John Murrell at the Banff Centre

Abstract

John Murrell is a respected and acclaimed playwright, librettist, arts advocate, and mentor. Born in 1945 in Texas, he came to Alberta in 1968 to pursue a career in teaching and quickly emerged as one of the first significant playwrights of the bustling new professional theatre scene in the province. Accepting a position in 1975 as playwright-in-residence at Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP), he scored his first popular “hit” with Waiting for the Parade (1977) about five women in World War II Calgary. A second play, Memoir, depicting the closing year of Sarah Bernhardt's life, brought Murrell to both national and international attention. Since then, he has served as both associate director of the Stratford Festival and head of the theatre division of the Canada Council (1988—92). His work has been performed at the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, at the National Arts Centre and in theatres across Canada. Internationally, his plays have been produced in more than thirty countries and been translated into more than fifteen languages. Despite Murrell's national and international reputation as a writer, his career has been based primarily in Alberta. In 1999, he returned to the Banff Centre, where he had earlier served as head of the Playwrights’ Colony (1986—9), to assume the position of artistic director/ executive producer of the Theatre Arts section. In the fall of 2007, he stepped down from the position to become the first emeritus artist-in-residence at the centre. In the following interview, conducted in Banff in January 2008, Murrell shares his views about the continuing importance of the Banff Centre as a uniquely Albertan generator of new regional, Canadian and international work, especially in opera, and about what he sees as exciting new possibilities for musical and dramatic collaboration in Western Canadian theatre.