Featured Playwright — Wren Brian
Each month we interview member playwrights to share their work, stories and inspiration with the community. We recently spoke with Wren Brian, a playwright who started her career in Whitehorse, Yukon (territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation & Ta’an Kwäch’än Council) where she was born and raised. She spent over 12 years based in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory, before moving to Scotland in July 2022. She also works as an arts administrator, producer, and dramaturg.
In her writing she is dedicated to creating characters that can be played by actors of any gender, ancestry, ability, and/or age. She was shortlisted for the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Manitoba Writer Award, Anomie won the 2017 Harry S. Rintoul Award for Best New Manitoba Play at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, and Bystander was shortlisted for the Playwrights Guild of Canada Emerging Playwright Award in 2015. Production credits include: Bystander (produced by Gwaandak Theatre), Situation (commissioned and produced by Gwaandak Theatre), The Investigator (produced by Yukon Digital Theatre Collective), and Climate Change Theatre Action 2021 and 2023 where her short plays When and Now were presented in nine countries. Now will return for their 10th anniversary in fall 2025, and Billie and the Moon is being produced by Manitoba Theatre for Young People in May 2025.
For more information visit: wrenbrian.com
Tell us how you got your start writing plays.
I first tried playwriting in 8th grade after feeling inspired while taking my first drama class in high school. I’d always enjoyed writing stories and was getting more interested in theatre and film. Over the years I would go on to try everything else in theatre and film (acting, directing, editing, designing, etc), but would always write scenes and monologues here and there. Patti Flather, who was the AD at Gwaandak Theatre, encouraged my playwriting from when I was 17 and kept in touch when I went to university (taking every class except playwriting). She invited me to virtually join Gwaandak’s New Yukon Voices Playwriting Group which helped give me confidence and feedback on the first one act play I wrote in 2014. Despite all of this I didn’t embrace being a playwright until January 2016 when I realized I didn’t enjoy any other aspect of theatre or film as much as playwriting. Definitely a bit of a winding journey!
You were born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, and spent over a decade living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba before re-locating to your current location in Scotland. What challenges and opportunities have you faced as a playwright in your travels, and how have your physical whereabouts influenced your writing?
The main challenge is more or less starting over in terms of networking and building those important relationships in theatre communities. It’s been quite similar both times in that no one really cares that you have prior experience, you’re an unknown in their community and so you do have to prove yourself again. It does make you really question what you know, and what you don’t, which I do think is ultimately a good thing.
The main opportunity moving gives is meeting people with different perspectives and life/cultural experiences. It can be hard to be aware how our experiences shape us until we go somewhere else that doesn’t share them. I’m not sure the moving has directly influenced my writing, it’s more subtle as any time we live in a new place for an extended period of time, and meet new people and experience new art and culture it absolutely effects us. There’s a great line from Severn Thompson’s play Elle (that I might be paraphrasing) of “you cannot inhabit without being inhabited” which has always stayed with me as I find it to be very true.
You specialize in writing characters that can be played by actors of any gender, ancestry, ability, or age. How do you practice this in your work, and why is it important to you?
I was introduced to unassigned characters while part of a community theatre group in Whitehorse as acting exercises proving what physicality, tone, etc. can add to a scene. These scenes often had each character saying no more than three words at a time. I really enjoyed these and then in university acted in Howard Barker’s The Possibilities which has a couple scenes that could easily be played by anyone and is not specifically set anywhere. I was really drawn to that style. The invitation to the director, actors, designers to fill in the world without being tied to reality and yet being very relatable. This combined with equity in theatre initiatives at the time made me want to write this way not only because I personally enjoyed the style but because I didn’t want to inadvertently contribute to inequity in the industry.
Of course gender, ancestry, ability and age all contribute to who we are and how we move through our world, so that’s why I don’t set my plays in a particular time and place. I either leave it undefined if the play is a more interpersonal one, or I’ve created a fictional world if I want to write a play that is more socio-political. I hope this allows other artists to come on board and bring themselves to the script and create a world with each other.
Your play Billie and the Moon will be at Manitoba Theatre for Young People from May 2–11, 2025. Can you tell us about the creation of this piece, and what inspired you to write it?
The creation process of Billie and the Moon was very different to the way I typically write plays, and wouldn’t have happened without Manitoba Theatre for Young People’s Creators’ Units facilitated by Rick Chafe and Andraea Sartison which I was a member of from 2016 to 2021. From the initial spark generated in November 2017 to workshopping the first draft in May 2019, the units were hugely influential. It was a blast to work in a more devised way and sound ideas off of many different people during the initial writing of it. I hope it’s made the play more relatable to more people.
I was inspired to explore introversion in this play because when I approach work for young audiences I try to think of stories I would have enjoyed at that age and/or things I wish I’d been exposed to earlier. It took me until my mid-20s to come to terms with my introversion and learn the difference between being alone and being lonely. It would have helped me a lot to see a story addressing this when I was younger, so I wrote one in the hopes to helps fellow introverts, and the extroverts who want to be friends with us.
The Investigator is a free interactive digital theatre experience created with Yukon Digital Theatre Collective, where each audience member customizes their experience online. Where did this idea originate, and what was it like to create a piece of work for a digital medium?
Patti Flather, Leonard Linklater, and I decided to apply to Canada Council for the Arts to allow us and other artists from or based in the Yukon to explore digital theatre. We were successful and so embarked on a research phase, and invited Lillian Nakamura Maguire and Christine Genier to come on board as well. Each of us was the creative lead on our own projects with Patti and I co-producing all five (all available now on yukondigitaltheatrecollective.com ).
For my project I decided to adapt my unproduced one person play called The Weaver. The ideas phase of adapting it was fun, sometimes confusing, but ultimately I really enjoyed thinking about what “digital theatre” is for me as it was discussed so much during the pandemic. I took this opportunity to try out things that I feel are distinctly theatrical. This is why there is no rewind button on the experience, and I almost didn’t have a pause button, but decided that was going a step too far. That said, the process of making it was a bit challenging as you’re dealing with two different industries and it takes a lot of work to understand each other. Everything takes longer to do than you think!
What are you working on next?
To be honest, grant applications. I am hoping to get some support to work on a second draft of a two act comedy-drama exploring privilege and complicity. I view it has a mash up of the film Gosford Park and the Canadian play The Wedding Party by Kristen Thomson with a dash of the themes of Cabaret. I’m also working on a trilogy about an International Criminal Court set in a fictional world in order to explore how we deal with prosecuting atrocities, and a one person show exploring the genre of autobiographical shows. I like breathing space between drafts, so tend to have a lot of plays on the go and they’ll each get their time once a year.
Do you have any favourite Canadian plays and/or which artists are currently inspiring you?
Recently I’ve been focusing more on reading/watching Scottish and other UK plays, trying to get up to speed on what’s going on here. Stand outs that have been very inspiring have been You Bury Me by Ahlam, Bellringers by Daisy Hall, and A Mirror by Sam Holcroft. That said, very much looking forward to seeing Keith Barker’s new show at Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg while I’m in town this April. Love Keith’s writing!
Keep up with Wren at wrenbrian.com.
Available for FREE Until May 18 — an interactive digital theatre experience: YouAreTheInvestigator.com
Learn More Here: YukonDigitalTheatreCollective.com/TheInvestigator/
Upcoming in Winnipeg: Billie and the Moon at Manitoba Theatre for Young People: mtyp.ca/on-stage/billie
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.
