The International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai

The International Women Playwrights Conference which takes place once every three years is being hosted this year by Stree Mukti Sanghatana, a women's issues organization in collaboration with the University of Mumbai, who is providing its three theatre spaces for a variety of playreadings, workshops and performances.


The conference, which begins November 1, 2009 and runs until November 7, 2009, has a delegation of 11 Canadian women playwrights attending: Beverley Cooper, Trina Davies, Christine Estima, Tara Goldstein, Jordan Hall, Robyn Israel, Marcia Johnson (The Playwrights Guild of Canada's Chair of the Women's Caucus), Melissa Major, Gail Nyoka, Carol Sinclair, and Sally Stubb. All of the Canadian playwrights will be reading from one of their recent or new plays. Beverley Cooper will be reading from her play Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott, which was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award.

I'll be reading from my newest play Harriet's House, a play about international adoption in a same-sex family. The play was workshopped this past July with five Toronto women theatre artists and Gailey Road is planning to produce the play this summer at the Toronto Pride Festival.

I am very excited about attending the conference which will include a number of performances by Indian women theatre artists. My next posting will appear after my return from Mumbai and will report on some of my experiences there. I anticipate being able to share a wealth of information about women-centred, research-informed theatre that is going on in India and other parts of the world.

All the best,
Tara

Gailey Road: What we do

Gailey Road is interested in social issues that impact on the lives of women. We work to ensure our work attracts women from a wide variety of communities in Toronto. Our first Fringe production Pound Predators was a satirical parody about the “war against weight” and featured a multicultural cast. Our second Fringe production Lost Daughter was a historical drama about antisemitism and xenophobia in 1933 Toronto. Lost Daughter won the 2005 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award. Our current project Harriet’s House is a play about transnationally adopted children growing up in a same-sex family. It will be performed during the Toronto Pride Festival in June 2010.

I am taking the latest draft of Harriet's House to the 2009 International Women Playwrights Conference in Mumbai, India. Some 300 Indian delegates will meet 100 of their international colleagues at this meeting of women playwrights. There are 11 Canadian delegates going to the conference to present play readings of their latest work and I am doing a play reading of Harriet's House on November 5, 2009.

About 150 theatre artists will also attend the the conference to stage more than a dozen scripts written by women. The conference will take place from November 1-7, 2009. For more information on the International Women Playwrights Conference and the organization behind it, Women Playwrights International, go to: http://www.wpinternational.net

In my next blog I will write about the Canadian group of playwrights who are going to the International Women Playwrights Conference and when I get back from the conference I will post a set of entries about the conference itself.

All the best,
Tara

What is Gailey Road?

Gailey Road Productions was founded in January 2007 by Toronto playwright and educator Tara Goldstein and currently involves Toronto director Jocelyn Wickett and Toronto Production and Stage Manager Gillian Lewis.  Our company produces women-centred, research-informed theatre on issues of pluralism, social identity, violence and oppression in Canadian society.     

My next post will tell you about our productions.

All the best, Tara