Nominees announced for Rintoul award for top MB play

With the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival headed into its final stretch, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights announced which six original local productions have made the cut for the prestigious Harry S. Rintoul Award, given out each summer to the top new Manitoban play.

Named for the late founder of Theatre Projects Manitoba, the Rintoul Award winners receive a $750 cash prize, while the honourable mention recipient takes home $250 for their creative efforts.

This year’s list features several playwrights who’ve established reputations for critical and commercial successes at the festival, along with a few first-time Rintoul honorees.

For JHG Creative’s Monique Gauthier, Ian Ingram and brothers Cuinn and Connor Joseph, a spot on the Rintoul shortlist is on the menu for Dead Chef, a black comedy musical set at the French restaurant Eau Bouillante which earned a “chef’s kiss” from Free Press reviewer Jen Zoratti. The winners of the 2023 prize for their World’s Fair 1876: The Centennial Exposition, JHG was also the honourable mention recipient in 2024 for their delivery comedy The Mailroom. The Josephs also won the award in 2019 for The Cause.

The name Ethan Stark has become synonymous with fringe excellence, and this year’s production, Our Father, brought the emerging Manitoba playwright back to the Rintoul table after earning honourable mention recognition in 2023 for A Work in Progress and a shortlist spot for 2024’s The Ethan in the Room.

Playing on the John Hirsch Mainstage, the production left “at least a dozen audience members … audibly sobbing,” the Freep’s Denise Duguay wrote in her five-star review.

Winnipeg theatre icon Debbie Patterson is also in contention for the Rintoul for her hour of storytelling called Happy Valley. Beginning with “angry desperation” in the titular Ontario mining town offers an insightful, empathetic and dazzling reflection that “will make you both laugh out loud and gasp in horror,” per Zoratti, who caught the production at the Rachel Browne (Venue 8).

For his tale of disappearance set behind the crumbling walls of a downtown character apartment, Winnipeg writer, filmmaker and cartoonist Logan Stefanson has earned a spot on the Rintoul shortlist.

Directed by Daphne Finlayson, herself a former Rintoul nominee, The Ghost of a Flea stars Black Hole Theatre Program alum Stephen Gatphoh as the disturbed caretaker Osric. Like Dead Chef, Ghost of a Flea is being produced at the Gargoyle Theatre on Ellice Avenue.

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A pet-sitting tale from Kevin Reid, Unzipping the Cat showcased the playwright-star’s preference for simple, quiet movements, according to Lara Rae’s four-alien Free Press review of the production at Venue 5, the Son of Warehouse.

“Some theatrical monkey business that looks really hard to do is often literally smoke and mirrors,” Rae wrote of the Ottawa-raised, Winnipeg-based writer’s show. “And sometimes shows that are just one person talking don’t reveal that what you’re viewing is a masterclass in courage and very boring hard work.”

From multidisciplinary writer Sonya Ballantyne, How Bono Saved My Life (Three Times) is an example of “endearing and courageous storytelling” that explores “how we can use pop culture to express our emotions,” writes the Free Press’s Aaron Epp. A solo performance by Ballantyne — a Free Press freelancer — about the unexpectedly powerful role the Irish rock band played in her personal and emotional development, the production, directed by Emily King, runs to today at the downtown Club 200 (Venue 29).

The winner and honourable mention recipient will be announced at the Old Market Square fringe stage on Sunday at approximately 7:30 p.m.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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Ben Waldman
Reporter

Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.

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