Executive Director's Update
By Craig Wrotniak
As our final National STAR Festival wrapped up this past weekend, we’re taking a moment to reflect on an incredible school year. Across Canada, we’ve witnessed theatre programs growing, expanding, and thriving – a true sign that we’ve turned a corner, post-pandemic. Educational theatre is not just recovering; it’s flourishing.
Here at the Theatrical Arts Education Association, we’ve seen 25% growth across all programs, and our STAR Troupe numbers are now well into the triple digits – an exciting milestone! Our five National STAR Festivals over the five weekends between April 26 and May 24 brought together more than 70 schools and over 1,000 students from 8 provinces. The talent, creativity, and passion on display were inspiring. Bravo to all the dedicated teachers who made these performances and presentations possible – we can’t wait to see what 2026 brings!
We’re especially proud of our STAR Short Play Competition, which saw student-written, award-winning scripts come to life in various stages of production during the festivals, under the support and guidance of the one and only John Lazarus. These young playwrights are now using their experience to refine their work ahead of publication – a true full-circle moment in student-driven theatre.
This year also marked the launch of our Drama Teacher Support System (DTSS) for professional members leading STAR Troupes and drama programs across the country. This initiative allows us to support educators all year long, not just during our annual fall conference.
Speaking of which – planning for the 2025 Teachers Conference is well underway! Registration sites are nearly finalized and ready to take registrations for Vancouver, Toronto, Stratford, and Victoria, with Calgary, Moose Jaw, Ottawa, Montreal, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland not far behind. Our Zoom Across Canada virtual stream is also shaping up to be something special. Whether it’s your fifth time attending or your first, this conference connects, inspires, and strengthens drama, theatre, and film education across Canada – all at a great value. Mark your calendars for October 24th and 25th and plan on joining us in-person or online from across Canada!!
Looking ahead, our 2025/26 Regional STAR Festivals are also growing, with over 30 regional events currently in the planning stages. These will lead into five National STAR Festivals once again in 2026, with specific dates coming soon. If you want to get your school involved next year, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at craig@educationaltheatre.ca
Thank you for being part of this remarkable journey. Here’s to continued growth, creativity, and connection in the year ahead!
Cheers – Craig Wrotniak (He/Him)
Executive Director – Theatrical Arts Education Association (TAEA)
Serving Teachers – Helping Students
In Praise of Canadian Plays
By John Lazarus,
Playwright, Retired Professor, and Editor of Theatrics
Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I like Canadian plays. They speak to us in ways that other plays do not. This essay will explain why I feel this way, and what I hope Canadian high-school drama teachers might do about it.
First, some history. As I’ve often told my students, I’m so old, and Canadian playwriting is so young, that we kind of grew up together. In 1970, the federal government instituted a new set of grant programs which seeded a great many new organizations, some of them theatre companies. I joined one in Vancouver, and we agreed that it would be fun to do Canadian plays, but they were few and far between. So we started writing our own. And it soon became apparent that this process was happening across the country.
Of course, there was theatre on Canadian soil long before the 1970s. There has been performance by First Nations artists for centuries; and even the first theatrical work by European settlers, an outdoor masque called Le Théatre de Neptune, took place in 1606 – during Shakespeare’s lifetime! Since then there have been such pioneer English-Canadian playwrights as John Coulter, Robertson Davies, Mazo de la Roche, David French, John Herbert, Eric Nicol, James Reaney, Gwen Pharis Ringwood, George Ryga and Herman Voaden. And the Québecois were way ahead of us, but their works were not yet in translation.
The three pieces that follow are written by three student playwrights, whose plays were among the six winners of this year’s TAEA One-Act Play Competition. Alaster Nikolic is the author of an experimental piece called Dogs Smell Blood, Sierra Thambatniram gave us a farce, set in a traffic jam on a bridge, called Get Out of the Road, and Jasper Zhang, in collaboration with his schoolmate Annika Gill, wrote Stars, an examination of the lives of artists and scientists. All of the winning plays will soon be published in an anthology by Theatrical Rights Worldwide. Alaster, Sierra and Jasper sent us the following pieces in response to a request from us that they tell us what the experience was like. – Ed.
