Brave New Play Rites presents twenty years of original and startling theatre from Canada's best young writers. The book is a collection of short one-act plays written by students in the Creative Writing Program at UBC and produced at the annual festival, Brave New Play Rites, for public performances. Many successful writers have had their plays produced in the festival, including Lynn Coady, Steven Galloway, Dennis Bolen, Kevin Chong, and Aaron Bushkowsky. The release of Brave New Play Rites coincides with the 20th anniversary year of the festival, and the familiar names in this collection will be of interest both critically, and to readers who already follow the careers of these writers.

Praise for Brave New Play Rites:

"This is a terrific anthology, generous, varied, and utterly engaging - a compelling argument for the short play, the achievement of the UBC Creative Writing Program, and the future of Canadian theatre. ... " (Martin Kinch, Executive Director/Literary Manager, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Vancouver, B.C.)

"Brave New Play Rites has been a turning point in the development of some of Canada's most dynamic writers. It is a festival that is unlike any other, and I'm grateful as hell that I got a chance to participate." (Steven Galloway, author of Finnie Walsh and Ascension)

"... collects twenty-five short plays to celebrate the twenty-year history of the annual festival of work written by students of UBC's Creative Writing Program. ... The anthology not only samples the history of the festival, it is a compendium of experiments with the twenty-minute play. ... " (Letters in Canada)

Bryan Wade is an associate professor and the acting department head of UBC's Creative Writing Program. He has had numerous productions of his stage plays in various theatres across the country, including Factory Theatre Lab (Toronto), Toronto Free Theatre, Playwrights Workshop (Montreal), Theatre Calgary, and Vancouver's New Play Centre. He has also been a playwright-in-residence at Factory Theatre and the Blyth Festival along with being an invited artist at the Playwright's Colony at the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Stratford Festival. Several of his plays have been published by Playwrights Press, including the anthology Blitzkrieg and Other Plays.

Bryan Wade's profile page