From page to stage! by Liz Gilroy, PSFT Artistic Director
Lee MacDougall gives us a teaser for Rye’ an Gospel : “Darla Parker and her outrageous friend Rex head back to the small town she grew up in to attend her grandmother’s funeral. When she ends up inheriting the family Mill property, the whole town gets involved in a battle between her cousin Lo-anne, the Mayor Mert Cooney, Stella and Vic Polinki, and more crazy locals than you can shake a stick at.” “Walter is a retiree living a quiet life in a quiet neighbourhood. Shannon is a busy mother of two who moves in across the street. An unlikely friendship develops as they sit and talk about everything from life to love to death to egg rolls. A year in the life of two lonely people who didn’t know they needed each other. Until they did,” playwright Steve Ross reveals. Please join us at the Simon Joynes Playwrights’ Festival from September 19th to 21st at 7:30 pm, and play a part in a new piece that could go from page to stage!
The inspiration for a play can come from anywhere; a germ of an idea, a snippet of an overheard conversation, a newspaper article, a dream or a nightmare, your own past, an urban myth, one of your grandmother’s tall tales, and the need to tell that story impels the playwright to create. It’s a solitary journey and requires self-motivation and discipline. That’s why Simon Joynes started the Playwrights’ Festival, being a writer himself he understood the need to offer playwrights the opportunity to find the money, the time, and a venue where people could gather and listen to a brand-new piece of theatre. How exciting to be the first audience to hear a play read aloud with professional actors and to be able to participate in that piece’s creation. Often by the time the play gets to the workshop stage, the writer has written three to six different versions, drafts as they are called in the biz. The public readings are invaluable for the playwright; they give them an opportunity to hear the audience’s reaction firsthand but without the pressure of a full production and the money it costs to make that happen. This year the Simon Joynes Playwrights’ Festival is offering three different works: Festival Season by Shannon Patte, Rye’ an Gospel by Lee MacDougall, and Goldfish by Steve Ross. Shannon Patte: “Before writing Festival Season, I dedicated a significant amount of time crafting each character’s background. This helped me understand how they would respond to whatever situation I threw at them. It was so much fun imagining how these characters would work together to organize a small-town flower festival.”
Port Stanley Villager September 2024 cover
Port Stanley’s 3rd annual Colours at the Beach was held at Main Beach on July 13th. If you look to the left, you can see Councillor Griffin getting in on the action! Photo by Geoff Rae
Page 8 Port Stanley Villager • September 2024
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