Tarragon Theatre and RBC have announced that Tracy Power is the winner of their annual playwrights’ competition. Tracy won for her play Ordinary Genius, the story of a young filmmaker’s struggle with her mother’s death and her imagined journey with the subjects of her film, poet Walt Whitman and Canadian physician William Osler. Tracey will receive a prize of $3,000, a year’s worth of dramaturgy at Tarragon Theatre, and finally a presentation in next year’s Tarragon Theatre's Play Reading Week in November 2012.
Tracey’s play was chosen from a shortlist of two other plays: Lake Laureate by Jordan Tannahill and Pieces by Sarah Illiatovitch-Goldman. Robert Chafe, Governor General’s Award-winning playwright and one of the competition’s judges, described the play as “well executed and sharply written”. Another judge, Bob White, a Consulting Director for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, remarked that it is “very ambitious and heart-felt.” The third judge was Jenny Munday, Artistic Director of Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre.
Tracey was honoured to accept the award from such an important cultural institution and is looking forward to developing a script with Tarragon over the next year. Her first play Living Shadows, A Story of Mary Pickford, a one-woman play starring Tracey herself, won the 2007 Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Fringe New Work. She has also written Garage Alec; The Great Mountain; Back to You, The Life and Music of Lucille Starr; If Romance is Dead Who Killed it?; The Big Sneeze; and an adaptation of The Jungle Book published by Bakers Plays. Her most recent play, Chelsea Hotel, The Music and Words of Leonard Cohen premieres in February at The Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver.
Tracey is also a distinguished actress and won the 2006 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Large Theatre for her role in Urinetown. She currently lives in Vancouver, BC.
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