Daniel MacIvor’s award-winning season

Autumn 2008 was a banner season for playwright Daniel MacIvor. On October 8, MacIvor was awarded The Banff Centre’s $25,000 75th Anniversary Playwriting Commission, one of the most significant commissioning and development opportunities to benefit the Canadian theatre community in recent years. Then, just three weeks later, on October 27, BMO Financial Group announced that MacIvor was the recipient of the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize for 2008.

The two prizes recognize MacIvor’s position as one of Canada’s preeminent playwrights, an artist who is able to illuminate the innate theatricality and profound drama of everyday life.

MacIvor’s submission to 75th Anniversary Playwriting Competition, Deshita, examines the relationship between Minako, a Japanese interpreter from a conventional family, and Colin, a Canadian ex-pat ESL teacher who brings radical liberalism to Minako’s life. A comedy and a modern love story, the play is also tragic in its examination of the lengths people are willing to go to preserve their old world culture.

“Commissioning new work is at the heart of The Banff Centre’s vision as a catalyst for creativity, contributing to the repertoire of Canadian theatre, music, and dance.” says Kelly Robinson, director of Theatre Arts at The Banff Centre. “The submissions represented a diversity of theatrical styles and came from a very diverse community. We feel that the ideas presented really spoke to the breadth and the depth of the playwriting community in Canada.”

Serving with Robinson on the jury for the award were playwright John Murrell, the Banff Centre’s emeritus artist-in-residence, translator Linda Gaboriau, director Brian Quirt, and the co-directors of the Banff Playwrights Colony, Maureen Labonté and Bob White.

“In our 75th year The Banff Centre was looking to celebrate the past, the present, and look forward to our future,” Robinson says. “Daniel’s piece, with its focus on a story happening in the now, with its collision of the future and the past, seemed to most touch on the spirit of the commission.”

MacIvor’s award includes a two-week writing retreat at The Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony, and two residencies with the Banff Playwrights Colony in 2009 and 2010.

MacIvor’s winning proposal was chosen from almost 100 submissions from across Canada. The adjudicators also chose to commission plays by Colleen Murphy, winner of the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for The December Man, and Hannah Moscovitch, playwright-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre. Both works revolve around Canada’s participation in the war in Afghanistan. “During the adjudication it became clear that settling on one work would ignore other plays that demanded to be supported,” says Robinson. In addition to the commission, Murphy and Moscovitch will receive creative support in developing their plays as part of the 2009 Banff Playwrights Colony.

Daniel McIvor photo by Guntar Kravis.