Welcome to My Renaissance is an artist-in-residency featuring Calgary playwright Eugene Stickland and friends.
Where does a song come from? Tom will take us through the process of writing his song “Lack of Rain” and perform the song. Then Eugene will talk about what it was about the song that inspired him to write a novel of the same name. Then a brief reading from Eugene’s work in progress. General discussion to follow about song writing and novel writing and anything else that comes up.
About Eugene Stickland
Born and educated in Regina, after completing an MFA in Theatre at Toronto’s York University, Eugene arrived in Calgary in 1994 and began a ten year residency at Alberta Theatre Projects. During this time he wrote and saw produced ten plays — 6 for ATP, 3 for Lunchbox Theatre and 1 for Theatre Network in Edmonton. In total, he has written 19 plays that have been produced in Calgary, Edmonton or Toronto and then throughout the world, from London to Istanbul. Following the residency at ATP, Eugene wrote a feature weekly column for the Calgary Herald for 6 years, a total of approximately 250,000 published words. In 2015 Eugene published his only novel (to date), The Piano Teacher, recipient of the W.O. Mitchell Award. Plans are being made to make a movie of the Piano Teacher, with Eugene writing the screenplay. Eugene currently has several projects underway which he is excited to share over the course of his cSPACE Eau Claire residency. He lives in the Beltline area of Calgary with his wife Belina.
