Meet the "slightly peripatetic" ANDREW TEMPLETON (Canada)

What do you hope to gain from this project?

I love these sorts of interactive playwriting experiences and creating work on the fly. My main expectation was to have fun and I did. 

Who is your greatest writing influence?

No single person, so in alphabetical order: Caryl Churchill, Will Eisner, Henrik Ibsen, Jack Kirby, Robert Lepage & William Shakespeare. This list could change radically, depending on the day. 

What makes a great play in your country?

I'm not sure how to answer this. At the moment, in the independent sector, we've seen the raise of devised, creation-based work. the text for this type of work does not come out of the traditional, playwright working in isolation process. Often the subject of the work is the creators themselves (in a strange hybrid of performance art and reality television). To my mind, the single best work that I've seen come out of this area of exploration has been Winners & Losers by Marcus Youssef and James Long, which is simply amazing and the show I'd suggest anyone to see to understand what's going on in Canada right now. 

There are some interesting regional variations as well, at least in English Canada. In my hometown of Vancouver, there is a strong pull towards creating visually interesting shows; in Toronto the focus is still much more language-based.

Describe your writing room / process.

At the moment, slightly peripatetic. I share a small apartment with another writer. I have a power station, where all my files are kept. I often work at the dining table or stretched out on the sofa. I've started using shared, creator spaces and I like them. It feels like going to the office, which I think is important to the psyche. 

Andrew Templeton (Canada) Originally from Vancouver and now based in Toronto, Andrew has had plays produced in Vancouver, Toronto and London (UK). With an interest in creating works that explore and test the use of genre, he is currently working on Angus Drive, a re-imagined murder mystery based on a real cold case from the 1920s. Past credits include: What You Want: Toronto (MachineFair/Theatre Passe Muraille); Babylonia (Radix, part of the Free Fall Festival), What You Want (MachineFair), Fever (Radix, part of HIVE 3), Biographies of the Dead & Dying (productions in both Vancouver and Toronto), This Mortal Flesh (Jessie nominated for Outstanding Original Script), Portia, My Love (Jessie nominated for Outstanding Original Script), Howard Johnson Commits Suicide  (London, UK); Branwell Alone (London, UK), Ken Dolls (also adapted for television) and Hazardous Cows (also adapted for radio). He was also one of the winners of the 2011 Vancouver-based Crazy8’s competition with the script Funny Business (directed by Russell Bennett). He is currently working on his first feature length screenplay and is in the planning stages of writing and directing a short film scheduled for production later this year.