Banff Playwrights Lab

The Banff Playwrights Lab was created by playwrights Tom Hendry and George Ryga in 1973. For more than 50 years, the Lab has sustained its founding principles of focusing on playwrights and developing new works away from the pressures of a producing theatre.

Each year the Lab welcomes Canadian playwrights and their collaborators, providing each writer with a residency tailored to their specific needs with the goal of nurturing, challenging, and inspiring the next phase of their work. The Lab also includes international writers, theatre makers and guest artists through partnerships with organizations from across Canada and beyond.

In 2023, to mark the Lab’s 50th edition, an Apprentice Dramaturg position was established to help nurture the next generation of Canadian dramaturg. The online history of the Lab was updated to include a list of all 538 playwright participants and the title of the play they developed at the Lab. We also published an anthology of short essays by Playwrights Lab participants between 2013-2023, with contributions from more than 35 playwrights, dramaturgs and choreographers from eight countries.

Director's Letter 2024

The Banff Playwrights Lab offers Canadian playwrights an inspiring, interdisciplinary, and inclusive environment to work on their plays while surrounded by performing artists from across the country and around the world. The Lab supports challenging, multi-disciplinary, and provocative approaches to telling stories. We are proud to gather on Treaty 7 territory to create, share and explore theatrical storytelling.

Each year the Lab welcomes 10 Canadian playwrights and their collaborators, providing each writer with a residency tailored to their specific needs with the goal of nurturing, challenging, and inspiring the next phase of their work.

We want to support writers and plays telling stories not commonly told on Canadian stages; stories that embrace outrage and wrestle with wild ideas, images, and individuals.

The Lab accepts applications in English and French only, though we are open to receiving projects that reference or incorporate any and all languages. We encourage artists working with Indigenous languages and those working on projects with little or no language to apply.

The Lab seeks artists who are exploring theatrical conventions, taking risks, and asking questions about our society. We value strong storytelling, diversity (in form, discipline, experience, culture, and community), beautiful language, bold experimentation, and collaboration. We seek artists who demand that theatre have social and political impact, and who are writing plays that seek to challenge and change our world.

Brian Quirt
Director, Banff Playwrights Lab