For Immediate Release
July 10, 2001

The Canada Council has increased the Banff playRites Colony’s funding by 5% to an annual operating grant of $34,000 per year for the next three years. Theatre section interim head Claudia Buckley says there is "strong support for the quality and interest of the work undertaken by the Colony, and for the recent arrival and new directions of John Murrell." Murrell is co-artistic director with Bob White of the Banff playRites Colony. "The positive and informed partnership among The Banff Centre, The Canada Council, and Alberta Theatre Projects is a collaboration which allows this flagship program of Canadian dramaturgy to endure, and to improve with each passing year. Partnership is now, and has always been, the foundation of the intense creativity of the Banff playRites Colony," says Murrell.

For more than 25 years, the Banff playRites Colony has played a major role in the development of Canadian plays and playwrights. The Colony is an artist-driven program designed to meet the particular needs of each participating playwright. Participants work with a requested or appointed dramaturge/director, and have access to a company of professional actors who help them explore and refine the text.

The unique atmosphere at The Banff Centre plays a significant role in the processes of the artists. Stephen Massicotte, a Colony 2000 participant, says "the Colony provides an excellent environment to meet writers from across the country, to discuss their work, and to find out a bit more about the business of playwriting in Canada."

Bob White was appointed artistic director of Calgary's Alberta Theatre Projects in November, 1999. He has been active as a dramaturge and director in Canadian theatre for over 25 years. As artistic associate at Alberta Theatre Projects, he headed the annual PanCanadian playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays for 13 years. The Festival has premiered over 50 plays since 1987, most of which have gone on to further production across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Bob is also program co-director of the Banff playRites Colony, an annual three-week writers’ retreat at The Banff Centre.

Bob’s activities in new play development include major interpretations of the work of Paul Ledoux, George F. Walker, Lawrence Jeffery, Brad Fraser, and Eugene Stickland, among many others. Bob has directed acclaimed Canadian, American, and British productions including Wit; How I Learned To Drive; Angels In America (with Michael Dobbin); Keely And Du; Six Degrees Of Seperation; Our Country’s Good; Oleanna; Speed-The-Plow; and many others.

Before moving to Calgary, Bob was artistic director of Toronto’s Factory Theatre (1979-87) and dramaturge at Playwrights Workshop Montreal (1975-78).

Born in Montreal in 1949, Bob is a graduate of Loyola College and the University of Alberta. In 1987, Bob received the first National Play Development Award for his contributions to Canadian dramaturgy. He also holds the 125^th Anniversary Medal for distinguished contributions to Canadian theatre.

John Murrell is one of the most frequently produced of all Canadian playwrights. His plays have been translated into 15 different languages and performed in more than 30 countries around the world. He is also nationally and internationally recognized as a translator of plays into English, including The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov; Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand; and Sophocles’ Oedipus The King.

Murrell has worked as playwright-in-residence at both Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects; as an associate director of the Stratford Festival of Canada; as head of the Banff playRites Colony (1986-1989); as head of the Canada Council’s Theatre Section (1988-1992); and since November 1999, as artistic director/executive producer of Theatre Arts at The Banff Centre.

Murrell’s work for the stage includes Waiting For The Parade, which has become a perennial favourite with Canadian and international audiences; Memoir (about the final days of legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt), which has been produced throughout Canada and continues to be performed frequently in Europe, as well as in both North and South America; Farther West; Democracy; and The Faraway Nearby (about painter and feminist icon Georgia O’Keeffe). Murrell wrote screenplays for both Farther West and Waiting For The Parade, which were filmed for Canadian television.

Waiting For The Parade, Farther West, and The Faraway Nearby were all honoured with Chalmers Best Canadian Play Awards, and Democracy received the Canadian Authors Association’s and the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Best Play Awards in 1992. Murrell’s most recent play, Death In New Orleans, was premiered by One Yellow Rabbit Theatre of Calgary at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre during the 1998 International Festival Of The Arts, and won a prestigious Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Writing.

Murrell completed his university education in Calgary, where he still lives, and first began writing plays when he was a teacher in public schools in Alberta in the late 60s and early 70s.