Series of short plays by women opens at the K-W Art Gallery

“We have promising voices, right in our own community,” says artistic director

KITCHENER — The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery is not your usual venue for a play but then “Heels on the Diving Board” is not your usual theatrical experience.

Lisa O’Connell, artistic director of Pat The Dog Theatre Creation, said she wasn’t really planning on a theatre series but then she met all these interesting women at the Women’s Room, a playwrights’ lab founded in 2016 by Pat the Dog and Sonderlust, a women’s theatre collective.

“There is still gender inequity,” O’Connell said, rhyming off several stats related to just how little representation women have on stage and how most plays are written by men.

“If 70 per cent of (play) tickets are purchased by women and there are not enough female characters, maybe there are opportunities,” she said.

The Women’s Room workshop started in 2016 with nine woman and two facilitators, meeting twice a month at Pat the Dog’s Frederick Street offices. A couple of the women came from Toronto, regardless of the weather, which O’Connell said proves the value of what they were learning and sharing.

“We came up with ideas for stories, we read them and talked about how to tell the story,” she said. “Some came with a story ready, some pieces were think pieces, some were musicals.”

She then spoke of how sexual misconduct allegations against one of the founders of Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre really shook up everyone in the workshop. This was their impetus to share their stories with a wider audience now, to talk about issues from a woman’s perspective.

“We sat around the room and talked about the state of being a woman theatre writer,” she said. “It’s a supportive space and it’s an artistic space.”

Pat the Dog is devoted to creating new works for Canadian theatre so this idea of a women’s series fit its mandate.

“There so many, many ways to tell a story,” she said, noting that while Toronto has playwright workshops, there is a lot of competition.

“There are women’s playwriting labs but it’s difficult to get into,” O’Connell said. “People want to tell stories, but there is intimidation, I think that’s a barrier.

“Our approach is really collaborative, our goal is to support women.”

What started as a workshop evolved quickly as the more experienced playwrights helped those just emerging. By the third year, everyone knew they were ready and so launched “Heels on the Diving Board,” a series of small theatrical pieces.

The series begins Wednesday night with “Hope Op: A comedy about yoga, crime and women’s anger” by playwright Kristin Shepherd, directed by Heather Davies.

Next up on Oct. 24 is “Tea and Tales,” a collection of stories presented by the Coalition of Muslim Women of KitchenerWaterloo.

The series runs alternate Wednesdays until Dec. 19, and all performances take place in the gallery space of K-W Art Gallery attached to Centre in the Square.

“We have promising voices, right in our own community,” O’Connell said. “People are wanting to do the work and tell their stories.”