My name is Marie Leofeli Romero Barlizo. I’m a Filipino-Chinese playwright, dramaturg, mentor and mother of two children. I was born in the Philippines and raised in Montreal. I was the first visible minority to graduate from the Playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS) in 2002. I also have a BFA in Theatre from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

My parents settled in Montreal with my sister and me with big dreams and a hundred dollars in their pocket. We lived in basement apartments in Côte-des-Neiges. My dad worked during the day at the hospital in housekeeping, and my mom worked at night as a line operator.

I had a particularly challenging childhood. My father was an alcoholic and suffered from severe paranoia. At school, I was bullied by the Filipinos in my class. Every day after school from grades 1 to grade 4, I would get beat up by a Filipino boy and other Filipino children would form a circle around us and just watch me get punched and kicked. The beatings stopped when a group of older kids started to walk me home and taught me how to fight.

The thing that got me through that time was reading stories.

I read a book every night and every night my imagination would take me to a place that was far away. I loved stories. Stories were magical. They were places I could escape to, create magic and find justice. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to create that same kind of magic.

But my parents sacrificed their own dreams so that my sister and I could have a better life. The expectation to succeed and become a doctor was tremendous. I had to summon a great deal of courage to tell them I wanted to pursue theatre since I knew that this decision would disappoint them, but for me it would have been harder to live a lie. The moment I told them, I knew I would be on my own. I worked three part-time jobs while I was going to theatre school at Concordia University but I was determined, no matter what. It took me 6 years to finish my degree.

When I got a huge scholarship to go to the National Theatre School (NTS), I knew my dream was finally coming true.

I don’t think I would be a playwright and dramaturg today if it were not for the training I received at the National Theatre School. Being the first IBPOC to graduate from the program, however, I continuously felt like I wasn’t good enough and was an outsider. After all, I didn’t grow up privileged. I was just a poor girl from Cote-des-Neiges. At 27, I was the oldest student in my class and, with the exception of one Acting student who was half-Japanese, the rest of my class was Caucasian. At the time, the most successful NTS IBPOC alumna was actress Sandra Oh. The only IBPOC mentor I had in three years at the school was Alyson-Sealy Smith, who directed my final project at the New Words Festival.

I felt I was constantly compared to the other playwright in my year, a white male. It was clear that some classmates did not connect to my work, and that they did connect to his. It didn’t help that in my first year, a few classmates let me know that they didn’t think I would ever make it as a writer. I never dared say it aloud, but I often wondered if my peers couldn’t identify with my work because I didn’t look like them and my stories didn’t reflect their reality. My worst fear was confirmed when a Montreal director was hired to work on one of my projects, but declined. The director later confided that they opted to direct the work of the other playwright because they were told he was the better playwright.

I was crushed. But I refused to give up.

I stayed because I wanted to write more than anything… I stayed because NTS encouraged me to dig deep and ask hard questions and to push my stories further. They also pushed me to dig deep inside of myself and investigate my Filipino-Chinese roots because my stories didn’t yet reflect who I was. It was an awakening that was so unexpected and brought so much meaning to me not only to my development as a writer but personally – to my young family.

I also discovered my process at NTS. I was introduced to authentic movement by my mind-body instructor Tedi Tafel– which is a meditative, intuitive, improvisational movement practise involving a mover and a witness – I explore my work and my creative impulses through my body and it leads me to the story. I continue to work with Tedi today.
My instructors encouraged me to believe in my own stories and to find “My People” who would work with me to make my plays happen.

While at the school, I also learned discipline to meet deadlines and how to work on multiple projects, which now serves me as I juggle various writing projects, contracts, and family responsibilities to my children and my parents.

The experience at NTS prepared me for the professional world and gave me the strength to keep going despite the hurdles I faced. There was very little opportunity for writers like me in Montreal at the time and after my experience at NTS I truly questioned whether or not I would ever have a place at the table – whether or not my stories mattered – whether or not I would ever find the people to collaborate with. Like Philip Akin, former AD of Obsidian, I believe that in order for writers to become better, writers need to have opportunities and get produced. So I went to Toronto to get the experience I needed. I worked with companies like Factory, Cahoots, fu-Gen and Nightswimming to develop my plays and artistic practice.

My husband and I came back to Montreal because we wanted to build a life here. Despite the politics in this province – ironically this is the place I feel most at home and creative.
After I had my second child in 2013, I began to notice a significant shift in the Theatre in Montreal. It felt more open. I felt for the first time that there was space for me and my work. I finally felt that I didn’t have to return to Toronto to work. That’s when I knocked on Quincy Armorer’s door at Black Theatre Workshop and things started to finally come together.

