Professional Development – Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre

Intensive Classes

These intensive one session online classes happen 3-5 times annually featuring artists from across the country.

Intensive Classes

These intensive one session online classes happen 3-5 times annually featuring artists from across the country.

2021 featured intensive classes with Bilal Baig (Inspiration, Character and Voice), Carmen Aguirre (Art as Activism), Yolanda Bonnell (Decolonizing Theatre).

Intensive classes are usually free to PARC members and open to non-member for a nominal fee.

Workshops

Workshops offering creative inspiration, as well as insight into the business of being a playwright. In person or remotely. Workshops often have limited enrollment, some have a specific targeted demographic.

Workshops

A variety of workshops are offered by PARC for the professional development of our members and the wider community – designed to appeal to playwrights at both the emerging level and master levels.

Workshops have been offered on various topics including: the business side of playwriting, a basic introduction to playwriting, the director and the playwright in the rehearsal hall, working with a dramaturge and actors in the workshop setting, monologue writing and finding inspiration.

Enrollment is often limited with priority being given to PARC members. Fees are also often two-tiered for members and non-members (if space allows).

Recent workshop facilitators include: Carmen Aguirre, Ryan Griffith, Pamela Halstead, Mary Vingoe and Collen Murphy.

Panel Discussions

PARC facilitates or participates at least one panel discussion annually. This may be online or in person, a stand alone or as part of a festival or conference.

Panel Discussions

PARC is part of a broader conversation that is taking place across the country. In recent years PARC has been involved in panels at the LMDA Conference of the Americas and the PGC Atlantic Edge Conference.

PARC also facilitates panel conversations, most recently in 2021 as part of our diversity initiatives. The panel was looking at cultural sensitivty and consultations and featured Carmen Aguirre, Yolanda Bonnel, Sunny Drake and Marcia Johnson. It was moderated by Santiago Guzman.

Tanisha Taitt, AD of Cahoots Theatre said, “Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre’s discussion on Dramaturgical Consultation and Cultural Sensitivity in Playwriting – with guests Carmen Aguirre, Marcia Johnson, Sunny Drake and Yolanda Bonnell – hosted by Santiago Guzmán, was one of the best panels I have attended in YEARS. To hear them each address with assuredness, openness, poignancy and intellect the complexity of the issue was incredibly refreshing.”

Exchanges

Offering Atlantic playwrights the opportunity to work with dramaturges and actors from other regions and to showcase their work in a different market.

Exchanges

When the opportunity permits, PARC arranges exchanges for member playwrights with other playwright development centres across the country. This allows playwrights to connect with dramaturges, actors and other playwrights from outside the Atlantic region.

Usually an exchange allows PARC to invite a playwright from another part of the country to take part in a PARC Retreat in exchange for a PARC member being hosted by another playwright development centre. In the past, such exchanges have been arranged with the Manitoba Association of Playwrights (MAP), the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre (SPC) and the Alberta Playwrights Network (APN).