Featured Playwright — Louise Casemore
Each month we interview member playwrights to share their work, stories and inspiration with the community. We recently spoke with Louise Casemore, an artist advocate, prairie nuisance, and two-time Sterling Award winning playwright. Based in Alberta on Treaty 6 and 7 Territory, she is the recipient of the ATP/Enbridge Playwright’s Award, was shortlisted for the inaugural John Palmer Award from the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and is a 2023 Edmonton Artist Trust Fund honoree.
Original plays include OCD (Canadian tour), Functional (Found Festival, IGNITE!), GEMINI (Chinook Series, High Performance Rodeo, Next Stage Toronto), and Undressed (Alberta Theatre Projects). Louise remains active in the wider community by way of dramaturgy, teaching, and sector research; and in 2021 she released the long-range national study on new play development, “Surveying The Landscape” (commissioned by Alberta Playwright’s Network). Louise is a member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, LMDA, the Citadel Theatre Dramaturgy Lab, and completed an MFA in Theatre Practice with a specialization in Playwriting for Immersive Theatre from the University of Alberta. She currently teaches Interdisciplinary Arts Practice at MacEwan University, and is the 24/25 Artist-in Residence for Found Festival in Edmonton.
Tell us how you got your start writing plays.
My playwriting journey started late, and soaked in tequila. I was a director and producer for nearly a decade before I wrote my first full play. After several years developing new plays and putting on artist events around Alberta, I got a call from a pal who was opening a new bar on the edge of the Edmonton Fringe Festival grounds. Since it was too last minute for them to be an official Fringe venue, he wondered if perhaps I had something in development that might be a good fit to test out their basement as a performance venue during the festival. My producer brain knew this was a juicy prospect given the built in audience, and something about the low-risk spontaneity of the situation struck me as the right time to take a chance on writing something for myself. That play, OCD, about my frustration with the casual co-opting of mental health disorders, continued to run off and on for four years and changed my life entirely.
One area of playwriting that you specialize in is participatory and immersive theatre, with many of your shows including elements of site-specific location, audience interaction, or even multiple ending options based on what happens during the performance. What draws you to this type of theatre, and do you have any tips for artists who might want to explore immersive theatre?
I’ve always been compelled by the storytelling of experience — performances that reach beyond the fourth wall with a mischievous glint in their eye, daring you to follow. Immersive theatre creates the sensation of a once-in-a-lifetime event, a performance directly informed or impacted by the individuals present — this is something that immediately ignited my heart and challenged by comfort zone. So naturally, I wanted to try it for myself. I now create shows that set out to make the audience indispensable, following the mantra that “we can’t do this without each other”.
If you’re curious about immersive, you’re already halfway there! My first bit of advice is to see and experience as much as you can, since it’s the best way to inform what you like and what you don’t. Immersive is a spectrum that includes everything from intimate audience-of-one experiences all the way to the 360-degree five-story free roaming adventures, so it’s great to dip your toes in by becoming an audience member first. The No Proscenium website is an incredible resource to learn about shows (live and online), reviews, and discussion forums for all things immersive and site-based performance.
Many of your existing plays were written with the intention of you performing them yourself. What differences do you notice when writing for yourself versus writing with the expectation of other actors taking on the role(s)?
While it was the foundation for my playwriting experience and taught me a lot — on a technical level, writing for myself is immensely lazy. The scripts end up being more like performance notes or diary entries where I make fun of myself in the margins, broken down into sections that assist my Actor Self with finding my next thought, or being easier to memorize. Once there are other performers involved — oh boy everything changes! Suddenly I’m on my best behaviour. To survive the (wonderful beautiful necessary) forensic interrogation that is having a director and other performers interpret and execute your ideas, the emphasis shifts from what makes sense to me to what can inspire and motivate others. And much like growing out a buzz cut, there is also the awkward middle stage where you try to teach others how you want it done by directing from the page. Cue the full page of introductory stage directions (that no one reads). That habit is harder to break, but one I am currently enjoying being in battle with.
You also conduct academic research on the theatre sector, for example your 2021 study on Canadian new play development, “Surveying the Landscape”. What draws you to this research, and what are the differences in how you approach academic writing versus creative writing?
In many ways, I have lovingly refused to differentiate between the two. I came to sector research and later academia as an artist practitioner first and foremost, so the audience I’ve always been speaking to have been people like myself. Folks who didn’t have university degrees, who were out in the field making and doing through trial and error, and those who want to dig into what is happening here and now. The Surveying the Landscape study (commissioned by Alberta Playwrights’ Network) that came out in 2021 was, at the time, a rare insight into the experiences of playwrights across the country as they try to develop their work. Now, nearly five years later, we’ve been fighting to secure support funding to carry out the follow up study. I hope ferociously to be able to return to those questions once again, this time holding space for those on the other side of the equation — interviewing programmers, artistic directors, and institutional leaders to determine what the landscape looks like now and in the future for the development of new Canadian plays.
Your play Lucky Charm will have its world premiere July 10–20, 2025 at the Found Festival Mainstage. It will be performed in a secret residential location, with ticket buyers being provided with the address 48 hours before the performance date. Can you tell us about the creation and execution of this piece, and the process of bringing it to the stage?
This inspiration for Lucky Charm started at the Banff Centre for the Arts, sneaking up on my subconscious as I was supposed to be working on a different play. I got to thinking about Harry Houdini and his death-defying escapes — wondering if he was married and musing on what a bizarre life that would be for his spouse. The more I learned about Bess Houdini and their story, the more I was shocked I had never come across it before. Shortly thereafter I was named the Found Festival Fresh Air Artist-in-Residence, which offered an extraordinary two-year partnership (Year 1 is development, Year 2 is premiere). Since the show is deeply inspired by the seances that Bess held following Houdini’s mysterious death, the experience has involved a massive amount of collaboration (magic history folks, script dramaturgs, immersive design specialists, site-based production geniuses) alongside regular experience testing to move us from the written page to intimate space effectively.
What are you working on next?
Next up will be an exciting script development phase for a new play called Put Your Lips Together. An ambitious neon-noir about the experience of women in the workplace, PYLT follows four strangers who meet after a chance encounter at a candlelit vigil, holding tight as they work together to blow the whistle on each other’s toxic workplaces. Following some high intensity research conducting off-the-record interviews with around 100 women in a dozen industries, I am excited to enter into a workshop phase with support from the SkirtsAfire Festival in Edmonton.
Do you have any favourite Canadian plays and/or which artists are currently inspiring you?
So many! Nicolle Moeller, Genevieve Adam, and Erin Macklem are all working on plays right now that I can’t stop thinking about. Kat Sandler’s Wildwoman. Keith Barker’s This Is How We Got Here. And my favorite example of scripting for participatory/unconventional performance — Winners and Losers, by James Long and Marcus Youssef.
Get tickets for the Found Festival’s world premiere production of Lucky Charm here!
Read “Surveying the Landscape” here!
And keep up with Louise on Instagram (@ladyjerkdaniels) and Facebook (Defiance Theatre).
Disclaimer: Playwrights Guild of Canada (“PGC”) is a national arts service mandated to engage and grow an active Canadian writing community. We promote Canadian plays around the world to advance the creative rights and interests of professional Canadian playwrights for the stage. The views of our members are their own. The opinions of PGC as an association remain neutral.
