Brad Fraser.
With the Tony nominations out, thoughts here in Toronto turn to the upcoming Dora Awards. A category I've been particularly looking forward to this time around is Outstanding New Play. It's been a strong year for new plays in Hogtown, especially at Tarragon and Factory.
At Tarragon, Michael Healey's Courageous, Daniel MacIvor's Communion and Erin Shields If We Were Birds are all potential contenders I'd say, while, at Factory, George F. Walker's And So It Goes, Michel Marc Bouchard's The Madonna Painter and Brad Fraser's True Love Lies would all be worthwhile nominees.
But, alas, while it would be fun to watch heavyweights MacIvor, Healey, Walker, Bouchard and Fraser going up against each other with newcomer Shields in there as the wildcard, that exciting race of Nestruck on Theatre's dreams will not take place. Fraser and Bouchard's plays are ineligible.
Here are the current rules for eligibility as laid out in the Dora handbook:
A production may be eligible for outstanding new Play or outstanding new Musical provided that it is the world premiere of the production, and provided that the production meets all other eligibility requirements for this division.
World premiere is defined for the purposes of the DMMA to be the first professional production of the play or musical in any language, anywhere in the world. This award goes to the writer or in the case of a musical to the writing / composing team, and is not an award for the production.
So Factory's production of The Madonna Painter may have been the world premiere of Linda Gaboriau's English translation, but it's not eligible. And because Fraser chose to have his world premiere of True Love Lies in Manchester earlier in 2009 before bringing it to Toronto, it is not eligible either
The Dora rules are clear, so no one's kicking up a fuss. But are these eligibility rules the ideal ones? The matter is complicated by the fact that the guidelines have shifted over time.
In 1991, Michel Marc Bouchard won Outstanding New Play for Lilies, translated by Linda Gaboriau, though it had first premiered in French, of course, at Théâtre Petit à Petit and the National Arts Centre four years prior.
And in 1995, Brad Fraser won Outstanding New Play for Poor Super Man, through the play had premiered in Cincinatti before the Canadian Stage Company produced it in Toronto.
The history of the Doras is more illustrious for having these plays in their list of past winners. But if either of them premiered today in a similar way, neither would be eligible
The current rules are fair and they are clear. My general feeling, however, is that awards are most interesting and carry more weight when there is more competition rather than less.
Two other quick bits of Brad Fraser news:
1) Fraser's Wolfboy - the show famous for having starred Keanu Reeves in its 1984 Toronto premiere - was adapted into a musical at last year's Edinburgh Fringe. Now, that musical - with music & lyrics by Leon Parris, book by Russell Labey - is going to the West End. It opens at 100-seat Trafalgar Studios Two in July starring an actor named Paul Holowaty, who is famous from his bad-boy role on a British soap called Hollyoaks and was once the featured "Torso of the Week" in Heat magazine.
2) Fraser is running an intensive playwriting program for new or unproduced writers in Toronto. Organised by the Playwrights Guild of Canada, it starts in June and the full details are here.
Top photo: Brad Fraser (handout).