We believe in developing Canadian voices.
Studio 180 is looking forward to developing a new script with acclaimed Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch, with plans to start exploring a first draft in the summer of 2012.
The upcoming work is loosely inspired by a story close to home – the 2007 murder of Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez. Hannah says, “the commission explores how the tension between freedom and culture can turn violent. The story is a domestic tragedy: a headstrong, rowdy girl and her traditional father battle it out in Toronto’s West End.”
ABOUT HANNAH
Hannah Moscovitch is a Canadian playwright who has risen to national prominence in a few short years. She has been dubbed “an indie sensation” by Toronto Life Magazine, “the wunderkind of Canadian theatre” by CBC Radio and “irritatingly talented” by Eye Weekly. Her work has won multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and she’s been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Carol Bolt Award, the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the K.M Hunter Award and the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Hannah’s smash hit East of Berlin played to a sold-out run when it premiered at Tarragon Theatre in 2007. It has since been remounted twice, in 2009 and 2010 – both sellouts – and gone on a national tour. It’s currently being translated into French. Her other writing for the stage includes Essay, The Russian Play, The Children’s Republic, The Huron Bride and In This World. Her plays have been produced across Canada, from coast-to-coast, including at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Factory Theatre, Edmonton’s Theatre Network, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC), and Alberta Theatre Projects. Hannah is currently playwright-in-residence at Canada’s leading national company devoted to new works, Tarragon Theatre. She is also a writer on CBC’s hit radio show Afghanada, and has won a Silver Medal Best Writing Award at the International Radio Festival of New York for one of the five episodes she’s contributed to the series.
Hannah possesses a unique ability to combine the tragic, the humorous and the shocking while delivering an intellectually and emotionally complex work. The Globe and Mail hailed The Russian Play as “that rarest of all theatrical experiments: a clever satire with a beating heart,” while Variety Magazine‘s review of East of Berlin noted that, “[Moscovitch is] not afraid to plunge right through areas that others might consider poor taste in order to come out the other side in search of a deeper truth.”
Upcoming, Hannah is writing plays for some of North America’s most exciting established and experimental theatre companies, including The Banff Centre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Volcano Theatre, 2b theatre, Theatre Panik and the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York.
Hannah is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and attended the University of Toronto as an English Major.
