Overview
Celebrating over 50 years of supporting playwrights and theatrical storytelling!
Since its launch in 1973, The Banff Playwrights Lab has provided an inspiring, interdisciplinary, and inclusive environment for Canadian playwrights to work on their plays while surrounded by playwrights and performing artists from across the country and around the world. We are proud to gather on Treaty 7 territory to create, share, and explore theatrical storytelling.
The upcoming 51st edition of the Playwrights Lab encourages applications from established and emerging playwrights that are telling compelling stories and exploring new creative landscapes in this time of both deep challenges and great opportunities for the theatre world.
We invite artists developing new works for both adults and young audiences – especially artists that are new to the Lab – to join us in a dynamic conversation about storytelling and contemporary performance as we push Canadian theatre into the future.
What does the program offer?
Ten Canadian writers will be offered a two-week residency at Banff Centre. Accepted playwrights may invite a collaborator to attend for up to four days to work with you on your project; this may be a dramaturg, director, digital creator, actor, designer, musician, choreographer, or translator. We encourage writers to consider inviting a non-theatre artist or individual essential to their creation process. Details of your proposed collaborator should be included in your application.
The Lab’s dramaturgical team will support these projects throughout the Lab. Optional online sessions (pre or post-program) may be offered as a community resource and way to stay in touch.
Note: The 2024 Lab will not include a company of actors.
The Retreat
Applicants also have the opportunity to be considered for The Retreat, a two-week winter residency from February 18th to March 3rd, 2024. The Retreat offers four playwrights the opportunity to focus specifically on the writing for their individual project. The Lab Director and Dramaturg will be in attendance for part of The Retreat to consult with the selected writers, but this is not a dramaturgical process – the focus is on writing and creation. No production support is available. Please indicate your interest at step 3 of the application process.
Who should apply for Playwrights Lab?
The Lab values strong storytelling, diversity (in form, discipline, experience, culture, and community), beautiful language, bold experimentation, and collaboration. We seek artists who are examining theatrical conventions, taking risks, and asking questions about our society; artists who demand that theatre have social and political impact, and who are writing plays that seek to challenge and change our world.
The Playwrights Lab supports writers and plays that tell stories not commonly told on Canadian stages; stories that embrace outrage and wrestle with wild ideas and images; and pursue challenging, multi-disciplinary, provocative approaches to telling stories.
We encourage applications from artists creating works that bridge theatre/dance and indoor/outdoor spaces; and projects whose goals reach beyond the theatre space to changing practices, systems and communities. As we consider the forms of new work that playwrights have engaged in during the pandemic, we want to acknowledge and examine approaches to storytelling that combine live and digital components.
Applications are open to Canadians and Permanent Residents only. Under the Jay Treaty in North America, Indigenous candidates are encouraged to apply. We welcome artists from all communities and encourage applications from artists working with Indigenous languages, incorporating multiple languages, and those working on projects with little or no language to apply.
