Tarragon Announces RBC Emerging Playwright's Prize Nominees

Tarragon Theatre has announced the six Canadian playwrights nominated for the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize, one of Canada's most prestigious prizes for new artists. The prize has a value of $8000 and includes a year's worth of dramaturgical support from Tarragon Theatre, as well as a public reading during the theatre's annual Play Reading Week. The winner will be announced in May, 2016.

Each year, Tarragon solicits nominations for the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize from select artistic directors across the country, and then assembles a reading committee to determine the prize winner. The jury of nominators changes every competition, and is announced along with the nominees each year. The theatre does not accept unsolicited nominations for this award. Since 2008, this program has received submissions from every corner of the country.

The 2016/17 nominees were received from these esteemed Artistic Directors: Eric Coates (Great Canadian Theatre Company), Marcus Youssef (Neworld Theatre), Bob Metcalfe (Prairie Theatre Exchange), Christian Barry & Anthony Black (2B Theatre), Amy House (Resource Centre For The Arts), Dennis Garnhum (Theatre Calgary).

The 2016/17 Season RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize nominees are:

Gillian Clark is a theatre creator, residing in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work has been shown across Canada, the U.K and India. Gillian's most recent piece, Let's Try This Standing, premiered in Halifax in January 2016 to sold out houses. Most recent acting credits include: Gillian in Let's Try This Standing, Dylan in her solo show Understudy (audience choice award at QueerActs Theatre Festival), Puss in Greg MacArthur's Girls! Girls! Girls!, and Evergreen in Michael McPhee's Heroic. She is currently the emerging artist-in-residence with 2b theatre company. Gillian's newest project, Now We Are, is in collaboration with Outside The March (Toronto), and is inspired by J.M. Barrie's, Peter Pan, A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six, and YouTube tattoo tutorials.

Geoffrey Simon Brown, playwright, director, and actor born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. A graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, Geoffrey is a co-creator of the Major Matt Mason Collective, a theatre company dedicated to creating intimate, visceral, experimental theatre about and for Calgary's younger generation. His plays Destroy, Air, and Control have premiered with the collective in the past five years. His play, Still Still Still, is the 2013 winner of the Playwrights Guild of Canada Post-Secondary Award and was included as part of the 2014 NNPN MFA Playwrights' Workshop. His play, The Circle, premiered in Calgary at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2015 and will have a subsequent production at the Tarragon theatre in Toronto this fall.

Christine Quintana is an actor, playwright, and co-Artistic Producer of Delinquent Theatre. In these various capacities, she has worked with the Arts Club Theatre Company, Bard on the Beach, The Cultch, Electric Company Theatre, Rumble Theatre, Carousel Theatre for Young People, Caravan Farm Theatre, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Pi Theatre, and Neworld Theatre. Playwriting highlights include Selfie (commissioned by Théâtre la Seizième, winner of the Sidney Risk Prize for Outstanding Script by an Emerging Playwright); Stationary: A Recession-Era Musical (toured to Talk is Free Theatre and The Cultch in April 2015, winner of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Musical, Small Theatre) for which she also served as producer and performer; and upcoming, Never The Last (co-created with Molly MacKinnon) which will premiere at the rEvolver Theatre Festival, produced by Delinquent Theatre in association with Electric Company Theatre, developed at the Banff Playwrights Colony. She holds a BFA in Acting from the University of British Columbia.

Frances Koncan is an Anishinaabe playwright and director from Couchiching First Nation. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Manitoba and an MFA in Playwriting from the City University of New York Brooklyn College. Credits as a playwright include: The Dance-off of Conscious Uncoupling (Sarasvati Productions, '15), and zahgidiwin/love, How to Talk to Human Beings, and Little Red (Winnipeg Fringe '16, '15, '14).

Meghan Greeley is originally from Newfoundland and holds a BFA in Theatre (Acting) from Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. She currently resides in Toronto, where she is completing an MFA in Screenwriting (York University). Her play Hunger was produced by White Rooster Theatre in 2015 and will be remounted at the Stages Festival in Halifax this June. Kingdom, also produced by White Rooster, premiered at the LSPU Hall in St. John's in 2012. It too toured to the Stages Festival and was later published in The Breakwater Book Of Contemporary Newfoundland Drama, Vol. 1. Her short play Brother, Brother, a winner of the InspiraTO Playwriting Competition, premiered at the Alumnae Theatre in 2015 and will be published by Playwrights Canada Press in its upcoming 10-Minute Play Anthology. Meghan's scripts have been chosen for the RCA Playwriting Series, Cultivate Playwright's Colony, the She Said Yes! Mail Order Dramaturgy Program, and twice for the Women's Work Festival. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Stockholm Review of Literature, Metatron, Riddlefence, Humber Mouths 2, and Nelson's Literacy 9. Awards include 1st Prize in the Sparks Literary Festival Poetry Competition and the Magnetic North Playwriting Competition (Under 25).

Darrah Teitel is a graduate of The University of Toronto and The National Theatre School of Canada. She is the playwright in residence at The Great Canadian Theatre Company. Her most recent credits include Corpus (Teesri Duniya 2014, Counterpoint 2014) The Apology (Alberta Theatre Projects 2013, Next Stage Festival 2011) Marla's Party (SummerWorks 2008) the CBC radio drama Palliative (2007) She Said Destroy (NTS, 2007). Her journalism, fiction and poetry have been published in journals and periodicals throughout Canada. Darrah is the winner of several awards, and has received nominations for Dora, Betty Mitchell, Rideau and META Prizes for Outstanding New Plays. Darrah lives Ottawa where she has worked for The NDP critics for The Status of Women and Indigenous Affairs and is writing a play about P.E. Trudeau's 1969 Omnibus Bill.

Tarragon congratulates these six exceptional nominees, and thanks the RBC Foundation for their ongoing support of the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Prize.

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