For the 39th year in a row, the Bryan Wade Brave New Play Rites Festival (BNPR), produced by the UBC School of Creative Writing, will take place at the Dorothy Somerset Studio at UBC in Vancouver from March 11 to March 15 at 7:00 pm.
Pay-What-You-Can tickets are available to book online until 5:00 pm on each show day. Any unsold Pay-What-You-Can seats will be available, cash only, at the door before each performance.
Named in honour of UBC’s Professor Bryan Wade (who passed away in 2022), BNPR is an annual event to recognize the amazing work done by the School’s student playwrights. Professor Wade believed that the best way for emerging playwrights to learn was to see their plays in front of a live audience.
“Public presentations of new work is a vital part of the playwriting process, which begins with a script but quickly becomes a collaborative process where the ideas and experiences of numerous other people – actors, directors, designers and, perhaps most importantly, the audience – all come together to create and share in a unique, fleeting, an ephemeral experience. BNPR offers students the best kind of theatrical training: the opportunity to learn by doing, by having their words embodied by performers and shared with an audience,” says Assistant Professor Frances Koncan, the current faculty advisor to BNPR.
The festival presents 15-minute staged readings that are the culmination of a year of writing and development by emerging playwrights in the School’s BFA and MFA programs. This year’s playwrights are Shaughn Clutchey, Matt Clarke, Stephanie Ionescu, Nina Legesse, Maia Dueck, Lois L.K. Chan, Ayda Niknami, Lava Alapai, Kristos, Izzy Harvey, Elysia Tessler, Dalia Currie, Ciel Lenz, Chance Plomp-Schweitzer, Ash Wahking, Acadia Currah, Acadia Currah and Xochitl Leal.
“The line-up of plays this year is really exciting, featuring work from both undergraduate students and graduate students, some who have never written a play before and some who have already had work produced professionally. Each night is a balanced blend of experiences, ideas, styles, and genres – there’s definitely something for everyone,” says Koncan.
New to the festival this year is a play just for children. Matt Clarke’s family-friendly play, The Children of Noisy Co-Op, will be performed on Saturday, March 15 and features a cast of seven talented children.
Tickets and a detailed performance schedule are available at https://www.bravenewplayrites.com/.
If in need of wheelchair accessibility, please see the front of house at the venue for accommodations. Gender-neutral bathrooms are available.
