2008 Winners Photos & Bios
(20th Annual)

     Winners: Jeff Pitcher / Joel Janisse / Harold Rhenisch

     Finalists: Tanya Gadsby / Dianne Lococo / Scott Sharplin

2008 Winner -
Full Length

Jeff Pitcher

Jeff has been working as an actor, director and playwright in Canada for the past 25 years. He is the author of over a dozen plays, including “Ed & Ed – Trapped,” “Sound & Fury” and “Elvis & Mavis” and “Scandal – The Robert Sommer’s Story.” He’s also adapted for the stage J.M. Barries’ “Peter Pan” and Dickens “A Christmas Carol.” His latest play, “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood” will premiere at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary in December 2008. He currently splits his time between his writing base in Vancouver and his home in Newfoundland, where he is the Artistic Director of Theatre Newfoundland Labrador.

2008 Winner - One-Act

Joel Janisse

Joel Janisse grew up in Windsor Ontario but currently resides in Vancouver BC.  His undergrad education was a long drawn out affair that finally landed him a double majored degree in Creative Writing & Sociology.  A few of his plays were performed in Windsor by Monkey’s With a Typewriter Theatre Company and his other writings have appeared in Adbusters and Kitchen Sink Magazine where he won their Second Annual Short Fiction Contest.  Joel is currently completing his MFA in UBC’s Optional-Residency program.  He believes he got into writing for the right reasons and that the fame, fortune, and celebrity is a minor bonus.
 

2008 Winner - Special Merit

Harold Rhenisch

Harold Rhenisch - Pox

Harold Rhenisch has been writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for thirty years. He translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into English (Living  Will, 2003), and restaged many of his plays in the poems in Free Will (2005). He has won the 2008 CBC literary prize and the 2007 George Ryga Prize for Social Responsibility in BC Literature, for his nonfiction book The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century.   A native of BC’s Similkameen Valley and a long-time resident of BC’s Cariboo, where Pox is set, he now lives in Campbell River, on Vancouver Island.

2008 Finalist

Tanya Gadsby

Tanya Gadsby was born in New Zealand, and shortly thereafter she and her parents moved to British Columbia.  When she was three they moved to Iqaluit, Nunavut and lived there for four years before moving to Whitehorse, Yukon where they have lived ever since.  Those four years in Iqaluit left quite the impression on Tanya, and, along with her many years in Whitehorse, have served as inspiration for her creative writing. Tanya moved to Victoria, BC in 2003 and recently completed her BFA at the University of Victoria where she studied creative writing and theatre (stage management, costume design, acting). The inspiration for Dream for Upirngaq came from a class assignment to design full costumes for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Her one-act play, Flealess, was produced at the Uvic Phoenix Theatre’s FIND Festival 2007.  Her stage management credits include The Ugly Duchess, and Crackpot.  She is currently working on her first novel.

Dianne Lococo

Dianne Lococo has written seven plays in seven years and had over a dozen productions and staged readings. The Globe and Mail has published several of her humorous essays.  Dianne’s husband asked her to stop writing plays about dead husbands.  She is currently working on RANDOLPH:  THE UNIMAGINABLE DOG, a memoir of her life in London, England, with an incorrigible dog and a perfect husband.  Richard and Dianne live in Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  www.diannelococo.com
* ”A Dying Family Tradition “ was also a finalist in the Samuel French playwriting competition.

Scott Sharplin

Scott is a playwright, director, actor, and dramaturge. After being introduced to playwriting through Victoria Composite High School and the Citadel's Teen Festival of the Arts, Scott co-founded the Carnival of Shrieking Youth theatre festival in 1993, and Sound & Fury Theatre in 2000. Scott has had his scripts workshopped and/or produced by Lunchbox Theatre, Theatre Network, Workshop West, Sound & Fury Theatre, Theatre Squared, Alberta Playwrights’ Network, Playwrights’ Theatre Centre, Theatre BC, The National Theatre School, and Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal. He has had plays published in three anthologies: Staging Alternative Albertas (Playwrights Canada Press, 2002) and Three on the Boards (Signature Editions, 2008), and the upcoming Hot Thespian Action! (Athabasca University Press, 2008). He is also a previous finalist in Theatre BC's Canadian National Playwriting Competition: in 1998 for his script, "Touch" and in 2003 for "The Truth Factory".

PlayComp Home /  New Play Festival