Sipping on a hot latte at the Art House Café, Catherine Ballachey recounts the time when she was an eight year-old at summer camp, playing the role of Pumba in an amateur production of The Lion King. It was then, she said, that she fell in love with theatre.
Ballachey dons different hats on a daily basis, including working with the Great Canadian Theatre Company, but her newest role involves her working with up-and-coming writers. Coordinator of the Emerging Creators Unit, an Ottawa organization that coaches emerging playwrights and just received funding from the City of Ottawa.
The Emerging Creators Unit is a partnership Ballachey has with the Ottawa Acting Company in which, for two and a half months, her group works with playwrights or creators to polish their scripts and prepare them for performance.
“We provide feedback and critical response to make sure it’s moving toward production,” she said.
Ballachey works as a dramaturge, creative directors that take care of the academic level of a script, providing research, advice and feedback for a production.
“Some people call me a ‘creative midwife,’” said Ballachey. “I am an outside eye, an outside voice . . . kind of like an angel or devil guiding them along their project.”
“A lot of theatre companies, especially in the United States, will hire a dramaturge or ‘literary manager,’” Ballachey said. “These people will work on getting ahold of new scripts, meeting new artists, developing and commissioning scripts and working on plays.”
According to her, however, dramaturgy is only beginning to catch on in Canada as a skill that is in demand.
While dramaturgy-related services are offered to artists, writers and directors in brevity by a variety of theatre companies in Ottawa, Ballachey’s Emerging Creators Unit is the first of its kind in providing solely these services free of cost, with an in-depth focus on new and upcoming artists in the industry.
“The idea of a starving artist is very real,” said Ballachey.
Ballachey started the Unit in 2017 with members of its outgoing batch going on to produce their plays and win awards. Some of the writers, directors, and producers that the Unit has worked with include Maria-Helena Pacelli and Vishesh Abeyratne.
Pacelli produced her play Ultraviolet Love at the Ottawa Fringe Festival 2018, while Abeyratne produced their plays titled Endlings at the 2017 edition of the same festival.
“I discovered somewhere in between my undergrad and master’s that I really liked facilitating, not necessarily auditioning. So I went back for my master’s at Ottawa U and I did it in theatre theory and dramaturgy. I am a dramaturge and a theatre artist,” she said.
Although she only began the Unit with her own limited resources, Ballachey said this year, she has the support of the City of Ottawa as they have provided her with a grant for “individual artist funding”—something Ballachey says shows that the city is recognizing a need for dramaturgy.
The next batch of creators will begin workshops Feb. 17.
Photo by Avanthika Anand
