PLAYWRIGHT
Cereal (Laughing Day Productions, 2000) From left: Shane Arbuthnott, Matt Hoos, Jason Rothery
Jason’s playscripts, screenplays, and collaborative-creation work have been produced across Canada and the U.S., and published by Talonbooks and Anvil Press. His administrative theatre roles include: resident dramaturg at Playwright’s Theatre Centre (Vancouver), Co-Creator and Festival Director of the Walking Fish Festival (Vancouver) and the Calgary International Fringe Festival. In 2009, Jason joined the Soulpepper Academy (Toronto) as resident playwright.
His second Fringe production — Menace (Laughing Day Productions) — won the Centaur Theatre Showcase Award at the Montréal Fringe in 2001. In 2002 he collaborated with Upintheair Theatre Society to create the Muppet- and Calvin & Hobbes-inspired Wedgie, which enjoyed a sold out run at the Vancouver Fringe. Possibly his most successful playscript to date, Wedgie continues to be produced to this day, 25 years after it first premiered.
In 2003, Jason became Head of Development at Rocket Ace Moving Pictures, where he co-created and wrote the weekly live-action internet serial Dead End Days, the short film Wank, and co-wrote two seasons of Cerealized. While in Calgary, his original script The Drop — based on a high school year-end tradition of tossing watermelons off of the third tier balcony — was produced by THEATREboom. In 2004, THEATREboom remounted Men Without Lips, which had premiered at Vancouver’s Summerworks Festival the year prior.
After taking the position of Artistic Director of Calgary’s Ghost River Theatre, Jason — by then pretty much obsessed with The West Wing — wrote and premiered POLITIkO, a political thriller based on the Anita Hill controversy of the early 1990s. The following year he collaborated on Something to do With Death, a unique “western for the stage” inspired by the films of Sergio Leone.
As a member of the Soulpepper Academy, Jason wrote three original playscripts: Inside the Seed, The Ring Around, and Cat vs. Duck (or: A Literary Evening). Inside the Seed would later premiere at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in 2014. This Upintheair production was nominated for seven Jessie Richardson Awards, and won Outstanding Director (Richard Rose), and Outstanding Original Script.
While at Soulpepper, the ensemble collaboratively-created (Re)Birth: EE Cummings in Song. This smash success enjoyed multiple mainstage runs, and a tour to New York City in 2017. 2017 also saw the sold-out premiere run of Upintheair’s technically-innovative The City & the City (which Jason adapted from China Miéville’s magnificent cult novel) at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
His dozens of short works include: Cereal, Battersplatt, Wilson’s Leg, Anal, Jack & Buck in Shack, Do Clones Ejaculate Electric Sperm, and Everyone You Love is Already Dead.
f outright lies. But hey — a gig’s a gig, I guess
Cat vs. Duck (or: A Literary Evening)
Drama
Cat vs. Duck is based on the true but opaque story of a (purportedly awkward) dinner hosted by T.S. Eliot for Groucho Marx. In the only extant account of this encounter between these late life admirers, Groucho reports having tried (and failed) to impress Eliot by declaiming King Lear, with Eliot parrying by quoting quips from Duck Soup. Part magic realism, part poem, part vaudeville, Cat vs. Duck probes each of these iconic artists’ chequered pasts, as well as the toll that fame exacted on those closest to them.
Cast of 2 women and 2 men.
Run time approximately 90 minutes.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.
Wedgie
Comedy
From super ancient times of yore, the grade Sixes of Anderson Elementary have waged bitter war against the grade Sevens of Jacobs Junior High. Reeling from a recent attack, Calvin, the leader of the Sixes, concocts a cunning and fiendish retaliation. But the Sixes are a grade divided, and the real war rages within their ranks. A Resistance has risen to counter the war, and rumors of a Prophecy have split the curtain behind which conniving forces work to consolidate power, and perpetuate the conflict forevermore. Part fairy tale, part parable, part cutting social satire, Wedgie is a whirlwind journey into the dark heart of childhood that speaks to the grown-up inside the child in all of us.
Cast of 6 women and 9 men. Potential for double-casting.
Run time approximately 105 minutes.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.
Wilson’s Leg
Published in Brave New Play Rites (Anvil Press, 2006)
Comedy
In this pitch-black comedy, three teenage boys ensconce themselves in a treehouse to perform a gruesome deed they believe will ensure their supremacy among their schoolmates.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.
A Perilous State of Grace
Drama
Set in the early aughts, A Perilous State of Grace concerns two very different brothers called home to attend their father’s funeral. (Yeah, one of those hackneyed “dead father” plays, but one that knows how hackneyed its premise is.) Carter is a journalist and agent provocateur in the Michael Moore mould whose forthcoming book is about to be pulped. Dylan is an advertising exec hawking cheap clothes to tweens. Finding their mother, a self-professed flower child, in the midst of a late-life meltdown, Carter and Dylan must confront festering wounds, while coming to terms with a rapidly changing world.
Cast of 2 women and 4 men.
Run time approximately 75 minutes.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.
Seize the Fish
Comedy
Before she goes full-fledged mid-life crisis, Ruby has to take care of some shit. First, she’s got to get her estranged father, Bixby, off of her back once and for all. The fact of his being in jail would be a wrench in the gears, but Bixby has a plan: Hire two keen young contract killers – Sam and Bridget – to shoot him in the shoulder, thereby effectuating his escape. With Bixby taken care of, and ties with her erratic shrink severed, Ruby will be free to rekindle relations with her self-styled entrepreneur ex-boyfriend.
Cast of 4 women and 3 men.
Run time approximately 70 minutes.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.
The Ring Around
Drama
In the spring of 1665, the small town of Eyam (Derbyshire, England) suffers an epidemic of bubonic plague by way of fleas festering in a box of cloth (or so the legend goes). The newly appointed rector – William Mompesson – asks the villagers to quarantine themselves and pledge an oath to stay, lest they spread the plague to the surrounding villages. His parish persuaded, they mark off a circle of stones outside the village limits. This true event purportedly inspired the nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosie.
Cast of 6 women and 6 men.
Run time approximately 120 minutes.
For the full manuscript, or to inquire about production rights, please send your query through the contact page.