Aaron Bushkowsky, creative writing instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has been short-listed for the Carol Bolt Drama Award for his play After Jerusalem.
“I am very pleased to be nominated for this prestigious award,” said Bushkowsky. “I wrote After Jerusalem over a weekend after discovering my original play was turned down for production. After Jerusalem is based on a trip I took to Israel in the 1990’s. While I was visiting I fell madly in love with an attractive female Israeli soldier and she had big dreams to move to North America to become an actress. Our relationship, however brief, was based on a lot of tall tales and little lies. This turned out to be my inspiration.”
Bushkowsky’s play features a down-on-her-luck school teacher who tries to find love in Israel by making herself up to be a famous actress only to run into a wannabe script-writer soldier with many tall tales to tell.
After Jerusalem was produced by Vancouver’s Solo Collective Theatre in 2011 and was also nominated for a Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script.
The winner of the Carol Bolt Drama Award will be announced at the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s (PGC) Inaugural Awards event on Oct. 22 at Stage West in Mississauga.
The award is for best English-language play for adults by an author who is a Canadian or a landed immigrant. All entries must have been first published (singly or in a collection) or performed in the year prior to the award. If performed, the working script for the production must be submitted.
Publication or performance may have taken place outside Canada. The winner will receive $2,500 and a silver medal.
Bushkowsky has been teaching poetry, prose, screenwriting, and drama at Kwantlen Polytechnic University for five years. A prolific writer, he has seven published books and over a dozen professional play productions. In the last decade, Bushkowsky has been nominated eight times (more than any other playwright) for Jessie Theatre Awards for Outstanding Original Play and has won two. Bushkowsky has also served as playwright-in-residence at Touchstone Theatre, The Playhouse, Rumble Theatre and as a resident film-writer at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. To learn more visit: www.aaronbushkowsky.com.
