BECOME PART OF THE CREATION PROCESS
Every Donation Helps Support the Production of New, Canadian, Work.
What does this mean?
Workshop West is a registered charity. Your donations help support our educational playwriting development programming for the general public and artists, and contribute to hiring playwrights, actors, dramaturgs and directors to workshop and develop new plays from the ground up. Our programs are available to the general public and artists through accessible pricing, and many programs are offered at no cost.
Why is this important?
A foundational part of a healthy arts ecology means supporting artists. Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre has a specific focus of being playwright-centred. This means we place a special importance on fostering and producing new Canadian work. There are three parts to this: development, accessibility, and fair compensation. Part of this healthy ecosystem involves development programs which help grow and nurture the next generation of playwrights. In addition, developing one’s craft or enjoying theatre as an audience member should also be accessible. Art cannot be made without an artist’s work, and we believe that artists should be compensated fairly for that work, just like any other profession. As a professional theatre company, we employ up to 50+ artists per year and pay artists according to professional standards.
Why new plays?
New plays reflect the current moment in ways older work often cannot. New plays provide rich opportunities to develop our perception of our personal agency, offering opportunities to explore ‘big’ ideas, while generating unique views of our world. Theatre promotes cultural engagement and an ability to understand and critique social life by extending the possibilities of our human experience. We believe producing new plays by living, breathing, playwrights is of vital importance to the ecology of our cultural ecosystem through supporting the artists who live in our community with practical economic realities of everyday life, like paying bills. We also believe in the importance of creative education offered to all levels of experience, including educational opportunities for the general public, youth (#Writes of Passage Teen Playwriting Program), artists-in-development, as well as professional artists.