LAURIE FYFFE

My most recent play The White Crocodile was produced by Plan B Productions at the 2024 Ottawa Fringe. Exciting Cause (created with choreographer Allison Burns) was produced by TACTICS in 2023. Exciting Cause received support through the Canada Council for the Arts and for an earlier workshop from the Ontario Arts Council.

Beowulf In Afghanistan began as a 2021 Fringe show and was picked up by the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Tributary Project in 2022. The play is now scheduled for GCTC’s 24/25 Season and will be directed by Kate Smith.

The past few years have been challenging times for anyone forging ahead with theatrical projects and post-pandemic many of those challenges remain. The fact that I emerged with plays ready for production – Beowulf In Afghanistan and Exciting Cause – can be credited to the determination of my creative teams to continue working on zoom, or in whatever fragmented and semi-isolated rehearsal models we were required to invent.

Prior to the pandemic, in March of 2018, Mirage: The Arabian Adventure of Gertrude Bell received a reading as part of Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival, and Being Helen received a workshop and public reading courtesy of the Ergo Pink Arts Festival.

Regarding my general background, from 2014 to 2017, I was Managing Artistic Director of Ottawa StoryTellers (OST), where I adapted James Bartleman’s Raisin Wine (2014), and co-wrote A Winter Tale: The Journey of the Blind Harper (2015). I was was Artistic Director of Ottawa’s Evolution Theatre from 2016 to 2021.  In 2017 Evolution premiered The Home Show at the Ottawa Fringe Festival. And in August of 2019, a further incarnation of The Home Show, Safe As Houses, was presented as a workshop at the Catalpa Cooperative.

My acting credits include, Ava Wolfe in the Counterpoint Players production of Corpus, and France Brooke in The Secret Life of Emily/Frances, 2015 Fringe, which I wrote. Both Corpus and The Secret Life of Emily/Frances were directed by Bronwyn Steinberg.

Going back further, my early work was produced at the Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre, Blyth Festival, and Theatre Kingston. A ten-minute play In Kabul premiered at New Theatre of Ottawa’s 2012 Short Play Festival and was subsequently produced at InspiraTo in Toronto, and the Short & Sweet Festival in Sydney, Australia. The Malaysia Hotel placed second in the 2003 Herman Voaden Competition.

I my MA in Theatre from the University of Ottawa (2010). I’ve been an active writing mentor for Ottawa’s Youth Infringement Festival, and I continue to teach Writing For Live Performance  at Algonquin College in the Scriptwriting Program, School of Media Design.