Call for Submissions: Langham Directors' Workshop

Company Overview

Based in Stratford, Ontario, the Stratford Festival is one of the world’s foremost repertory theatre companies. It operates year-round, presenting a season of about a dozen plays each year between the months of April and November, a rich stream of digital content and hundreds of events designed to deepen understanding of the plays. For every person a theatregoer sees on our stages, we have seven people working behind the scenes, some of the world’s most dedicated and experienced arts workers.

The Stratford Festival is committed to ongoing work to support equity, inclusion, anti-racism and anti-oppression in all areas of our work. These areas include play selection, casting, marketing and public relations efforts, education programs, production, design, recruitment of staff and volunteers, and the composition of the Board of Directors.

Job Description

The Langham Directors’ Workshop wants to nurture exciting directorial talent and provide you with the resources to explore, play and hone your craft. We want to help you create inspired and boundary-pushing work — not only for our stages, but for your career and beyond. We offer emerging and mid-career professional directors the opportunity to explore innovative Shakespeare and classical works, support large-scale productions on some of the most unique stages in the country, and birth new plays with Canada’s finest playwrights. Throughout these explorations, we hope to provide mentorship opportunities, help grow your networks, and provide a space for authentic creative exploration. We aim to give you practical knowledge of the workings of this Festival and hope to see your work on our stages in the near future.

• Participants will work as Assistant Directors on Festival productions during the initial residency. (Responsibilities may include attending design and production meetings before the official residency in Stratford and leading/assisting on understudy rehearsals both prior to and after the opening.)
• Participants will attend regular group meetings during the season with guest artists and talk with fellow Langham participants and program alumni.
• Participants will take part in two intensives — the first during the season, and the second near the end of October — consisting of panel discussions and other creative workshops to help prepare them for working at theatres like the Stratford Festival.
• The Festival plans to create opportunities for interested participants to be placed in an Assistant Director role after the initial Stratford residency, which may be at the Festival or at another theatre, subject to mutual agreement on the terms, schedule, etc.

• Langham participants are paid a fee, housing subsidy and travel expenses.
• Depending on the length of the rehearsal process and other factors, fees for the assistant directorship usually range from $9,000 to $10,000 for the initial residency, which typically continues through approximately two weeks following the opening of a production.
• Terms for any extension or placement after the initial Stratford residency subject to mutual agreement.
• Participants will be able to engage in a collaborative mentorship with established Festival directors, and have the opportunity to learn from guest artists and their Langham peers. 
• Participants can also take advantage of everything the Stratford Festival offers: tours, special events, tickets to productions, the Festival’s Archives and libraries, company classes taught by the Festival’s coaching staff, and both formal and informal opportunities to speak with senior staff and visiting artists.

• This program is designed for artists who have acquired foundational training (either from a training program OR through experience) and have worked as a theatre artist for at least 4 years. We are looking for artists with a proven commitment to the craft and career of directing theatre, and some productions would be best served by candidates with a demonstrated interest in Shakespeare or the classical canon. The program is geared toward directors who are confident in their directorial process and feel ready to lead a room of Stratford actors. The Stratford Festival is a large and complex institution. Participants are best served by this program if they have experience working in a professional theatre setting.
• Preference is given to those who have been working outside of an MA/MFA program for at least 1 year.
• We strongly encourage applicants who identify as First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Black, People of Colour, Mad, D/deaf, Disabled and the 2SLGBTQ+ community. If you have any questions or concerns about your experience in this program, please email Natasha Sinclair, Assistant Producer, at langham@stratfordfestival.ca or call at 519-271-4040 x2505. 
• Participants will need to be available on site full-time (usually 11 to 16 consecutive weeks starting as early as February and ending as late as August) from the first day of rehearsals until the opening or the understudy run of the show, whichever comes later. 
• The Langham Directors’ Workshop is only open to those who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada.

Please Note: Special care will be taken in pairing possible Langham participants with directors of productions. In addition to interviewing with the leadership of the Langham Directors’ Workshop, you will also be interviewing with directors of the productions. The participant’s specific interests and the director’s requirements will be taken into account and both the participant and the director must agree to work together.

The Festival acknowledges its history of colonizing culture and is working to understand its complicity in unjust systems that have excluded many from participating fully in the work on our stages. We are committed to continuously evolving our understanding of equity, inclusion and anti-racism, and we acknowledge that the work of reconciliation is an ongoing journey. The Workshop actively seeks to partner with artists from equity-seeking groups and theatre makers whose talent, energy, commitment and creativity will shape the future of theatre, both at the Festival and across the country.