Playwrights Lab - 2024

Brian Quirt is the founder and Artistic Director of Nightswimming, a dramaturgical company based in Toronto, and has been Director of the Banff Centre Playwrights Lab since 2013. With Nightswimming he has commissioned and developed 35 new works, created eight of his own plays and performance projects, and directed the premieres and 10 national tours of many Nightswimming projects including, most recently, new works by Carmen Aguirre and Anita Majumdar. Nightswimming’s national initiatives include Pure Research, dedicated to innovative performance research, and 5x25, a commissioning project for artists born in 1995, the year of Nightswimming’s first production. www.nightswimming.ca

He’s held senior positions at Factory Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Canadian Stage Company, and the Great Canadian Theatre Company. His work as a dramaturg, director, and playwright has been seen at theatres and festivals across Canada. Brian is the past Board Chair and a past-President of the Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), and was the founding Board Chair of SpiderWebShow Performance. He is a two-time recipient of LMDA's Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy, and recently received LMDA's Lessing Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dramaturgy.

Jenna (she/her) is a mixed-race Director and Dramaturg who gratefully resides in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), on Treaty 7 Territory. She is the founding Artistic Director of Chromatic Theatre, the Dramaturg for the Playwrights Lab at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Board Co-Chair of LMDA, and the Director of Theatre Alberta’s Artstrek summer camp for teens. She is a passionate advocate for equity in the arts, a fierce supporter of new play development, and is learning how to juggle parenthood with a career in the arts. Jenna is a graduate of the NTS Artistic Leadership Residency (2020), the Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership Program (2019), and a member of the artEquity National Facilitator Training cohort (2018). She is a recipient of Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize and holds a MA in International Performance Research from the universities of Amsterdam and Tampere. Recent directing credits include Teenage Dick and Undressed at Alberta Theatre Projects, Little Women at Theatre Calgary, Hookman and The Green Line for Chromatic Theatre, Sherlock Holmes at the Vanishing Thimble at Vertigo Theatre, and Mary’s Wedding at the Citadel Theatre.

Kodie Rollan is a Philippine-born, Scarborough-raised, Moh'kins’tsis-based playwright, dramaturg, lyricist, and producer. He is excited to return as the Assistant Dramaturg for the Playwrights Lab. As an arts leader, Kodie is passionate about community-building, creating spaces for shared storytelling, and arts equity within the nonprofit sector.

Kodie is proud to have worked with a variety of theatre companies in both Alberta and Ontario in a variety of capacities. Some of these companies include Downstage Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, Lunchbox Theatre, Swallow-A-Bicycle, Alberta Workers Health Centre, fu-Gen Theatre, Carlos Bulosan Theatre, Prime Mover Theatre and The Musical Stage Company.

He received his Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and his Masters in Arts Leadership from Queen’s University. He is currently the Artistic Director of Chromatic Theatre and is also a facilitator of the Rozsa Admin Fundamentals Training program with the Rozsa Foundation.
 

Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg who works across Turtle Island. Her works include the plays The Unplugging and Annie Mae’s Movement, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shanawdithit, the short play-for-film Katharsis, the VR piece Reconciling. She recently co-created Wreckonciliation with Marion Newman and Melody Courage at Opera Kelowna, and is working on a musical adaptation of The Englishman’s Boy with Ian Cusson, Allan Gilliland, Josh Languedoc, Vern Thiessen and Royce Vavrek. Other directing projects include Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade at Stratford Festival, Julie Tamiko Manning’s Mizushōbai at Tableau d’Hôte, Leah-Simone Bowen’s The Flood at Imago, both in Montreal, and Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s play The First Stone at New Harlem and GCTC in Toronto and Ottawa. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. 

Marie Beath Badian is an award-winning, Filipino-Canadian playwright based in T’karonto [Toronto, Ontario, Canada]. She is the 2022 Recipient of The Playwright Guild of Canada’s Tom Hendry Award for New Drama, received a 2023 Honourable Mention for the Herman Voaden Prize for her play Common, and is a two-time alumnus of The Banff Playwrights Lab.

Her plays include The Waltz, Prairie Nurse, The Best Friend Blanket Fort Show, The Making of St. Jerome, Mind Over Matter, and Novena. Her commissions include Prairie Theatre Exchange, The Blyth Festival, Young People’s Theatre and The Stratford Festival. She developed work in the playwright units of Cahoots Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, Soulpepper Playwrights Circle and The Factory Theatre. She was the Playwright-in-Residence at fu-GEN Asian-Canadian Theatre Company, Project:Humanity and The Blyth Festival.

Prairie Nurse and The Waltz are part of a multi-generational trilogy spanning fifty-years, set in rural Saskatchewan. She will be working on the third play, The Cottage Guest, as part of The Slaight Theatre Creation Residency in January 2024. All three plays are commissions of The Blyth Festival. www.mariebeath.com