The Arts Club Theatre Company has announced six new commissioned scripts as part of their Silver Commissions program, celebrating the company’s 60th anniversary. Founded in 2006 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first world premiere of a Canadian play at the Arts Club, the Silver Commissions program is designed to foster the creation of new Canadian scripts.
The Silver Commission program has seen the Arts Club has commission, develope, and produce 20 new plays, including the critically acclaimed Onegin, The Piano Teacher, Redbone Coonhound, Someone Like You, and Forgiveness. Each year two new scripts have been commissioned but, for the Arts Club’s 60th anniversary, the company is celebrating with the commission of six new projects.
Artistic Director Ashlie Corcoran said, “Commissioning and developing new plays is part of the Arts Club’s backbone. Every year we commission two new scripts with the aim of premiering them on our stages. The bold and exciting move of commissioning a whopping six new scripts this year speaks to the company’s ongoing commitment to new work and our ambitious spirit of adventure.”
This groundswell of new play activity exceeds even the launch of the Silver Commissions program in 2006, when the Arts Club commissioned five new scripts.
Stephen Drover, who oversees New Works & Professional Engagement at the Arts Club, added, “The playwrights creating these six new plays represent some of the most exciting and impactful theatre being made today—in BC and across Canada. The incubation for new scripts – from commission to production—is usually between 3 and 5 years so I’m thrilled to spend the next several years working with each of these playwrights as dramaturg and champion of their new work.”
2024–2025 Silver Commission works to watch for in the coming years include:
BEWARE THE GLUNKUS: A CHRISTMAS MUSICAL by Ben Elliott and Anton Lipovetsky
The story of the Glunkus is a legend that Joe’s dad used to tell him as a kid about a mischievous gnome that hates Christmas. Beware the Glunkus: A Christmas Musical is a new holiday musical comedy that puts family—and holiday spirit—first!
Ben Elliott is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist living in Vancouver. When not working in the theatre, Ben writes, records, and performs his own music, animates his own music videos, and composes for film, TV, and radio. Anton Lipovetsky is a songwriter, actor, musical director, sound designer, and educator based in Vancouver. He has performed on stages nationwide and his original musicals have been shortlisted three times for a Playwrights Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Award. Together, Elliott and Lipovetsky have written the musicals The Park (with Hannah Johnson) and The Best Laid Plans (with Vern Thiessen).
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE by Colleen Murphy
Told through the lens of climate change, Canadian playwright Colleen Murphy re-imagines Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, about Dr. Thomas Stockmann. The medical officer in a small Norwegian spa town becomes the target when he puts public safety over the town’s prosperity when he exposes the local economically important spa baths to be contaminated.
Colleen Murphy is a two-time recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and the Carol Bolt Award for Outstanding Play, for both Pig Girl in 2016, and The December Man / L’homme de décembre in 2007. Other plays include The Society For The Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius, The Breathing Hole, I Hope My Heart Burns First, Armstrong’s War, The Goodnight Bird, Beating Heart Cadaver, and The Piper.
FAN TAN ALLEY by Jovanni Sy
In 1900, Victoria’s now famous Tan Fan Alley, the narrowest commercial street in North America, was a bustling hotbed of illicit activity. In one of its flophouses, dozens of Chinese men live together, taking shifts sleeping, as they cut deals, have dalliances, hide from crime bosses, and try to find impossible privacy in the single room they all share. Fan Tan Alley is a new farce with mistaken identities, narrow escapes, and crazy coincidences that leads to much slamming of the room’s single door and window in this claustrophobic comedy.
Jovanni Sy is a playwright, director, performer, and the former artistic director of Gateway Theatre (Richmond) and Cahoots Theatre (Toronto). His plays include Salesman in China (co-written with Leanna Brodie), A Taste of Empire, The Five Vengeances, Nine Dragons (Jessie Richardson Award), The Tao of the World (PGC Comedy Award), and Kowloon Bay (PGC Drama Award). At the Arts Club he directed The Orchard (After Chekhov) and performed in The Great Leap, It’s a Wonderful Christmas-ish Holiday Miracle, Noises Off, and Forgiveness.
FLORIDA SOCIAL by Bronwyn Carradine
Based on a trues story; a month ago, Loren’s days were filled with auditions, classes, newspaper interviews, and nights at the theatre. Suddenly, she’s now in the witness protection program, living with her estranged 80-year-old grandparents in their Venice Beach retirement complex, desperate to figure out where she belongs in this sudden new era of bridge tournaments and church luncheons.
Bronwyn Carradine is an award-winning writer, director, and arts administrator. Her stage work has been workshopped, produced, and developed by theatre companies across Canada, including the Arts Club (Unexpecting; Listen to This Series, 2021) where she was part of the inaugural Emerging Playwrights’ Unit in 2019. She’s a graduate of Studio 58, a member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and currently works as the Artistic Managing Producer for Zee Zee Theatre.
LITTLE DARLING by Amy Lee Lavoie and Omari Newton
On her way to the airport, a starlet stops at a tiny town to smoke a cigarette and accidentally burns down the community building that serves as school, gas pump, convenience store, and clinic. As part of her community service, she has to direct a “big splashy play” as a fundraiser to rebuild the community hub. Leading an eager team of miscast community actors in a homegrown play proves to be the exact tonic she needs to understand herself and what truly matters.
Amy Lee Lavoie is an award-winning playwright and graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting Program. Her plays include Rabbit Rabbit, Stopheart, Genetic Drift, Doubletree, and C’mon, Angie! Omari Newton is an award-winning professional actor, writer, director and Head of the Acting Department at Vancouver Film School. His original hip-hop theatre piece Sal Capone has received critical acclaim and multiple productions, including a recent presentation at Canada’s National Arts Centre. Together, Lee Lavoie and Newton have written Redbone Coonhound and Black Fly.
MURDER ON THE PACIFIC SPIRIT EXPRESS by Frances Koncan
In time between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the beginning of World War I, follows an unlikely group of characters from different regional and cultural backgrounds find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery on the luxury Pacific Spirit Express train as it journeys across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver. Murder on the Pacific Spirit Express is a comedic investigation of both a (fictional) murder and the contentious history of a nation that was born on the back of the railway.
Frances Koncan (she/they) is an Anishinaabe and Slovene playwright currently living in Vancouver. Originally from Couchiching First Nation, they grew up on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and attended the University of Manitoba (BA Psychology) and the City University of New York Brooklyn College (MFA Playwriting). They are currently Assistant Professor of Playwriting at the University of British Columbia. Select plays include Women of the Fur Trade, Space Girl, and zahgidiwin/love.