Community Development Initiative - Announcement

Great Canadian Theatre Company is pleased to announce that the new community development initiative, named The Tributary Project, has juried and selected the first local show to bring in-house for development. We are delighted to support Laurie Fyffe’s Beowulf in Afghanistan.

[Image Description: Text Reads “Community Development Initiative to support "Laurie Fyffe’s “Beowulf in Afghanistan.” “The Tributary Project” logo, which has water behind “Tributary” is in the top centre.]

About The Tributary Project

The Tributary Project selects one local show to bring in-house per season for development with an eye towards production in a future mainstage season. AD Sarah Kitz introduced this offer from GCTC to the community at the unconference in May 2022. Since then, every step of this process has involved the leadership and vision of community artists. 

A tributary is a river or stream that flows into a larger body of water. There is also the notion of paying tribute and, with this initiative, GCTC seeks to pay tribute to the artists of the National Capital Region by supporting and uplifting their work here at home.

Laurie Fyffe says:

I am thrilled to be taking my play Beowulf In Afghanistan to the next level of development with GCTC. I’m especially delighted to be working with Sarah Kitz as dramaturge and to continue my association with Kate Smith as director. The offer of resources and a talented team is an invaluable contribution to a playwright’s work.

About the selected project, the Jury says:

I believe that “Beowulf in Afghanistan” is a good project to road test the first year of the Community Development Initiative at GCTC. It is an ambitious project that will benefit from the dramaturgical/workshop process. It will also be enhanced by the technical and design elements offered by the theatre. I believe that the creative team involving Laurie, Kate and Axandre will deliver a significant piece of theatre, and should be granted the opportunity to create and produce in a resourced environment. - Geoff McBride

Laurie Fyffe's Beowulf in Afghanistan is an intertextual tour de force that troubles, subverts and questions Western literary traditions at the same time as it lifts the veil on the myth of the hero-warrior. By refusing the promise of transcendence that comes with masculinist fantasies of violence, she provokes a feminist anti-epic grounded in values of empathy, grief and vulnerability. - Sanita Fejzic

Beowulf in Afghanistan is a play which examines  binaries - what it means to be a hero or an ordinary human, the 'glorious' past in relation to the harshness of the present. The Author has woven these, and many other, themes together using myth and modernity with a luscious text that elevates the play and engages an audience's intelligence.  - Martin Conboy

Laurie has clear artistic questions she would like to expand on from the story to character development, and the opportunity with the GCTC will allow the play to grow into a piece that is ready for the national stage. I am excited to see this virtual Fringe show take its next steps! - Lydia Talajic

Laurie’s harnessing of a Western canonical text against the contemporary Canadian experience of war grounds her tale in myth - reaching deeper than itself, into our unconscious - and implicates Canada’s involvement in a foreign military incursion. Laurie is well on her way to unearthing how foundational myths of empire building have disastrous effects for the people who are instrumentalized into the empire’s narrative of itself. An astonishing anti-war play that deserves to be developed and uplifted. - Sarah Kitz

Big thanks to Horseshoes and Hand Grenades for helping to fund this pilot year of development.