Becoming a parent changed my life. It put things into perspective. For instance, when I had my first child, I considered making my maternity leave from the theatre permanent. But then my daughter became obsessed with Frozen and told me she wanted to be Anna. It was a heartbreaking moment. But that’s the moment when I knew why I had to keep writing.

I have to keep writing for my children and for my children’s children and their children and so on and so on. So that there will be stories for them. Stories that are about them. Stories in which they can see themselves and their experiences reflected on stage. So that they feel acknowledged that their stories are also being told.

I write about things I don’t understand and that I want to make sense of. I write in order to have more Asian stories, and specifically Filipino stories, on Canadian stages. The plays I create give Asian female actors the opportunity to challenge themselves in their craft and redefine Asian Canadian characters on our stage for contemporary audiences. As a community, Filipinos are neglected and our history is too often dismissed. For example, the fact that about a million Filipinos died in World War II is left out of most historical accounts. Manila, after Warsaw, was the most devastated city in that period. I also write about survival, hope and the complexity of people and the decisions they make. Filipino women are stereotyped as obedient, submissive and highly sexualized. I want to challenge those stereotypes. I also write about survival, hope and the complexity of people and the decisions they make. I am inspired by the people I grew up with from Cote-des-Neiges who were very complicated. One of my best friends who used to protect me from getting beat up went to prison for gang rape. I also want to understand how we cope with difficult things.

My play The Little Mighty Superhero, which was a commission by Geordie Theatre for kids ages 5 and older for their 2Play Tour, is now being virtually streamed in schools. Mike Payette, the artistic director of Geordie Theatre, approached me to write a play that featured Filipino characters because he recognized the lack of Filipino stories in Canadian theatres. The play is about intergenerational sharing, fear and loss. It explores how kids can use their imagination to cope with their fears. The project was inspired by my son’s deep and special relationship with his Lola – which means grandmother in Tagalog and his fear of the dark. My mom passed on stories to my son and my daughter. In the play, the Lola passes on the story of The Bakunawa, a myth that dates back to pre-colonial times in the Philippines. The story is about a sea dragon who falls in love with the seven moons in the Sky and swallows them. When he swallows the last moon, the ancient Filipinos rise up and scare the dragon, who spits out the moon back into the sky. In the play I mythologized my son’s story to show him he has strength and wisdom of his ancestors to face his fears. He can access his strength by remembering what he’s learned from his past experiences with fears and the stories shared by his Lola.

Presently, I’m developing the play The Warrior, inspired by the atrocities experienced by my family when the Japanese invaded the Philippines in World War II. On September 16, 1943, about twenty-five members of my great-uncle’s family were hunted down by the Japanese army and systematically beheaded on the fields of Buntal in Barotac Viejo, my father’s birth town. They were targeted because they supported the local anti-Japanese guerrilla movement. There are many theories about who reported them and why. In The Warrior, I am exploring what people, in particular women, are willing to do to survive in the extreme circumstances of war and how and why they betray each other.

I’m also continuing to develop my play The Healing which was a commission by Carlos Bulosan Theatre in Toronto and was virtually launched this past summer. My play centers around my challenging relationship with my father who lives in a long-term care facility (a CHSLD) in Montreal, and how almost losing him to COVID -19 allowed me to move past our previous issues and my feelings of anger and resentment. It is a new beginning with my father – something I never expected I would ever have. I’m writing this story not only to advocate for people who are the most vulnerable in our society, but also to explore questions of what we inherit, what we have to confront in ourselves to move forward, and what we need to let go of to find peace and a family of one’s own.

This is my third season at NTS, but my first year as the Playwriting Mentor. It is an honour to have this opportunity. I bring with me my experiences and the challenges I faced over the years both personally and professionally. I also bring light, hope and courage. I’m here to support you as students and your artistic interests but also help you navigate a system that can be overwhelming especially during these uncertain times.

An excerpt from the essay “Master Class: Dramaturgy and New Play Development” recently published in The Directors Lab, edited by Evan Tsitsias. (It is available here from Playwrights Canada Press). Written by Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada, this essay reveals what makes or breaks a play.

The Directors Lab, edited by Evan Tsitsias and published by Playwrights Canada Press, 2020.

