Short Play Commission!

I was shocked and delighted when I got the email from Colin Wolf, Gwaandak Theatre's artistic director, asking if I'd be interested in writing a short new play for the Yukon Human Right Commission's conference Know More which was about workplace sexual harassment.

I received a lot of files from past cases to read through and a really informative talk given by the wonderful staff at the YHRC which got me writing. And with Yvette Nolan as dramatrug I developed the play through December and January. It was my first time writing a piece for something so specific, and it was a great experience. The most difficult part ended up giving it a title, something I feel I am truly terrible at. Yvette helped me eventually land on calling it Situation.

The play ended up being filmed instead of presented onstage, but director Meredith Pritchard did a lovely job adapting it. It was presented March 4 and included an interactive digital element.

For the first time in a long time I considered assigning genders to the characters, but funnily enough I'm so used to keeping that flexible, it wasn't hard to keep the characters' genders unspecific. After all, sexual harassment can be perpetrated by anyone on anyone.

The script is available on the Playwrights Guild of Canada's Canadian Play Outlet for anyone who wants to have a look!