By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Springboards is back this week. And with it, our annual backstage pass to the world of artistic creation, where new plays get born and develop.

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Workshop West Playwrights Theatre’s new play festival, which returned after a 10-year absence in 2022, is a signature event for a 46-year-old company devoted to the discovery and development, the honing, expansion and profile, of the Canadian repertoire. And in this edition, works-in-progress at every stage of their evolution by some 22 playwrights at every stage of their careers, from beginners to veteran Canadian stars like George F. Walker, will get staged readings of every size in a cabaret setting at the Gateway Theatre — with an audience (that’s us!).

As Workshop West’s artistic producer Heather Inglis has often reminded us, the first engagement of a new play with a live audience is a crucial part of its journey to the opening night mini-quiches — revealing for the playwright and exciting for us watchers. Springboards is all about that. And restoring it was a priority for Inglis when she got the Workshop West job just before COVID brought live theatre to a shuddering halt in 2020.   

In this year’s expanded festival, Monday through March 31, replete with staged readings of every size, workshops, talkbacks, cabarets, and panel discussions, there’s even a night (Tuesday) devoted to a “Workshop on Workshops,” that, as Inglis puts it, “pulls back the curtain on what happens when a play gets workshopped, the rules of engagement for a good workshop.” It’s led by actor/ director Trevor Ruegar, the Calgary-based executive director of the Alberta Playwrights Network.

And by way of launch, the opening night of Springboards 2024 is an evening in the company of an artist with “an encyclopedic knowledge of Edmonton theatre,” and an unfailing generosity of spirit in sharing it. Ask Jim stars Jim DeFelice, actor, director, teacher, mentor, an unparalleled resource for everyone who works in the field, and everyone who loves live theatre. “Cynical is not part of his DNA,” as Inglis says of the puckish Edmonton “theatre elder” now in his ‘80s.

Hosted by the star playwright Conni Massing, whose new comedy Dead Letter (part of last year’s Springboards) is the Workshop West season finale in May, the evening includes an onstage interview of DeFelice, and questions from the audience. Bring yours.

Both DeFelice and Massing have a long history with Workshop West. The former was on the WWPT board for 17 years, with a wealth of experience and connections in new play creation. Six of the latter’s plays have premiered at Workshop West.

Springboards 2023, Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. Photo supplied.

The full-length featured staged readings include new plays by award-winners Collin Doyle (Let The Light Of Day Through, Terry And The Dog, The Mighty Carlins) and Nicole Moeller (The Ballad of Peachtree Rose, An Almost Perfect Thing, The Preacher). Doyle’s Summer Solstice, set in 2002, takes a character back to her home town in northern Alberta for the funeral of her father, a man’s she’s removed from her life 30 years before. Inglis, who describes the playwright as “such a smart, careful, passionate writer,” directs Friday’s reading, with a cast that includes Beth Graham, Doug Mertz, and Marianne Copithorne.

Moeller’s The Resurrection of Dottie Reed, as Inglis describes, concerns a woman in her ‘60s, a victim of an internet scam, who has had enough,” and devises her revenge. With recent productions of Mob and Subscribe Or Like, Workshop West has stepped into the dangerously volatile online world in which we all at least partly live and struggle to retain our agency and identity. This time, a character fights back, “using a lifetime of experience.” Tracy Carroll directs Chris Bullough, Michele Fleiger, Kristin Johnston and Maureen Rooney in Saturday’s reading.        

EdmonTEN, the bright idea of Carroll and Conni Massing and now “an Edmonton tradition,” arrives back at Springboards Wednesday in partnership with The Alberta Playwrights’ Network. Five 10-minute plays, selected blindly from submissions, get a debut reading. And the playwrights run the gamut of experience. The evening includes Beth Graham’s Galloping Heart, Leslea Kroll’s Riverside, Shawn Marshall’s The Chart, Cat Walsh’s The Sun Sets In Apartment 506, and Alexandria Fortier’s Stuck With You.

The 10-minute play is a concentrated form that’s intensely difficult to craft, as Inglis points out. “It requires such a tight command of tension.” Amy DeFelice directs a cast of three: Trevor Rueger, Michelle Diaz, and Danielle LaRose.

All three of the artists, relative newcomers to the scene, who have contributed scripts to Thursday’s Wildside Cabaret are actors-turned-playwrights. Intriguingly two of their three high-contrast offerings — all directed by Ben Henderson (former Theatre Network artistic director and ex-city councillor) — involve animal characters. One of the queer couple in the third is played by a puppet.

Angus, the protagonist of Spencer Kells’s Sheep Play, is a sheep with big dreams and, in a post-human world, challenges to match. The cast of Lora Brovold, Brennan Campbell, Alex Dawkins, and Cody Porter take on sheep-ish assignments. Kole Durnford’s Horseplay chronicles the best-friends relationship between Jaques, a jockey, and Horse who is one. They’re up against the threat of separation if they don’t start winning races. Inglis calls it “a beautifully sad and hopeful coming of age play.”  Vince Forcier and Aran Wilson-McAnally step up to the gate. In Michael Watt’s Arthur and Titi (“whimsical and fun” as Inglis describes) we meet a couple, a man and a puppet, trying to make things work between them.

Sunday’s grand finale is the third annual Springboards Cabaret, curated by Darrin Hagen and directed by Jake Tkaczyk. It’s a mashup of excerpts from soon-to-be hot new plays, new music, special guests, billed as “an evening of adult fun.”

The playwright list for this cabaret, always a hot ticket, is wildly eclectic. As usual it’s attracted submissions from a mix of newcomers and experienced writers: Stephen Allred, Mikayla Boutin, Louise Casemore, Kijo Gatama, Seth Gilfillan, Katherine Koller, Emily Lizotte, Natalie Meisner, Kristine Nutting, Zachary Parsons-Lozinski, Andrew Torry, Jaquelin Walters, Lindsey Walker … and George F. Walker. The latter, one of the country’s celebrated veterans, has credits in the Workshop West archive. In the 1999-2000 season, the company produced two of Walker’s Suburban Motel plays. Bradley Moss directed Problem Child; David Mann The End of Civilization.

Inglis has discovered that “Jim DeFelice wrote the first article ever about Workshop West for the Canadian Theatre Review, in 1985…. It’s been fascinating to see what hasn’t changed — the struggle for (acknowledged) relevance of Canadian work.” Now, she says, “it’s still considered an incredible risk to put new Canadian plays onstage.” Inglis sighs, and laughs. “But that’s what we do! I love an underdog story!” And there’s nothing more heartening than an underdog celebration.

For more information, and the full detailed schedule, check workshopwest.org.

Springboards New Play Festival, 2024

Theatre: Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

Where: Gateway Theatre, 8529 Gateway Blvd.

Running: Monday through March 31

Tickets: all pay-what-you-will at the door. In advance at showpass.com.