How do you Re: Imagine Theatre?

Pictured: Alyssa Formosa in a 2023 workshop of Binary Star testing projection design for PTC Associate José Teodoro with dramaturgy by Joanna Garfinkel. Photo by José Teodoro.

The new version welcomes a community perspective that provides an entry point for audience members of all experiences to relate to and calls for openness in embracing change. Rather than record the past, God’s A Drag now re-envisions a more inclusive future.

With PTC’s Artistic Producer & Dramaturg Davey Samuel Calderon by her side, Jessica dove into the art of drag as a design element and experimented how it intersects with religion. They consulted Clare Morgan, whose current work as a minister supported research and demonstrated grounded possibilities. TheGod’s A Dragteam further worked with Drag Consultant Rae Takei, who empowered them in embodying their drag features and personas, and Costume Designer Alexa Fraser, whose approach championed the discovery of character journeys and voices. Through process, drag became not just an element within the play, but a character with its own throughline and narrative, to hold divinity and queer joy together onstage at the 2024 Vancouver Fringe.

Pictured (left to right): Quinn Churchill, Emily Case, Yasmin D’Oshun, Yasmin Tayob, and Dolly Hardon as Pastor Luz, Joan of Arc, Neveah, Cassandra, and Petty Poise respectively in the 2024 Vancouver Fringe run of God’s A Drag directed by Jack Bumbala. Photo by Alyssa Formosa.

Transformations like this, starting in one world and ending in another, are common in PTC’s processes because it’s experimentation in its truest form. It's collaboration with community members who metamorphose an imagined journey into a physical reality. It's letting go of general ideas to make concrete choices with collaborators in the studio. It’s embracing impulses and giving time, space, and energy to an idea that may or may not become something. It’s asking, “Will it work?” and having us answer, “Let’s find out.”

"Finding out" depends on making choices, seeing how they resonate, and then finding the next experiment. PTC Dramaturgs Davey Samuel Calderon, Joanna Garfinkel, Heidi Taylor, and Melanie Yeats deep dive into these processes with creators that leave us, the work, and future audiences transformed. At Playwrights Theatre Centre, this is how we “reimagine theatre” together. We play professionally.

Pictured (top to bottom, left to right): PTC Staffing Team Heidi Taylor, Joanna Garfinkel, Davey Samuel Calderon, Melanie Yeats, Carmela Sison, and Alyssa Formosa in the Progress Lab studio. Photo by Sarah Race Photography.

What does it mean to work in the hypothetical? How can we ground the hypothetical into something tangible to be moulded and experimented with? If playwrights create something out of nothing when they put pen to paper, then dramaturgs transform something into everything when they guide what’s on paper into the room. We understand ‘play’ as a verb to be embodied in our work, as a value to bring forward into process design. As the only dramaturgically-focused theatre company in Canada west of Montreal, Playwrights Theatre Centre is where aesthetic meets function, where idea meets creation space, where we “reimagine theatre” together.

Playwriting and theatre making is a process that transcends a script. We work with creators to explore and test ingredients, including projection, choreography, and other elements of live performance. We expand the minds of our artists to how these other layers of design, audience, and context deepens their work, empowering them to make strong dramaturgical decisions for themselves. Our dramaturgs have an important role in supporting this discovery, guiding playwrights through processes in which they can delve more deeply into their worlds. Each process looks different because every project demands new forms of experimentation; process design is essentially structured play. Often what emerges from these workshops are threads that, when followed, lead our dramaturg-playwright duo toward radically transformed structures.