A Master Playwright Festival? In Winnipeg?

Abstract

Every January for the past eight years, Winnipeg theatre-goers have been offered twelve to fifteen different productions of plays by a major twentieth-century playwright, staged by as many different theatre companies, over a period of about two weeks. Ticket sales remain steady at about 10,000, in a city of 650,000. Beckett was the subject of the first festival, in 2001; festivals that followed were devoted to the works of Brecht, Pinter, Albee, Tremblay, O’Neill, Stoppard, and Mamet. In 2009, it’s Miller. “The audiences are fascinating,” says festival founder Bertram Schneider. “They’re groupies. It’s thirty below. January. Little dark theatres. It’s astounding.”