Featured Playwright — Rose Napoli
Each month we interview member playwrights to share their work, stories and inspiration with the community. We recently spoke with Rose Napoli, an award winning actor and writer of stage and screen. Selected plays include Mad Madge, Innocents (winner of the 2024 PGC Comedy Award), and Lo (or Dear Mr. Wells) nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play.
Onstage, she was recently seen in Michael Healey’s The Master Plan and Kat Sandler’s Wildwoman. She writes for various television shows, both onscreen and in development, and teaches at the Canadian Film Centre, where she is an alumni of the Prime Time Television Writing Program. Her new musical, After the Rain, co-written with composer Suzy Wilde, will premiere at Tarragon Theatre co-produced with the Musical Stage Company this spring.
Tell us how you got your start writing plays.
I was in a production of Romeo & Juliet at the Citadel in Edmonton. I had been told in theatre school that I would never play Juliet so when I got the chance, I thought it would be so satisfying. And in many ways, it was. But I also felt incomplete. I was speaking thrilling text working with a brilliant company of actors on a beautiful stage but it wasn’t enough for me. I started writing my first play right after that show closed.
What inspires you to write, and what does your process look like to get an idea down on the page?
I’m always listening. I’ll overhear a conversation on transit or I’ll meet someone at a dinner and little soundbites will collect themselves around an idea in my head. Slowly and subconsciously, I build up to being obsessed with that idea, to the point where almost everything I hear and see and read is somehow connected to it. That’s when I start writing.
Your musical After The Rain written with composer Suzy Wilde will have its World Premiere at Tarragon Theatre, May 27 — June 22, 2025. Can you share what it has been like to bring that work from the page to the stage, and what would you like audiences to know going into the performance?
There is something special about how After the Rain has come together. I’ve never felt it before on a project. An alchemy between the story, the players, the creative team, the text, the music. It feels like we’re at the beginning of something that’s going to have a life. And it’s a musical about a band so the songs are cool! It’s like you’re listening to an album that your parents listened to. You’ve heard it a million times, but it’s also brand new.
In April you took part in PGC’s first Craft Bites International Live session, where you were paired with Icelandic playwright Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson to discuss your work. Can you reflect on what that experience was like for you, and what you took away from it?
Tyrfingur is amazing. It’s wonderful to hear about theatre in other countries, particularly outside the US or the UK, which we have so much exposure to. He is an Icelandic playwright living in Amsterdam and there is something cross-sectional about his work and philosophy. I can get very insular in Toronto. It was inspiring to hear from an artist who has a global curiosity that you can feel in his work.
Can you share your reflections about the stage of your career that you’re currently in, and what your goals are going forward?
I understand now that I won’t ever feel like I’ve “made it”, whatever that means. I’m proud of what I’ve built for myself but I don’t think the building ends. Now that I can look back on a body of work, it’s satisfying to see some throughlines, to have a more robust understanding of what I’m interested in making and the artists that I want to work with. Goals are: keep learning, keep making, stay humble, stay curious, try to make a decent living.
What are you working on next?
I’m writing a few new plays. A comedy set in Woodbridge in the 1980’s based on Carlo Goldoni’s Mirandolina. A science fiction family drama set in a speculative present where risk can be calculated by technology. And a campy murder mystery set around an aging actress’ “56th” birthday party.
Do you have any favourite Canadian plays and/or which artists are currently inspiring you?
I loved Monks. Veronica Hortigüela and Annie Luján were fearless and hilarious and very resourceful.
Instagram: rose_napoli
Facebook: Rose Napoli
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.
