001), both at Workshop West Theatre, and was read publicly at the 2001 Alberta Playwright's Network Conference, and as a Platform Play at ATP's playRites '02. Recent theatre work includes writing Assembly (Secret Spaces: The City Speaks 2002 Workshop West Theatre), directing Slowly, An Exchange is Taking Place (2001 Edmonton Fringe) and Naomi's Road (1999 Sterling Award) and Are We There Yet? (2000-2002) both for Concrete Theatre. Her award winning films include Shepherd's Pie and Sushi, By This Parting and Samurai Swing. She is currently writing and directing a documentary on child music prodigies for the National Film Board and CBC's The Nature of Things, entitled Minor Keys. Mieko will be the Playwright in Residence at Workshop West Theatre for the 2002/2003 season.

snowman
by Greg MacArthur (Toronto)
Directed by David Oiye

Sunday, June 2 @ 16:00

"We live simple and quiet, me and Marjorie. We got what we need and we like what we got. Not much. A wood stove, a ski doo, a collection of videos. I always thought I was the kind of person that needed more from life. I was wrong." At the edge of a glacial sheet, four remote people tell their stories, and try to thaw their lives.

Greg MacArthur (Playwright)
Greg is a playwright, actor and Co-Artistic Director of House of Slacks, a Toronto-based theatre company. He has been involved in the creation of over 30 new works for the stage. His recent work includes: Stem (House of Slacks / Buddies In Bad Times Theatre); girls!girls!girls! (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre / Montreal Fringe / Féstival de Théâtre des Amériques); Epiphany (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre / NAC's On the Verge / ATP's playrites - Platform Play); dangling (House of Slacks / Theatre Centre). He has been Playwright-In-Residence at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Artist-In-Residence at Playwrights Workshop Montreal, a member of the 2002 Banff Playwrights Colony, and recently toured Japan in the premiere of Lulie the Iceberg (Kageboushi Theatre-Tokyo / Topological Theatre-Toronto). He divides his time between Montreal and Toronto, where he is currently developing a new script, Henry and Garbo.

NIGHT ZOO
by Michel Azama (France)
Translated by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Keith Turnbull

Presented in association with The Banff Centre with the generous assistance of the Embassy of France in Ottawa.

Sunday, June 2 @ 19:00

Night Zoo takes place over the course of a single night on the sharp edge of reality. Four characters, engulfed in their individual worlds of boredom, heartbreak and solitude, become ensnared in a violent psychological game. In this new Canadian translation of the renowned French play, Michel Azama dissects the violence of a generation pushed to the outer limits of society.

Linda Gaboriau (Translator)
Linda has translated more than 70 plays, including the work of Québec's most prominent playwrights. Her translations have been published and widely produced in Canada and abroad, and have garnered numerous prizes including three Chalmers Awards (Toronto) and Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award for Literary Translation. She has a longstanding association with Montreal's Centre des auteurs dramatiques where she has directed the play development program and coordinated many translation and international exchange activities. She is currently Associate

Director at the Banff playRites Colony. For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, her translation of Michel Tremblay's play, Encore une fois si vous permettez, has just opened at ACT in San Francisco with Olympia Dukakis in the lead role.

Michel Azama (playwright)
After completing graduate studies in modern literature, Michel Azama trained and worked as an actor. He now devotes himself entirely to writing. He has been writer in residence at the Nouveau Théâtre de Bourgogne in Dijon and editor in chief of the contemporary theatre review, Les Cahiers de Prospéro, published by the Centre national des Écritures de Spectacle at la Chartreuse in Villeneuve le Avignon. The author of some fifteen plays, his work has been published by Avant-Scène, Actes Sud Papiers, les éditions Théâtrales and produced on radio, television and in theatres throughout France. He has given dramaturgical workshops in France, Italy, Spain and Latin America and has translated the works of contemporary Spanish and Catalan writers. Many of his plays have been translated into several languages and produced abroad (England, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, Greece and Latin America). Michel Azama is the recipient of several prizes, including the prestigious Prix Beaumarchais Paris for Night Zoo.