In selecting a play to develop, I look for two primary qualities in a play or creation proposal. They are remarkably simple, but difficult to find. The first is an understanding, on the part of the playwright or theatre creators, of theatre as a medium, and the second is the presence of a unique voice or perspective.

Theatre is a dramatic medium and a live art form, which means it has a very specific relationship to time and physical space. It is not uncommon to read texts offered up as plays that are not theatrical. When reading a play, I consider the following questions as to its theatricality:

• Is the play written to be a live art form, experienced in a particular space over a particular span of time?
• Does the play acknowledge the scale of theatre, or is it written in the equivalent of filmic “close-ups”?
• Does the text conjure a visual world, or is it sparsely written to primarily convey character intention, as in film?
• Is the text written dramatically, or does it sit within the realm of description or contemplation as prose and poetry are apt to do? Does it embrace plot and conflict, character development and arc as well as the transformation—of its characters and world—over time?
• Is dramatic action the primary means of generating the play’s theme or meaning?

The more plays you read and see, the more immediately clear it will become to you whether or not a text is theatrical.

One important consideration, especially given the rising prevalence of alternative performance conventions in theatre, is the fact that theatre is a durational art form. That means a viewer should experience the play over time and that each moment of the play—regardless of how it is conceived and staged, and regardless of whether each audience member views the same content in the same order—must be integral to the artistic experience. If you can imagine leaving and returning during the performance without anything substantial changing in the interim, I would submit that the text is not essentially dramatic.

Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program, in conversation with one of her students, Cole Haley (Playwriting 1, Elliston, NF)

On a basic level, what I look for in a play or theatrical creation is a series of dramatic events, each of which creates a transformation, however small, in the world of the play. This chain of events and transformations (event → transformation → event → transformation) should achieve two things. The first is to draw a reader or viewer more and more deeply into the world of the play, increasing intellectual and emotional investment over time. The second is to allow the reader or viewer to begin to construct a precise and play-specific meaning to the progression of events; this meaning should be felt as much as or more than it is intellectually understood. A great way to test whether a play is working dramatically is to ask yourself, at any given point in the play, if you can identify and remember the series of events and transformations that immediately preceded it. In dramatically written plays, regardless of whether they are linear or non-linear, conventional or unconventional, this should be relatively easy to do when the events and transformations accrue in impact and meaning such that one could not occur without all the others leading up to it. If you are still in doubt as to a text’s theatrical potential, ask yourself if you could more easily imagine it in another medium: prose, poetry, performance art, essay, television, or cinema. If your answer is “yes,” then you are likely not reading a theatrical text.

In addition to a play’s theatricality, I am most compelled by the playwright or theatre creators’ unique exploration of the human condition. By “human condition” I mean those experiences and struggles that form the core of our shared humanity. They point to something deeper and more inescapable than individual, social, and political categories—something that is capable of generating profound meaning in our lives. This, for me, is the central purpose of any art, including theatre. I want to be surprised—by new thoughts, feelings and arguments, or old ideas in new contexts and new interpretations. If a play offers up a simplistic and immediately recognizable worldview, that is a severe limitation for me. Likewise, if a play offers up an uncomplicated view of a political or ideological dilemma, and allies with a single character or perspective throughout, that is also a severe limitation for me.

I search for plays that engage with moral questions, human questions, and, yes, universal questions. Each of us wants to be seen, loved, valued; each of us wants to belong, somehow. However imperfectly the concept of universality might have been —and still be— understood or applied, it remains a very powerful and aspirational concept for me. Art must be created with an underlying compassion for the human beings represented in it and viewing it. If it is dark and despairing —as the most compelling plays frequently are— it must be in search of a significant truth and offer some glimmer of redemption for humanity.

Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada.

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An excerpt from the essay “Master Class: Dramaturgy and New Play Development” by Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Drawing primarily from her experience as a working dramaturge, Romaldi attempts to answer what dramaturgy is.

Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program, in conversation with one of her students, Cole Haley (Playwriting 1, Elliston, NF)

For fifteen years, I worked in new play development. Ten of those years were spent as Literary Manager at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre—a leader in the development of new Canadian plays— where I practised dramaturgy every day. This is a luxury in my field and it served me well, exposing me to a variety of dramaturgical visions, processes, and practices.

