What is the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative?
Following the first iteration of the project at the Blyth Festival pre-pandemic, the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative (DDI) is a collaboration between Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, Playwrights Theatre Centre, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights (MAP), and the Blyth Festival.
The pandemic has accelerated our use of digital tools. However, knowledge and financial gaps are still with us. With this reality in mind, we created three locally based residencies to investigate and expand our collective vocabulary with digital technology. These three distinct week-long residencies have been designed to allow for a deep investigation and articulation of two main questions:
- Where are the literacy gaps in managing the processes and systems in the integration of digital components?
- How to best organize creative relationships to maximize expertise in the collaboration process?
The Winnipeg Residency - June 21-26/2021
Synthesizing digital and live theatre
Deadline for applications - Friday, March 12th, 2021, 5:00 pm CST
The Manitoba Association of Playwrights (MAP) is looking for participants for a week-long residency workshop (June 21 to 26, 2021) exploring the integration of digital technology and expertise in early stages of story creation and project development.
We are looking for projects that envision a theatrical form that synthesizes digital platforms and live performance. We invite artists and performance companies to apply with relevant works-in-progress (early to mid-stage of development). MAP, along with our local partners Video Pool Media Arts Centre and Manufacturing Entertainment, will meet with selected artists to devise a practical workshop that best serves their project. We will provide technology, equipment, and expertise to support each project’s dramaturgical investigation.
Each participating artist will receive a $750 honorarium.
Participants will also be invited into auxiliary programming over the course of the residency week, designed to support the projects selected. This programming may include collective investigations into both traditional and emerging digital tools and technologies, exploring the vocabulary needed to collaborate in digital integration and exploration, and/or look at case studies from the Canadian and international landscape.
MAP welcomes applications from Manitoba PACT theatres, independent theatres, collectives, ad hoc groups, playwrights, and storytelling artists from other live and digital performance disciplines. Teams are encouraged to apply (ex. playwright and dramaturg, core creative members of a collective, story devisor and design support, etc.). 4 to 6 projects will be selected (a total of 12 participants).
PWM, PTC, and MAP are continuously working to make all of our programs accessible. We recognize that the identity of each person is fundamentally plural, multidimensional, changing and evolving. We are committed to working with artists to create spaces within which Indigenous artists (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), racialized artists (including recent immigrants), members of the 2SLGBTQQIPAA+ communities and/or neurodiverse and disabled artists as well as artists living with chronic illness and chronic pain can create.
The Winnipeg residency is one leg in a series of residencies taking place across the country investigating Digital Dramaturgy, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Literacy Fund. As such, we will be documenting activities and discoveries over the course of the week to add to our national research dissemination. All participants must be willing to share parts of their creative process and learning outcomes during the residency. DDI and participants will negotiate fair Intellectual Property rights for educational, non-commercial dissemination of exploratory work undertaken during the residency, an example of which can be found here.
MAP Winnipeg Digital Dramaturgy Initiative application guidelines – APPLY
Deadline for Winnipeg applications - Friday, March 12th, 2021, 5:00 pm CST
For an overview of the Digital Dramaturgy Initiative national partnership, visit the Playwrights' Workshop Montréal website
The Digital Dramaturgy Initiative is a partnership between
The Digital Dramaturgy Initiative is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts
