Chelsea Woolley

Chelsea Woolley is a playwright whose work includes: Paint Me This House of Love (Tarragon Theatre), (Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs (Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival), The Mountain (Geordie Theatre, Spinning Dot Theatre), The Only Good Boy (Theatre BSMT), and These Peaceable Kingdoms (New Words Festival). She is the founder of the Mixed-Arts Performance Partnership Program connecting young artists living in precarity to professional artistic mentorship, and the creator of a writer’s unit for teens at Red Door Shelter where she and they co-wrote a script titled, One Day. Chelsea has been recognized through a number of awards including: Tarragon Theatre’s RBC Emerging Playwright, The Playwright Guild of Canada’s SureFire List, The Ellen Ross Stuart Opening Doors...

Chelsea Woolley is a playwright whose work includes: Paint Me This House of Love (Tarragon Theatre), (Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs (Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival), The Mountain (Geordie Theatre, Spinning Dot Theatre), The Only Good Boy (Theatre BSMT), and These Peaceable Kingdoms (New Words Festival). She is the founder of the Mixed-Arts Performance Partnership Program connecting young artists living in precarity to professional artistic mentorship, and the creator of a writer’s unit for teens at Red Door Shelter where she and they co-wrote a script titled, One Day. Chelsea has been recognized through a number of awards including: Tarragon Theatre’s RBC Emerging Playwright, The Playwright Guild of Canada’s SureFire List, The Ellen Ross Stuart Opening Doors Award, and the Toronto Fringe New Play Contest. She has attended the Banff Playwright’s Lab, and the National New Play Network’s Playwright’s Workshop at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C.. Chelsea is currently the Head of Drama at the Canadian Children's Opera Company, and is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting Program.

Scripts

Paint Me This House of Love

by Chelsea Woolley

1

Cast Size

3

Genre

drama,

experimental

“Why shouldn’t a dream be just as much a truth? A fantasy be just as deep a reality?”
After twenty-five years estranged, Cecelia and her father, Jules, are attempting reconciliation. Unable to communicate past shames and shortcomings, the pair become dependent on increasingly dramatic fairy tales to explain away their pain.

Paint Me this House of Love is a rhythmic, yearning, experimentation of language...

“Why shouldn’t a dream be just as much a truth? A fantasy be just as deep a reality?”
After twenty-five years estranged, Cecelia and her father, Jules, are attempting reconciliation. Unable to communicate past shames and shortcomings, the pair become dependent on increasingly dramatic fairy tales to explain away their pain.

Paint Me this House of Love is a rhythmic, yearning, experimentation of language, exploring the threads that stitch together our shared family narratives, and asks how we communicate, “I Love You”, when the words alone are not enough.

These Peaceable Kingdoms

by Chelsea Woolley

1

Cast Size

6

Genre

docudrama/historic,

drama,

experimental,

horror,

melodrama,

movement/physical,

mystery/thriller,

period,

political,

tragedy

Puritan butcher, Robert Goodman, has firm command of his righteous and God-fearing family. A mad wife, a violent brother, and a past of carnal temptations however, threaten the pillars of his kingdom. An investigation into the silencing of women as crazy, when they fail to subscribe to what institutions demand as normalcy, "These Peaceable Kingdoms" focuses on the unrelenting pressures of ‘the way things have...

Puritan butcher, Robert Goodman, has firm command of his righteous and God-fearing family. A mad wife, a violent brother, and a past of carnal temptations however, threaten the pillars of his kingdom. An investigation into the silencing of women as crazy, when they fail to subscribe to what institutions demand as normalcy, "These Peaceable Kingdoms" focuses on the unrelenting pressures of ‘the way things have always been’, in turning the lively into the lunatic, and the victim into the villain.

The Exhibition of Extraordinary Oddities and Living Freaks

by Chelsea Woolley

1

Cast Size

3

Genre

comedy,

dark comedy,

drama,

experimental,

horror,

immersive,

melodrama,

movement/physical,

mystery/thriller,

political,

tragedy

After the collapse of her business, Deanna and her seventeen year old daughter Esther, are forced to return to Deanna’s rural childhood home. During this town’s Annual Pumpkin and Squash Fest, a travelling freak show performer is accused of murdering the mayor’s son. He invites us, as town audience, to question what it truly means to be a freak. Through the incorporation of buffoon, clown, and circus theatrics...

After the collapse of her business, Deanna and her seventeen year old daughter Esther, are forced to return to Deanna’s rural childhood home. During this town’s Annual Pumpkin and Squash Fest, a travelling freak show performer is accused of murdering the mayor’s son. He invites us, as town audience, to question what it truly means to be a freak. Through the incorporation of buffoon, clown, and circus theatrics, The Exhibition of Extraordinary Oddities and Living Freaks explores the reality of being an outsider and how universal this may be. Is it human nature to mistrust those who are other? What is the risk of revealing your oddities, and what is at stake, what festers within you, if it is never allowed to show?

The Mountain

by Chelsea Woolley

Cast Size

2

Genre

adventure,

fable/folktale,

young audiences

Aya, the lady adventurer, (not a princess because princesses are stuck up), just wants to go home. She is a refugee and that means she is not from here. She’s tired of Canada, and wants to go back to her great and magical valley, far, far away. Only problem is, her dad won’t answer her phone calls, she’s broke, and the lonely boy she’s found to be her side-kick, doesn’t want to help. A timely show for young...

Aya, the lady adventurer, (not a princess because princesses are stuck up), just wants to go home. She is a refugee and that means she is not from here. She’s tired of Canada, and wants to go back to her great and magical valley, far, far away. Only problem is, her dad won’t answer her phone calls, she’s broke, and the lonely boy she’s found to be her side-kick, doesn’t want to help. A timely show for young people about fear, bullies, war, and the mountain we must climb together, as one, to find peace.

The Only Good Boy

by Chelsea Woolley

1

Cast Size

2

Genre

dark comedy,

drama

Jacob and Monica are meeting for dinner. They will have a great time. They’re both wonderful. They’re fine. Fantastic. The Only Good Boy explores how we bury and live with our most dangerous secrets. It asks us to recognize our uglies after years hidden under the rock. The play experiments with the use of separate, and sometimes surrealist realities, times and spaces. Jacob and Monica are meeting for dinner...

Jacob and Monica are meeting for dinner. They will have a great time. They’re both wonderful. They’re fine. Fantastic. The Only Good Boy explores how we bury and live with our most dangerous secrets. It asks us to recognize our uglies after years hidden under the rock. The play experiments with the use of separate, and sometimes surrealist realities, times and spaces. Jacob and Monica are meeting for dinner. They’re both terrified.