From biryani-making to a Gen X immigrant story, Advance Theatre Festival spotlights diverse stories
Nyla Carpentier curates a wide range of BIPOC, female-identifying playwrights at Ruby Slippers Theatre event
Nyla Carpentier
Shayna Jones
Grace Chin
Ruby Slippers Theatre presents the Advance Theatre Festival livestreamed and live at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts from February 7 to 11
A YOUNG Pakistani would-be bride attempts to make a biryani to take to a suitor’s house. A family gathers to deal with the growing dementia of its matriarch, a Chinese-Canadian Second World War veteran. And a Gen X woman recounts her family’s move from Malaysia to Canada.
These are just a few of the BIPOC women’s stories debuting at Ruby Slipper Theatre’s Advance Theatre Festival—a showcase of five dramatic play readings performed live and livestreamed from the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts this week, with full casts of actors performing the scripts.
Curator Nyla Carpentier says she was blown away by the diversity of experiences reflected in this year’s submissions.
“My impression was there were a lot of untapped stories out there, and it was really great to read different stories from different perspectives that I never knew about,” she tells Stir.
The series kicks off tonight with playwright and dramaturg Scheherazaad Cooper’s The Bibliomancer, about a book-loving girl who discovers a family secret. Tuesday night, Valerie Sing Turner debuts her In the Shadow of the Mountain, a tale set in 1988 that focuses on a family gathering that brings together the World War II experiences of Chinese-Canadians, Japanese-Canadians, and Indigenous Canadians, set against then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s formal apology for the Japanese Internment. February 9, Lee Nisar debuts Dil Ka (Urdu for “of the heart”), which follows potential bride-to-be Zahra as she prepares a dish to take to a potential suitor’s home, weighing the desires of her traditional family against who she wants to be. February 10, Shayna Jones unveils a reading of Black Skin Deep, one woman’s reckoning with her dark skin, her mother, and a mermaid. And Grace Chin rounds out the week on February 11 with A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Canada, a part-Peranakan, part-Malaysian-Chinese cha bor’s stories about her father bringing her family from Malaysia to Canada.
“It’s great to see plays that are in such different phases of development,” says Carpentier. “Some are second drafts—fresh, fresh, fresh. And some are very developed and just need more support. We also get to support writers in different points of the development process.
“There’s a lack of opportunity for BIPOC artists,” adds Carpentier, a theatre artist who’s had her own work read in the festival. “As an Indigenous woman I recognize there’s only so much opportunity for me to express myself—and opportunities that are not traumatizing. There's a safety net here to explore work and share it in a way that’s nurturing.”
The Advance Theatre Festival traces back to 2015, when Ruby Slippers approached the Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Vancouver Fringe Festival with the idea of a reading fest that would spotlight works written and directed by diverse, underrepresented theatre artists. Some of the plays have already gone on to larger productions, including Sangeeta Wylie’s we the same, which Ruby Slippers premiered late last year. Now the fest is produced in partnership with Playwrights Guild and the Shadbolt Centre.
Carpentier says the Advance series allows emerging playwrights to take a script to the next level in what is often a years-long process, encompassing many drafts and workshops. And there was a wealth of submissions from BIPOC female and female-identifying artists this year–particularly from brand new voices on the local scene.
“I think for some the pandemic has allowed them to slow down enough to explore and pursue projects that have maybe been on the backburner,” observes Carpentier. “I am curious to see what we get five years from now when we go to the theatre. Creating a play takes a lot of time and it's great that they're getting support now.
"Who knows where they're going to go down the line? I would encourage emerging theatre makers to just go for it and just keep creating work!”
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