What is theatre doing to reflect the wishes and concerns of young people right now? This exciting collection of recent Canadian TYA plays provides answers. Plays for elementary school age audiences, as well as scripts designed with young adults in mind, are here together in one volume, opening theatrical doors on a wide range of topics from the serious to the hilarious. These scripts are road-tested: toured by professional companies to schools, theatres, libraries, museums and other assorted venues, they have been seen and enjoyed by many young people across Canada. Included are interviews with the writers discussing themes and concerns of their particular play, as well as topics such as the touring experience, the challenges and thrills of writing for specific age groups, and the impulse behind the writer's work: what is going on in the world that gave spark to the idea?

Kit Brennan was born in Vancouver and grew up in Kingston, Ontario. She currently lives in Montreal where she is a faculty member and coordinates the playwriting program at Concordia University’s Department of Theatre. Her plays have been produced across Canada and include Spring Planting (Winner of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild 1993 Literary Award), Magpie (Winner of the 1992 Grain Drama Award), as well as new plays Hunger Striking and Having. Her latest book Two Hands Clapping (Signature Editions), is a volume of plays written by playwrights from coast to coast and most regions in between.

Kit Brennan's profile page

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed playwright, librettist and TV writer. Her work for the stage includes East of Berlin, This Is War, Little One, The Russian Play, Infinity and What a Young Wife Ought to Know. Her plays have been widely produced across Canada, as well as in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria, Australia and Japan. Hannah’s music-theatre hybrid, Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan) has toured internationally, garnering a New York Times Critics’ Pick and over fifty four- and five-star reviews. Hannah’s operas with Lembit Beecher, Sky on Swings and I have no stories to tell you, have been produced at Gotham Chamber Opera / the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Opera Philadelphia. She has been honoured with numerous accolades, including multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Toronto Theatre Critics Awards, Fringe First and Herald Angels Awards, the Trillium Book Award, the Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize. She has also been nominated for a Drama Desk Award, the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and twice for the Siminovitch Prize. Recently, Hannah debuted her first confessional work for the stage, Secret Life of a Mother (co-created with Maev Beaty, Ann-Marie Kerr and Marinda De Beer) at the Theatre Centre in Toronto. Hannah is a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto and lives in Halifax.

Hannah Moscovitch's profile page

Jason Long's profile page

Janice Salkeld's profile page

Brian Drader is an actor and writer from Winnipeg, who now lives in Montreal, and is head of the playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada. His writing credits include Liar (Scirocco Drama, 2004, a finalist for the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation Playwriting Award, New York, NY), Prok (Scirocco Drama, 2003, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Drama, a finalist for the 2003 Governor General’s Award for Drama, and winner of the Theatre BC National Playwriting Award and the Brick Playhouse New Play Award), The Norbals (winner of the Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition, and also published by Scirocco Drama), S*it (a play for teens), The Fruit Machine, and Tucktuck. Drader is also editor of Breakout, a Scirocco anthology of plays by young emerging playwrights.

Brian Drader's profile page

Marcia Johnson is a playwright and actor based in Toronto. Her plays include Binti's Journey, an adaptation of The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis; Courting Johanna (Scirocco Drama, 2009) based on Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and Late. Her plays have been performed by the Blyth Festival, Obsidian Theatre Company, Theatre Direct Canada, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Black Theatre Workshop, Western Canadian Theatre Company, and more. My Mother's Ring, a short opera for which she wrote the libretto with composer Stephen A. Taylor, was nominated for a 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Award. Their second collaboration, Paradises Lost, based on the Ursula K. Le Guin novella, had excerpted concert performances by Third Angle Ensemble in Portland, Oregon and at The Gershwin Hotel in New York. Marcia Johnson is a core member of Got Your Back Canada and is a juror/dramaturg for Ergo Pink Fest, supporting, developing and showcasing the works of women and playwrights of marginalized genders.

Marcia Johnson's profile page