This post is an excerpt from the essay “Master Class: Dramaturgy and New Play Development” recently published in The Directors Lab edited by Evan Tsitsias. (It is available here from Playwrights Canada Press). The essay draws primarily from my experience as a working dramaturge and was informed by my contributions as a panellist to Directors Lab North and the questions asked by its participants. As such, it speaks to the relationship between playwright, dramaturge, and director, and it is intended to offer guidance to directors engaged in new play development and/or the premiere of a new play. In sharing my insights, I hope others can make use of them to support the creation of their own unique theatre.

What Is Dramaturgy?

Dramaturges are frequently asked, “What is dramaturgy?” and I would be remiss not to attempt an answer. However, just as each director, playwright, actor, and designer would define their role and practice differently, so would each dramaturge. In reading my response below I encourage you to add to it whatever you already know of dramaturgy. In my theatre community, I have sometimes observed a tendency to parse definitions, conventions, approaches, theories, and styles, and to split them along certain aesthetic lines. My approach has always been more of an additive one: I try to layer whatever new theory, thought, or tool I encounter into my practice in the hope of making it richer, deeper, and more versatile in its application.

I work in new play dramaturgy, which is distinct from production dramaturgy. My understanding and experience of the latter are relatively limited. Production dramaturges tend to work on plays that have been previously produced, often, but not always, historical plays or plays set in a time or place less than familiar to those working on it. They frequently engage in historical research and bring relevant materials into the design and rehearsal process to support the creative team and cast in their interpretation and performance of the play. When a classical text needs to be edited for a specific production, a production dramaturge will often work with the director to reshape the play in support of the directorial vision.

In new play dramaturgy, a dramaturge’s role is to help a playwright or group of theatre creators identify and address the gaps between what they want their play to communicate to an audience and what the play actually communicates. When a person (or group of people) create new work, they experience two major hurdles. The first is that they possess a glut of information. They know much more than any reader or audience member about their play, its world, its characters, and its artistic aims. A dramaturge helps to ensure that such relevant information—basic facts of the play’s world—reaches the audience instead of remaining only in the creators’ minds. A dramaturge might ask: What is happening? Why? How do I know that? What do I need to know about this world and these characters in order to follow the story, in order to emotionally invest in the play? The second problem play creators face is a lack of information. Like most of us, they are frequently unaware of their own subconscious drives in creating art. In following the emotional life of the play, a dramaturge can often point to clues in the text that hint at a playwright’s deeper obsession, the moral or metaphysical question lying unacknowledged in the heart of the writing. In pursuing both lines of questioning, a dramaturge can help a playwright realize their vision of their play.

Andrea Romaldi, Director of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada.

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Students were invited to speak to Board members and Governors at the School’s Annual General Meeting.They have allowed us to reproduce their speeches on this blog. Here, Gillian Clark (Playwriting 3, Halifax, NS) tells us about the courage it takes to confront our own fears through writing

Gillian Clark (Playwriting 3, Halifax, NS) delivering her speech at the 2019 Annual General Meeting

I get asked a lot at NTS about why I make theatre and why I write.
I guess that’s probably a good thing, considering it’s a theatre school.

Sometimes it feels like I don’t know.
Sometimes it really feels like I don’t know.

And then sometimes I’m sitting in a rehearsal hall.
Or I call a mentor.
Or I’m sitting in a show.

And it’s something that is inexplicable. I think it’s a type of evolution in myself. I can’t put this feeling into words. I can’t. And maybe that’s why I write.

I think that writing creates a blueprint for a piece of work that is then transformed. I find this transformation, ultimately, inexplicable.

I think this is why I make theatre.

It makes talking about my work pretty difficult.

“I think I was afraid that they didn’t fit into the show that was about them”

I recently had to write a project description for the show I developed here in second year. I worked with Sarah Elkashelf as my dramaturg and Anosh Irani as my cultural consultant.

Oh no. What is this seemingly racist show about?

The show is largely autobiographical. When I was 22 I was commissioned by a company in India to make a verbatim piece of theatre about violence in the sex trade. So—bright eyed, wanting-to-change-the-world Gill went to India and worked with girls who had been rescued from the sex trade to make this show. The first half of the show was performed by professional local actors and then the girls were supposed to dance in the second half, but they never did. The story I told myself is that it was unsafe for the girls to be let out of the collective home they were living in, when in reality… I think I was too afraid of them. I think I was afraid that they didn’t fit into the show that was about them.

