"True when no one would listen": scripts for young readers and young audiences
Author
Faculty Advisor
Date
2022
Keywords
playscripts, discussion, youth
Abstract (summary)
Playscripts present the vision of the playwright, while simultaneously opening spaces for multiple voices to tell stories their own ways. Since characters in a playscript are meant to be embodied, they immediately invite interpretation. And since scripts rarely, if ever, answer all the questions a reader, actor, director, or educator may have, they encourage complex ways of listening and having conversations. Selfie by Christine Quintana, A Bear Awake in Winter by Ali Joy Richardson, and Winky & Stinky by Curtis Peeteetuce are all recently published scripts that engage with some similar issues: consent, agency, voice and choice, bodily autonomy, gendered expectations, and controlling your own narrative. Selfie, published by Playwrights Canada Press as a standalone script, was first performed in English in 2018 (Young People’s Theatre Toronto), and in French in 2015 (Théâtre la Seixième in Vancouver). A Bear Awake in Winter was first workshopped in 2018 (Canadian Stage Toronto) and produced by Binocular Theatre in 2019 in Toronto. Finally, Winky and Stinky is part of Boca del Lupo’s pandemic project Plays2Perform@Home, which features five box sets containing four scripts each: British Columbia, Prairie, Ontario, Québec, and Eastern Canada. Winky and Stinky is part of the Prairie Box Set and was created with support from Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon.
Publication Information
Fitzsimmons Frey, H. (2022). "True When No One Would Listen": Scripts for Young Readers and Young Audiences." Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 14(1). 122-127. https://doi.org/10.3138/jeunesse-14.1.122
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
Rights
All Rights Reserved