Gailey Road: December Update

Strategic Planning for Gailey Road Productions

The last few months were important months for Gailey Road Productions. Director Jocelyn Wickett and Production Manager Gillian Lewis and I (Tara Goldstein, Founder) have been working on a five-year strategic plan for the company and will hold the company's first Board of Directors meeting on December 13, 2010.

Over the last four years, Gailey Road Productions has matured in a number of ways. The company has moved from producing plays in Bring Your Own Venues at the Toronto Fringe Festival to self-producing its most recent play Harriet’s House in a professional theatre run by IATSE technicians. It has moved from seeking Fringe Festival waivers for its Canadian Actors’ Equity Association (CAEA) members to hiring CAEA actors on guest artist contracts. In the fall of 2009, Gailey Road took on an intern, Monica Nunes, who was mentored into the role of Assistant Producer for the staged reading of Zero Tolerance (February 2010) and then took on the role of Assistant Producer for the production of Harriet’s House at Hart House Theatre (July 2010).

After three successful staged productions and three staged readings Gailey Road Productions is ready to develop as an organization and move from its four-year start-phase on the Ground Floor (its first production Pound Predators was actually performed on the Ground Floor of the OISE/UT library) to its next five-year development phase at the Mezzanine level.

Current Organizational Development Goal

The primary development goal for Gailey Road in the next five years is to establish a strong financial base so the company can continue to develop, produce and tour its current project The Harriet’s House Trilogy.

The Harriet’s House Trilogy

The writing and development of The Harriet’s House Trilogy began in 2007 with a series of 10-minute plays I wrote on the topic of transnational adoption in both heterosexual and same-sex families. Building from the 10-minute play series, the first play in the trilogy, Harriet’s House, focuses on the themes of love, loss and adoption in a same-sex family. Given the ongoing issues of bullying, harassment and prejudice that face lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (lgbtq) communities both locally and internationally, I felt it was important to write and stage the experiences of lgbtq adoptive families. The Harriet’s House Trilogy will provide opportunities for playwrights, actors, audiences and readers of the play to engage in discussion about these issues.

The Women's Caucus Six-Week Cyberwritng Challenge

The First Six-Week Cyberwriting Challenge that I ran this past fall is now over (see my last blog entry for more details) and the feedback about the Challenge has been enthusiastic. Here is a sample of the feedback.

• I have 2/3 of a rough draft of a play done as a result of this process.
• I have gained tools from this I know I will use again.
• The challenge was helpful at reminding me to make room for my writing every day.
• I think one of my plays is now taking a turn toward being clearer and more effective thanks to your suggestions.
• I like the warm up exercises. I don’t use them every time, only when needed. Perfect.
• I was surprised to discover the warm-up exercises really helped my writing.
• I loved the ‘compile everything you have so far’ exercise.
• It's made me do more writing than I would otherwise have done.
• I plan to go through them again as I'll soon be doing a rewrite of a play.
• I didn’t write much as I wanted, but certainly more than I would've done without the challenge.

Given the positive feedback, I plan to run the Challenge again next fall. If you are a Canadian woman playwright and would like to participate in the Challenge, contact Robin Sokoloski at the Playwrights Guild of Canada to become a member of the Guild's Women's Caucus: robin@playwrightsguild.ca

As this will be my last blog entry for the year, I want to take this opportunity to wish all the visitors to my blog a healthy, happy and successful new year.

All the best,
Tara