01/14/2021
This Friday's Midnight Playwright will be talking about
New Wave Theatre Company, Company values part 1.
1: GENDER NEUTRAL STORIES.
At York University, I had an amazing Professor Michael Greyeyes tell me the minute you put a man and a woman on stage, you bleed their gender all over the performance. Thus, at NWTC we made a rule that all our scripts are gender neutral and each character’s gender changes depending on the day of the performance. Thus, every performance is different for various reasons including gender.
2: CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE STORIES.
All scripts NWTC will produce have a choose your own adventure vibe to them. Each night, we replace scenes with other scenes, many of which we hope in the future will be added to the play’s repertoire as we expand our drama therapy process and allow others who have knowledge of the issues in the play we are presenting to share their own voice.
3: ACOTRS PLAY MULTIPLE ROLES.
All actors play multiple roles. One thing I enjoyed at George Brown Theatre School was doing multiple roles at the same time. I thought it was a real acting workout and improved actors’ breadth and depth tremendously. Thus at NWTC we added that feature to our plays, Everyone will play an minor character all the way up to the leads.
4: EMERSION THROUGH REALISM AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE PLAYING SPACE.
I had another wonderful Professor at York University named Professor Peter McKinnon who was big on emersion and ensuring the plays we made in Devised Theatre encompassed and made use as much as possible the entire playing space from the audience to the stage. Thus NWTC has adopted this principle in their scripts as well. Furthermore, all plays we produce at NWTC will be written to show not tell a story. We are not telling stories, we are showing them through what I call unbiased 360 writing were we show the issue from all sides. It is up to the audience to decide the plays message, the emotions in it and who the good guys and bad guys are.
