Mandate and Activities
As of its 30th anniversary in 2005, Touchstone had produced 26 world premieres and works by 38 Canadian playwrights. Touchstone's "All-Canadian" mandate is carried out by several means. Touchstone mounts premiere productions of plays by British Columbian playwrights, it mounts second productions of important plays that premiered in other areas of Canada, and it produces works developed within the company. Touchstone has helped launch and develop the careers of numerous playwrights and actors. For example, Touchstone theatre was Callum Keith Rennie's first professional theatre performance was in Touchstone's 1990-91 production of production of Lost Souls and Missing Persons. Touchstone fosters the creation of new works through its "Playwright in Residence" program. Under the program, Touchstone spends two to three years working with a playwright to develop a play through workshops and dramaturgy to production. The "Playwright in Residence" program has resulted in the development of plays such as Kevin Kerr's Governor General's Awards-winning Unity (1918). In 2010, the Touchstone program focussed on female Canadian playwrights.
In 2003, Touchstone partnered with Rumble Productions to found the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, a performing arts festival held every January.
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Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)