Highlights from the International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai

I’ve just returned from the IWP conference in Mumbai, India, where I had the opportunity to read several scenes from my play Harriet’s House. Harriet’s House, which Gailey Road is planning to produce in June 2010, is still a work in progress and the reading in Mumbai gave me the opportunity to solicit feedback from women playwrights working in Norway (Kristin Bjorn), India (Hina Siddiqui), New Zealand (Denise Walsh), Australia (Fiona Wheeler), the United States (Vanessa Adams-Harris), as well as Canada (Beverly Cooper, Marcia Johnson, Gaily Nyoka, Sally Stubbs, Margot Huycke).

Inspired by what I learned about my characters and my story from the feedback I got from reading, I’ve begun revisions of the play and look forward to developing the work further when it goes into rehearsal for its production in June. An on-going, report of my journey of producing Harriet’s House for the Toronto Pride Festival will begin on this blog next week.

Here are some of the highlights I experienced at the IWP Conference in Mumbai:

• Meeting the other Canadian delegates, reading the plays they brought to the conference, and hearing about their latest projects. See the list of the “Productions I’m Following” and the “Plays I’m Reading” for more information on some of the terrific work being done by Canadian women playwrights.

• Meeting other women playwrights who are also running their own theatre companies. I spent several breakfasts talking to Anne Bertram who is the Managing Director of Theatre Unbound in St. Paul, Minnesota (www.theatreunbound.com). I also spent some time during dinner talking to Suzy Messerole, who along with Amir Siddiqui, is running Exposed Brick Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota (www.exposedbricktheatre@yahoo.com).

• Meeting women playwrights from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Phillipines and hearing about the ways that they have integrated their work as playwrights and theatre artists with their activism to improve the lives of women their communities. The panel discussions on “Theatre of Social Change” and “The Pain and Pleasure of Women Directors” were particularly rich.

• Finding out about an organization called the International Centre of Women Playwrights (ICWP) (www.womenplaywrights.org) which is a social and professional network and support group for women playwrights around the world.

• Hearing Katherine Thomson’s keynote entitled “Politics in Theatre” in which she discussed the way she embeds political issues into her plays by focusing on the creation of characters that have freewill and can provide multiple sides of a political arguments. A “dramatist first, and activist second”, Katherine spoke about wanting to write great roles for great actors. “With the right actor, we get more than we can ever imagine.”

In my next posting I will begin the first of an ongoing set of postings on the journey of producing Harriet’s House.

All the best,
Tara