“I question how I can create a practice that leans into and supports the discomfort of change”

Flash forward 5 years. I’m at NTS and I want to write something I’m really afraid of. I’m really inspired by the writing of Young Jean Lee. She’s a Korean-American playwright who chooses the thing she is most afraid of, and writes about it. One of my favourite pieces of hers is called The Shipment, in which she worked with a team of African-American creators to create a show that was about the stereotypes of blackness in mainstream media. In my opinion, her approach creates a piece of theatre where you feel the presence of the creators existing within the blueprint of the script. In her work, I find there are three stories being told: one is the plot of the play itself, one is the experience of creating the show, and one is the experience of the creators in their day-to-day lives and how it has informed the process. In Lee’s work, we don’t enter a theatre and leave the world behind, we take the world into the theatre with us. To me, it creates a palpable level of vulnerability and active examination in the texture of the words. Basically, it makes for really exciting and fresh work.

A photograph of Gillian Clark (Playwriting 3, Halifax, NS) at the Annual General Assembly

Being inspired by Lee, whom I was introduced to by my classmate Kalale Dalton-Lutale (Playwriting 3, Toronto, ON), I was determined to write what was I most afraid of. What was it? Confronting my inner racism and white guilt in a piece of work in the most diverse institution I’ve ever been a part of? Yes. What was I even more afraid of? Not placing judgement on myself for having these feelings. I’m not sure I ever got there. I don’t think I ever will get there. As multidisciplinary artist Marcus Youssef says, we should look at everything as a work in progress. Including ourselves. Including decolonizing. Nothing is finished or will probably ever be finished. I think the thing I took away the most from the process of writing this play is that evolution, whether of an institution, of myself, or of my work, can be very uncomfortable. I question how I can create a practice that leans into and supports the discomfort of change.

“How can I hold myself accountable? How do I acknowledge when I’m placing value on my whiteness and linear ways of working?”

I’m talking about my practice because I feel as though my experience is really all I have. Like playwriting, I hope you will see something that is reflective or meaningful to you and NTS as an institution in the specifics of my inquiries and examinations. Here’s where I’m at with my practice right now:

I write about really ugly things. I use my whiteness, my upper-middle-class upbringing and my femininity all as tools to investigate the grotesque nature of human beings. I feel as if all of these things are my strength, and also my weakness. More and more I can really feel the failings of my whiteness.

Being at NTS has ignited a curiosity in me of looking at alternate ways of working. Sometimes it’s because I’m exposed to new ways of creating, and sometimes it’s because a light is shed on my shortcomings in terms of how I’ve always thought about making work. I’ve begun to question how to open up playwriting beyond a writer sitting behind a computer, the writer writes and the actors act, and the writer has all the answers to her plays. I very seldom have the answer. I’ve also begun to question how my colonial practices are integrated into the subconscious of how I work in rehearsal halls or behind my computer.

How can I work more circularly? How can I actively work on placing value on oral tradition? How can I hold myself accountable? How do I acknowledge when I’m placing value on my whiteness and linear ways of working? Again. I don’t have the answers. I definitely don’t have all the questions. Another reason why I write.

“Endings are very hard. I think there actually isn’t a great conclusion to this because

the work is ongoing”

A mysterious thing about playwriting is that you don’t really get to see how other playwrights work because it can be so insular. If someone were to shadow me, it would be a lot of looking out the window and heavy sighing. Basically, it would be like shadowing a cat. Something I’d love to organize at the school is a reoccurring workshop on how to demystify playwriting and creating. How can we crack it open? A lot of our playwriting in this country comes from a European tradition and I’m eager to open up a conversation on where I can expand my practice. How can I leave space for other experiences and different ways of working in the script I create? As an institution, how can we push this conversation forward? A few artists I admire who are active in this type of work include Kim Senklip Harvey, a fire creator (playwright, director, actor) whose work and practice investigates the ethics of creating new relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canadians (also you should follow her blog if you’re not already!); Marcus Youssef, aforementioned work in progress, but also creator of meaningful work with a variety of communities, such as collaborations with artists whose lives include having Down Syndrome and neurotypical artists; and Laura Nanni who is the Artistic and Managing Director at Summerworks Performance Festival. I bring her into this conversation because I think, as a settler, she does a great job of supporting diverse artists in the early stages of development. She programs difficult work and gives artists and audiences alike the chance to develop and grow with new pieces.

I’m trying to find a graceful way to conclude. Endings are very hard. I think there actually isn’t a great conclusion to this because the work is ongoing.

I think that’s probably another reason why I make theatre. The work doesn’t end.

Gillian Clark (Playwriting 3, Halifax, NS) is a third-year student the the Playwriting program.

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