Playwrights assemble: 10 theatre companies are teaming up to give LGBTQ artists a dreamy opportunity

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Across Canada, a consortium of theatre companies have joined forces to create something aimed at giving a much-needed boost to LGBTQ theatre makers: the National Queer and Trans Playwriting Unit.

The first of its kind in this country, the partnership is currently accepting applications for a new mentorship and play creation program that is quite substantial: five emerging or mid-level artists will be selected to participate in a 10-month process, during which they will receive living wage compensation and one-on-one mentorship as they write a new work. The developed plays will be performed live and streamed online in September of 2023.

"Art has the power to elevate voices and ideas that can change the world. Now, more than ever, the arts sector needs to prioritize those who have been systematically left out of the conversation," says Cameron Mackenzie, Artistic and Executive Director of Zee Zee Theatre, the company that initiated the consortium. "The impacts of this project will be far-reaching and numerous: for the playwrights, it offers growth, stability, and a national platform for their voice and stories to be heard. For the consortium companies, it creates a new body of work and connects them with vital queer and trans communities. For our sector as a whole, it offers new representation and reflection in ways that are meaningful and non-tokenizing."

Along with Zee Zee Theatre in Vancouver, the members of the NQTPU include the frank theatre company (Vancouver), Gwaandak Theatre (Whitehorse), Theatre Outré (Lethbridge), Persephone Theatre (Saskatoon), Theatre Projects Manitoba (Winnipeg), Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto), Native Earth Performing Arts (Toronto), Imago Theatre (Montreal), and Neptune Theatre (Halifax).

The inspiration for the Queer and Trans Playwriting Unit occurred when a gap was identified in the Canadian theatre ecology by the folks at Zee Zee.

"A few years ago, my husband and I were looking for what the next few years of Zee Zee programming would be and couldn't find the right plays: we knew there were surely great Canadian queer plays out in the world, but we couldn't find them," Mackenzie says. "So much of queer performance gets stuck in regionalism and disappears, and so we wanted to create a national consortium of companies who could hold hands and support the artistic development of vital voices." 

Mackenzie says that between the ten consortium companies, the NQTPU has "a huge range of sizes of organization, of mandates, of lenses, and that's a great support for artists developing shows as there's a pool of mentors to lean on." 

"This program is designed to meet artists where they are in their careers and help them excel," he says. "We are tired of seeing works stuck in development hell for years and years without any real opportunity to make it to production, and our goal is to find a great cross-section of queer and trans artists from all over the country and help them execute their personal artistic visions for their pieces, and then continue the process of bringing them to the stage."

Daniel Carter, the Interim Director of Operations and Programming at Buddies In Bad Times in Toronto, is excited about joining forces with the NQTPU because it will give him a chance to read work from artists outside of Toronto.

"While Buddies gets to engage quite actively with local queer artists, we don't always get frequent opportunities to engage with artists' work on such a national scale," he says. "I'm thrilled to engage with work from artists in different provinces and territories that share their own unique perspectives on the queer experience."

Mackenzie adds that while LGBTQ represenation in theatre is certainly growing, the bulk of that representation is still made up of white male cis narratives.

Coming out of the pandemic — at least to the degree that theatres are welcoming audiences again — seems like a context ripe for opportunities for change, and both Mackenzie and Carter believe NQTPU can be a part of that. 

"I think diverse voices and stories have long existed and pushed for changes in the theatre ecology even before the pandemic," Carter says. "However, I believe in the past two years, it is the companies and institutions that have had to better their practices on how they welcome and engage those voices."

"The [companies involved in the NQTPU] all have varying experiences in working with different voices, and so this is a wonderful opportunity to draw upon community learning and resource sharing in order to create spaces that allow artists to thrive. Hopefully, this Unit and its formation can act as a template and example of how to develop partnerships and working models that leverage collective experience to best support the communities being served."

Mackenzie adds that the pandemic has shown us what can happen when artists suddenly have access to a basic income of $2,000 a month. 

"We really used that as a guide when building this program," he says. "At the top tier, playwrights get paid $12k to write multiple drafts of a play, which in some cases is years of work. Imagine! That just doesn't cut it anymore."

"We can't yet change those systems that have been in place for years, but we can certainly build new ones. And that's what this is — the beginning of reimagining the systems."

Applications for the NQTPU are due on July 5, 2022. Find out more about how the program works and how to apply by visiting Zee Zee Theatre's website.