The Tom Hendry Awards: Showcasing the Bravery of Canadian Playwrights
The Tom Hendry Awards began in 2002 with one award honouring the talents of a Canadian playwright. The program has grown exponentially in the last 23 years, adding awards such as the Theatre for Young Audiences award and the Carol Bolt Award for scripts that recently premiered. Now comprising eight annual awards, the Tom Hendry Awards offers a wide range of categories that recognize theatre pieces of various genres and forms in order to uplift up-and-coming artists.
Ahead of the announcement of the award winners, I had the chance to speak to Nancy Morgan, the Executive Director of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, about her and the Award’s connection to Queen’s University, past recipients, and the importance of diverse, Canadian stories being brought to the stage.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Each of the nominees in the Musical category represent diverse voices and stories, from queer identities in Small Gods, to the story of a young, undocumented girl near the US border in Olivia O, to the women fighting against capitalist and gender systems in The Great(er) Maple Syrup Heist. I know part of the PGC’s mandate is to uplift diverse stories, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the importance of amplifying these particular stories and authors, all of which are different, yet uniquely relevant in the current Canadian political landscape.
We have the Tom Hendry Awards for a reason: to uplift Canadian voices, but also to help give our writers a place where [they can send them] when these stories are brand new. There are other great award systems… where you could submit work that will also be reviewed by peers, but it also has to have something behind it. What’s interesting about Canadian creators is their bravery in telling a new story and coming up with a new idea.
The Tom Hendry awards allow writers to submit them early, like, “This is my new work, it has not been tested anywhere.” In a number of the categories, it can’t have been seen anywhere: it must be a new thing.
For our position at the PGC… what we know and see and believe in for Canadian creators is they’re quite brave and they do have all sorts of diverse stories, and it’s not driven by what is going to potentially sell. We see different stories on stages and written and created and pushed forward by Canadians that are different than our counterparts in the US, because it’s not driven by wondering if it is a financially stable option. The artists that have written these three stories [in this category]… those are just the stories they wanted to tell.
What we really appreciate is that the DAN School, five years ago, agreed to take that journey with us and invest in these artists. The stories may not be a traditional Broadway musical people have seen for the last 50 years… we’re very proud to be able to allow for artists to submit in that way, and then celebrate them and their stories.
Past winners of the Musical Award category have been incredibly well-received, nationally and internationally (Come From Away in 2013 and Kelly v. Kelly in 2020, to name a few). Why do you think it is important to recognize artists yearly?
It’s a big country, right?
If you were in Toronto and you build a network of people that you know in Toronto, you can start to talk about your work with those [people]. But if you’re on the West Coast? East Coast? It’s hard to bridge that gap.
That’s the goal of what we’re doing… When the Tom Hendry Awards started, we started with the Carol Bolt Award, but after that, the thought process was [looking at] which types of writing could really use a celebration to remind how there’s a real art form in [them]: so we introduced the Theatre for Young Audiences and Musical categories. We want people to make sure that they appreciate that they are separate talents, and different types of audiences and different types of performers can celebrate those all on their own.
As Executive Director of the PGC since 2021, you’ve witnessed the Tom Hendry Awards revival as Canadian theatre opened its doors again following the pandemic. How have the awards changed since then, if they have?
We added a drama category [when the Carol Bolt Award went on hiatus] so that we weren’t losing opportunities for writers to make submissions. When the world broke in that way, it also gave new opportunities. We don’t accept screenplays because that’s not our purview, but at that point, we [figured] what if it was a play, but it had to be digital?
So then we allowed the artists to decide if they had two versions: one for the stage, another for digital. [From there], which one of those scripts did they want to give us? We noticed that while [this option] may not have been true to everyone in the way that they were feeling and coping and maneuvering through that time, we certainly saw people [use the digital form] to deal with subject matter about being lonely or isolated—so the subject certainly changed.
The winners of the Awards are announced on Monday: do you have any words for the next generation of Canadian playwrights who hope to have their work seen on a national level?
Oh, gosh. I wish I had a perfect answer for that. It’s a difficult industry, right?
Sometimes people say it’s driven by passion; so you just do it for love? No. It’s a profession. So my advice would be to make sure you’re still involved in that. Tell the stories you are passionate about… You choose this line of work because of passion, so you just want to allow the passion to drive the story.
If you can find opportunities to move outside of your communities, do it, even though I know it sometimes isn’t easy. But if you can find opportunities where you’re a sponge and taking in new things—I think that’s what I find inspiring about our writers, that they have their own voice from their own regions, from their own histories, as the face of Canada keeps changing.
You can see new Canadians bringing their input and it’s so important for audiences and readers to be willing to listen to stories we should have listened to before. Before we were perhaps frightened of what that reaction would have been: I think most artists are brave because they’re brave enough to fail.
Nancy Morgan has been working as an administrator in the non-profit arts sector for over 30 years. Nancy is the Executive Director of Playwrights Guild of Canada. Nancy has previously worked as Executive Director of Theatre Nova Scotia, Managing Director of Strategic Arts Management, the General Manager at Eastern Front Theatre, and as Administrator at Great Canadian Theatre Company. Nancy has a BAH (Music) from Queen’s University and an MBA from St. Mary’s University.
To learn more about the Tom Hendry Awards and the Playwrights Guild of Canada, click here.
