Award-winning Toronto playwright, screenwriter and director Colleen Murphy has been named the University of Regina’s first playwright in residence thanks to a $20,000 Canada Council grant.

The 10-month appointment takes effect Aug. 15, 2006. It is a full-time residency due to matching funds provided by the University of Regina’s faculties of Arts and Fine Arts ($10,000 each), plus an additional $2,500 from each of the University’s federated colleges – Campion College, First Nations University of Canada and Luther College.

U of R theatre professor Mary Blackstone says the appointment of a playwright in residence is a significant first for the U of R. “It will help draw attention to the new creative writing program offered by the English Department, with strong support from the federated colleges,” she said. “It will also support the work of the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Centre for the Study of Script Development and the successful group of playwrights associated with its programs.”

Working from an office in the U of R’s Theatre Department, Murphy will consult one-on-one, helping develop student writers as well as other writers in the community. She will also offer readings, screenings and workshops, enabling Regina audiences to become more familiar with her work.

Murphy’s work includes The December Man (L’homme de décembre), a play for which she recently won the 2006 Enbridge playRites Award and which will be produced at Alberta Theatre Projects in the winter of 2007. The play focuses on a male student who was ordered out of the classroom at École Polytechnique the afternoon Marc Lapine shot and killed 14 female students and wounded 13 others.

Murphy’s work in progress includes The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G., an opera libretto she is writing for Edmonton-born composer Aaron Gerais about a young Ukrainian woman abducted into the sex trade.

Murphy is currently president of the board of Playwrights Canada Press and an advisor to the board of directors of the Alliance of Canadian New Music Projects. She lives in Toronto with her husband, filmmaker Allan King.

For further information please contact Mary Blackstone at blackstm@uregina.ca, or Cameron Louis at 585-4429, or Cameron.Louis@uregina.ca.