The Challenge of Putting a Show Together
By Alaster Nikolic,
DSBN Academy, St. Catharines, Ont.
The TAEA One-Act Play Competition has been an absolutely incredible experience, and I’m extremely grateful for this opportunity. My drama teacher had suggested I submit a piece to this contest after I had written two plays for our school and brought home awards for playwriting at the NTS Dramafest. I was then surprised to see that I had been chosen as one of the winners. It still feels unreal, but the process has truly helped me expand my piece and work with incredible people.
I saw this contest as an opportunity to be creative and experimental. My play featured characters from other unfinished written works that I’ve been creating over the course of several years. I am deeply attached and connected to these characters, so writing about them and being published meant a lot to me.
I then had to begin the process of begging our school for funding to take the piece to Starfest. I was insistent that the school help us for the sake of our drama students. We successfully got the funds and I rounded up a team of student actors who I believed would be best suited to portray my characters, and would commit to the piece, take the subject matter seriously, and work well as a group.
Laughter, Tears and Mood Swings
By Sierra Thambiratnam
York House School, Vancouver, B.C.
Writing my short play Get out of the Road has been quite an experience, one filled with laughter, tears and mood swings (evidently). Yet through it all, my family, friends and teachers have been the most supportive community I could have ever hoped for.
The idea for a play set in traffic was created by my sister and I when we were, ironically, stuck in traffic. In December, my drama class attended a STARFest, and I heard about the short play program. This spurred me to write fifteen drafts over the span of winter break, all of which I deemed absolutely terrible. At this moment, I must confess my deep gratitude towards my mother and sister who uncomplainingly proofread, and provided feedback on, all fifteen drafts. I must also thank my father, who was very encouraging. (He didn’t read my drafts, but only because I wouldn’t let him. He wanted me to make that clear.)
After winter break I almost had a heart attack, because I realized that in three weeks the play would be due; so for the next two weeks I spent every night desperately typing away. Fortunately, it didn’t affect the quality of my schoolwork.
It Took Us to the Stars
By Jasper Zhang,
Fleetwood Park Secondary School, Surrey, B.C.
The idea of Stars came to Annika and me late in the night in early January. Annika and I tend to have long writing sessions over the phone, stretching past midnight, filled with laughter, conversation, and inspiration. During one of these calls, we recalled something our band director had said about the connections between the arts and the sciences: how they both inherently stemmed from curiosity and wonder, but were constantly ripped apart by our society into two polar opposites. I pitched the idea of writing a short play for the TAEA One-Act Play Competition, which I had learnt about at the SFU Metro Regionals in early December. Annika and I met at a coffee shop the next day and began writing what would become the short play entitled Stars.
We began with the “Artist” and the “Scientist,” the protagonists of our story. We wanted them to be complete opposites, scoffing at each other, but we also wanted the audience to be able to realize that they were intrinsically identical. We wanted them both to be burnt out, disillusioned, and melancholic – reflecting on the complex paths they had taken here, and, most importantly, longing for the other side. Particularly, the Scientist aches for the arts more than the Artist yearns for the sciences. In our interpretation, the Artist chose the unsteady path of the arts, conscious with its risks and downsides, while the Scientist innocently pursued the path of sciences for its promises of riches and respect, without acknowledging the advantages of the pursuit of the arts.
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Want to see your thoughts printed in “Theatrics Canada”? So do we! We need your expertise, so send us stuff! Of course, we won’t be compiling our next issue until next November, but we’re putting this notice in this issue anyway, to serve as a reminder if you come back next fall and read it again. And look at it this s not too early!
We welcome news of your school’s theatre work (like Alaster’s, Sierra’s and Jasper’s pieces in this issue), advice on teaching and theatre (like John’s piece here), reviews and criticism of current work that might be of interest, essays, photos – we love photos! – short plays, cartoons, Letters to the Editor – anything related to theatre and teaching. Send it to John at theatricscanada@
