Writer’s room

a professional development program for emerging tya playwrights

connecting to tya leaders across turtle island

Writer’s Room Program

Writing for young audiences is a special skill that you can develop!

Created by Erica Petty with workshop curation from Monica Ogden, Story Theatre’s Writer Room program provides BC-based playwrights or creative collectives with space, specialized workshops, training, and resources to use for exploring new play development, creating new works, and practising leadership of their own artistic processes.

Writer’s Room is not a results driven program, but rather an opportunity to build skills together and see where your creativity lands when given the chance to engage. By providing artists with resources and training, new ideas and stories will be explored. Build community with artists who want to work in TYA and empower the next generation as leaders of change.

Previous intake: 2022-23, Adonis Critter King, Sydney Marino, Rain Fox

Next intake: TBD

Previous guest workshop leaders

TYA 101 Crash Course

Led by Izad Etemadi and Erin Michell

Izad Etemadi is an Iranian-Canadian actor and writer based out of Toronto. He was a resident of the 2021/2022 CBC Actor’s Conservatory at the Canadian Film Centre and the recipient of the 2017 Emerging Queer Artist award from Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Recent on-screen acting credits include Ghosts (CBS), Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+), Overlord and the Underwoods (CBC/Nickelodeon) and Revenge of the Black Best Friend (CBC). He originated the role of Samuel in the new Canadian musical Grow (from the producers of Come From Away) at the Grand Theatre and will be returning this winter to play the titular role in Elf the Musical. As a screenwriter, he is working on shows in development and production with Shaftesbury Kids, Family Channel, and OUTtv. His solo comedy shows have toured across North America and his newest project Izad Etemadi: Call Me By My Stage Name is being developed in residency with Green Light Arts. Izad’s work uses comedy to explore issues of queer identity, immigration, body image, and the terrors of being a millennial. 

Erin Michell is a movement director, choreographer and performing arts instructor based in Vancouver, BC. Recently she worked with Oscar nominated actors Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as their movement coach on an upcoming feature film. She has choreographed for film and tv productions with Kickstart Entertainment and MATTEL Inc. Choreography and directorial credits for stage include Cock (Theatre Inconnu), The 25th Ann. Putnam County Spelling Bee (StageNewWest & FCP - CTC nomination for best choreography),  Matilda JR. (StageNewWest). Choreography and dance credits for film include The Ways To Love You (singer/songwriter Justin Hewitt), #ThisisAna - Ep 109 (webseries), Lift A Finger (singer/ songwriter Tissa Rahim). Her play designed for preschool audiences, The Very First Circus toured Vancouver Island in Spring of 2022 with the The Story Theatre Company. Currently, Erin has partnered with Notable Content Inc. and Studio 604 Entertainment to develop a new kids TV series centered on inclusivity in dance for kids and youth. Erin uses her experience in performance education as inspiration for her work. Through words and movement alike, Erin aspires to reach and connect with young audiences through storytelling on a national and global scale.


International TYA, Touring, & Black History Matters

Led by Giselle Clarke-Trenaman

Giselle Clarke-Trenaman has roots in the Toronto theatre community and holds a B.F.A. Hons in Theatre from York University. She has worked with CanStage/Volcano Theatre on the acclaimed Another Africa as well as The National Arts Centre/Young Peoples Theatre’s production of i think i can. Now a resident of Vancouver B.C., Giselle was recently nominated for a Jessie Award (2019) for her work in Stage Management and highlighted by the Black Theatre Caucus for their 101 Black Stage Managers Celebration. She is currently the Production Coordinator at Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver. Recent Stage Management credits include working with Presentation House Theatre on Cat Killer and So, How Should I Be? and Learning and Forgetting the International tours of Jack and the Bean and Where the Wild Things Are and the National tour of Baking Time. She has worked with Carousel Theatre, Goh Ballet, SoulPepper, Highlands Opera Studio and Opera Atelier to name a few.

As the founder of Black History Matters, she has presented to schools in the Vancouver area reaching over 3,000 students with her tailored age-appropriate presentations. The program uses the Arts to impact unintended bias in K-7 students by homing in on three core competencies: communication, critical thinking and personal and social development. She has also done several presentations geared towards Educators and Parents.

She currently sits on the Board for Nova Dance and ASSITEJ Canada.

Quote: You are young, gifted and Black. And that’s a fact. – Nina Simone


Making Through the Bamboo: Production History

Led by Byron Abalos and Andrea Mapili

Andrea Mapili is a Filipinx-Canadian playwright, movement director, choreographer, and movement artist based in Toronto. In 2017, she reinterpreted the choreography of Cassettes 100, a one hundred–person interarts piece at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. In August 2021, she took part in the digital presentation of Supermodel, as one of 18 Asian- Canadian artists to respond and interrogate the myth of the model minority. In addition to co-writing the play, Through the Bamboo, with her partner, Byron Abalos, which won Patron’s Pick at the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival, she was also the Movement Director and Assistant Director. In July 2021, Through the Bamboo was published by Playwrights Canada Press. Andrea is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator, a Tamalpa Practitioner and speaker who offers private coaching and group workshops specializing in embodied communication, somatic awareness and creativity for health, healing and wellness. Most prominently, Andrea is mama to 3-year old Mayari Ember Mapili-Abalos, who inspires her to continuously deepen her decolonization work, to interrogate what it means to be Filipinx and to continue striving for a more equitable world.

Byron Abalos is a Filipino-Canadian playwright, actor and producer from Toronto. His play, Remember Lolo, won the NOW Magazine Audience Choice Award in the 2005 SummerWorks Festival. In 2011, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre premiered his play, Brown Balls, at the Factory Studio Theatre. As part of the 6th Man Collective, Byron co-created Monday Nights, an interactive basketball performance, which has toured across Canada. NOW Magazine named him one of Toronto’s Top 10 Theatre Artists for 2010. In 2021, Through the Bamboo, a play for young audiences which Byron co-wrote with his partner, Andrea Mapii, was published by Playwrights Canada Press. Byron is a writer for the OMNI Filipinx-Canadian sketch comedy show, ABROAD.  Byron has a BFA in Theatre Acting from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University), and was an inaugural Bob Curry Fellow at The Second City.

Leadership and Directing TYA in Winnipeg

Led by Katie German

Katie German is a Métis director, performer, educator and mother. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Katie is currently the owner and director of Junior Musical Theatre Company (JMTC), the Assistant Program Director of Pimootayowin Creators Circle with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Artistic Consultant with Manitoba Theatre for Young People and is a Mother to a creative seven-year-old and a joy-filled one-year-old.

Recent directing and performance credits include: Rez Sisters (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), Embodying Power and Place Digital Presentation & Workshop (Director, New Harlem Productions, Nightwood Theatre & Native Earth Performing Arts); Winn nipi (Director,  Prairie Theatre Exchange); Wolf Joe cartoon (Voice Director & Character Voice, Media Rendezvous & Amberwood Entertainment); A Year with Frog and Toad (Manitoba Theatre for Young People); Hockey Sweater, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Rainbow Stage); South Pacific (Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra).