We’re proud puppies over here: Congrats to Jessica Anderson, winner of the 2012 RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwrights’ Competition. We’re super thrilled since we’ve been working with Jessica and her play since she placed in our 2010 24-Hour Playwriting Contest with the first draft of The Gods and Calvin Brewer. During that 2-year period Jessica received one-to-one dramaturgy, a workshop with public staged reading as part of our Piece/Meal Series plus a mini-residency where she completed the more expansive draft that she will work with at Tarragon this year.

In The Gods and Calvin Brewer, seventeen-year-old Calvin creates a world that balances epic mythology and reality in order to communicate with his mother, a former classics professor struggling with mental illness.  Here’s a snippet of what the Juror’s had to say about Jessica’s play.

“Good dialogue and strong situations” —Brian Quirt, juror, Artistic Director of Nightswimming (Toronto)

“I like her voice a lot…[it’s] courageous.” —Marcus Youssef, juror, Artistic Director of Neworld Theatre (Vancouver).

“I was moved by this play. It is complex yet the characters and the dialogue move the story along.…the playwright shows great promise.” –Amy House, juror, Artistic Animateur of Resource Centre for the Arts (St. John’s)

Jessica Anderson is a playwright and arts administrator, originally from Oakville, ON. She currently resides in Ottawa, where she balances her creative side by working in administration for Ottawa Little Theatre.

Mark your calendars now to hear more from this talented new voice:  Jessica’s My Purple Wig, which won Theatre BC’s Special Merit Award and was performed as part of the Emerging Voices Festival, will be featured at our new Piece/Meal Series March 2013 in Kitchener. The Gods and Calvin Brewer will be presented as part of Tarragon Theatre’s Play Reading Week in November 2013 in Toronto.