Congratulations to the 2014 Shaw Festival Intern Directors

Congratulations to Alistair Newton of Toronto and Rachel Peake of Vancouver who have been chosen as the Intern Directors for the 2014 Neil Munro Intern Directors Project at the Shaw Festival.  Each season, the Shaw Festival hires two Intern Directors.  They look for promising professional directors at a point in their career where an extended residency with a company like the Shaw Festival will be of benefit to their professional development.  The interns have a good amount of professional experience, but will not have had an opportunity to work on the scale of production that is characteristic of The Shaw.

Alistair Newton is a Toronto-based playwright, director of theatre and opera, and founding Artistic Director of Ecce Homo Theatre.  Alistair’s work has been seen at the SummerWorks, Rhubarb and Next Stage Festivals, and he recently served as director/dramaturge for Bella: The Color of Love (Philadelphia Theatre Company/Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts) and writer/director for Of a Monstrous Child (Ecce Homo/Buddies in Bad Times) which received four Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations. Alistair was Apprentice Director for the Ensemble Studio of the Canadian Opera Company during the 2009/10 Season where he directed Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, and he recently completed a residency as Apprentice Artistic Director at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Alistair is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and holds a BFA from The University of Victoria.

Rachel Peake has directed for companies from Newfoundland to Victoria including the Belfry Theatre, Théâtre la Seizième, Alley Theatre, Pacific Opera Victoria, Studio 58, and Solo Collective Theatre, for whom she was the Artistic Director from 2008-2013.  Rachel spent two years as part of an inter-arts collective as resident director of Gros Morne Summer Music and has worked extensively in new play development.  In 2011 Rachel won the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Direction and the Ray Michal Award for Outstanding Body of Work by an Emerging Director.  Upcoming, Rachel will dramaturge and direct the opera Stickboy by Shane Koyczan for the Vancouver Opera.

The Intern Directors work under the mentorship of the Directors of the Academy—the Shaw Festival’s professional development and public education wing.  Each Intern is assigned to two or three successive shows as an Assistant Director.  The “Director’s Project” is the culmination of the Intern Director’s season, and consists of a double-bill of two one-act plays directed by the two Intern Directors, chosen from the period of The Shaw’s original mandate.

Since its inception in 1988, the project has been sponsored annually by Sun Life Financial and Theatre Ontario.

Read more about the Neil Munro Intern Directors Project at the Shaw Festival on the Theatre Ontario website