Picture this: you’re a starving artist in training, and you have written your first short piece of theatre, perhaps a work that will change the face of drama forever. Maybe a work that will replace the “starving” part of your moniker with “award-winning, critically acclaimed.” Your concept is airtight. Your dialogue sparkles. Now if only you could bounce it off an experienced theatre type, shine it up nice and pretty, iron out any wrinkles you may have missed, and then take it to the top. Who will you ask? You need to go over it with your Auntie.
An “Auntie,” or Rhubarb Festival dramaturge, is the experienced theatre type involved in the production and rehearsal of pieces submitted to the festival. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Artistic Director and Rhubarb Festival “Auntie” David Oiye explains this over his lunch:
“Aunties are there to answer questions and to provide shoulders to cry on.” They assist first-time playwrights with the realization of their pieces, providing advice and the voice of experience. “The biggest pitfall of young theatre writers is that they don’t see enough theatre. They write in a bubble; young queer writers don’t grow on trees, or tend not to write queer scripts, or sometimes write in a style that is what they imagine theatre to be,” says Oiye. An Auntie encourages these writers to challenge themselves, while ensuring their work can be produced in a theatrical space. “You need to understand the limitations of space, etc, in order to challenge them…. You need to know why you’re doing it in order to make it effective.”
The Rhubarb Festival provides first-time playwrights the perfect opportunity to hone their skills. In addition to Aunties’ assistance, the festival prohibits journalists from reviewing any of the performances. This facilitates learning, as Oiye points out: “We learn from mistakes, provided we talk about why [the piece] didn’t succeed…. In university, you rarely read plays that flopped.” Likewise with successes—the difference here is that the media does not recognize that successful playwrights develop over time, that they are not born writing perfect scripts.
As a festival audience member, you have the opportunity see work at an exciting stage, where ideas are fresh. “People should come out to see theatre unlike that you would see anywhere else in Toronto,” remarks Oiye. As a student, this provides “a chance to see the obvious next step, moving from theory [or concept] into practice.”
As a starving artist in training, the pieces may inspire you to submit your own next year (call for submissions is usually in late summer), and benefit from the unique environment of the Rhubarb Festival.
As Auntie Oiye points out, the theatre community is “not as competitive as everyone imagines…. [Mid-size theatres] really want each others’ shows to succeed…. [Lately there has been an increase in] artistic directors picking up playwrights and pieces from the festival.”
