Rose Scollard is a professional playwright who has over thirty professionally produced stage and radio dramas. Her play Shea of the White Hands, a modern-day version of the Tristan and Isolde legend, was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an international award for literary excellence in work by women playwrights.

She was a co-founder of Maenad Productions, western Canada’s first woman-centred theatre. For over a decade Maenad produced more than 50 plays in addition to producing the yearly Fem Fest, a goddess festival in which women from all over the country as well as from the United States and Europe performed their own work. Along with Co-Artistic Directors, Nancy Jo Cullen and Alexandria Patience, she wrote Aphra, a tribute to the first woman to earn a living as a playwright, and one of Maenad’s most well-received productions

Rose was appointed playwright-in-residence at the University of Calgary as part of the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program. During her residency she completed Caves of Fancy, a play about Mary Shelley, Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft, and the famous “Frankenstein’s monster”, that was workshopped by the Drama department and presented at an international Shelley/Wollstonecraft conference at the University of Calgary.  Caves of Fancy was later published as part of the book Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).  

Fifteen of her plays have been collected and made available through North American Women’s Drama, an electronic research and study collection for university libraries. Her play Firebird was translated into German by Ute Scharfenberg, chief dramaturge of Freie Kammerspiele of Magdeburg, Germany. Feuervogel received its German premiere with Frie Kammerspiele in 2003. Firebird was published in TYA 5 (Playwrights Union of Canada), a collection of theatre for young audiences.

Tango Noir, a trio of her plays, Tango Noir, Bete Blanche and Preservation Blues was published by Frontenac House and is available from this website.

Rose is co-author, with Caroline Russell-King, of  Strategies: The Business of Being a Playwright in Canada published by the Playwrights Union of Canada. This was a first-ever national source book for playwrights on markets, agents, grants, publishers and playwright development centres and programs. Rose is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and Writers Guild of Canada. She is currently working on Love M.E. a play based on a four-year correspondence between close friends. She also ran a very successful, award-winning publishing company, Frontenac House from 2000 – 2016.

Awards and Grants

Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 1995.   Finalist Award.  Shea of the White Hands. Produced by Maenad Productions.

Alberta Culture/CBC Write For Radio Contest,1988. First Prize. The Man Who Collected Women, 1988, produced for Vanishing Point, CBC.

Alberta Culture Playwriting Competition, Uneasy Pieces. 1985. Second Prize in the full-length category. First Prize in one act category for Nosey Parkers.  Nosey Parkers later produced in One Act Play Festivals in Seattle, Montreal, Toronto, and made a six-city Fringe Tour in 1992 with Royal Canadian Mounted Productions.  The Swapper produced in one-act play festivals in Edmonton, Calgary, and Beechy Saskatchewan.

Alberta Culture CKUA Short Story Competition, 1987. Second Prize.  “Mysterious Ways”.  Published. Read on Radio and became the basis for CBC radio drama Love and War Western Style.

Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts, 1989,  Senior grant for first drafts of Firebird, The Persephone Dress, and Shea of the White Hands.  All later produced.

Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts, 1986, Intermediate Grant for the first draft of Thirteenth God, produced in 1989.

 

Published Works

Books

Aphra, co-authored with Nancy Jo Cullen and Alexandria Patience‎, Frontenac House 2016

Tango Noir, Frontenac House 2012, (includes “Bete Blanche”, “Tango Noir” and “Preservation Blues”).

Strategies: The Business of Being a Playwright in Canada, co-authored with Caroline Russell King, Playwrights Union of Canada 2000.

 

Anthologies

“Tooth or Dare” was published in Instant Applause II, Playwrights Canada Press 2004.

Caves of Fancy was published in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001.

Firebird was published in TYA 5 a collection of theatre for young audiences, Playwrights Canada Press 1998.

“Leaving England”, Alberta Rebound, Ed. Aritha Van Herk, NeWest Press, 1990. Appeared originally in The New Quarterly, Summer, 1989

“Kerbie Dick Launches His Wife Mattie Onto The International Art Sea”, Street Songs, Ed. Jane Hill, Longstreet Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1990.  Read on CBC Anthology 1997. Appeared originally in Fiddlehead, Summer 1989

 

Periodicals

“Preservation Blues”, Theatre Alberta Magazine, December 1997

“Mandatory Tigers”, Freefall,  Spring 1994.

“Aphra”,  Theatrum Magazine, Co-Authors N. Cullen, A Patience, Sept 1991

“Nosy Parkers”, Quarry/Special Drama Issue, July 1988.

“Mysterious Ways”,   Calgary Magazine August, 1987. Read on CKUA Radio.

“Fair Exchange”, Western People, 1987.  Read on CBC Anthology.

“Best Trick Yet”, Woman To Woman, Dec 1987

“Overriding Love”, Western People, 1986.

 

Electronic

The following plays are included in North American Women’s Drama an electronic research and study collection for university libraries. Alexander Street Press 2003. Alexandria.

Caves of Fancy, Preservations Blues, Shea of the White Hands, Bête Blanche, Tango Noir, Firebird, I Miss you already, Aphra, Nosy Parkers, The Swapper, The Hero, Metamorphosis 1, Metamorphosis 2, The Man Who Collected Women, 13^th God.