Every year we bring in a few guest artists to be part of The Live-In Festival. Last year we welcome Haley McGee with her exceptional one-woman show "I Am Doing This For You", now touring Europe, and internationally renowned Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock.

This year we are lucky to be welcoming Jay Whitehead, known to Halifax audiences from "Unsex'd" and, more recently, "Castrati: An Electro Drag Opera!", as one of our guest artists. For the past two years, Jay had collaborated with us on DaPoPo's The Drinking Game in Lethbridge, Albert with the bold and beautiful artists at Theatre Outré. Here he will be working on a new script, Tab & Landon, tis October.

In advance of the Live-In Festival, Jay Whitehead will be offering a Meisner Acting Intensive workshop.

We encourage you to register for this workshop, and keep your eyes peeled for other such outstanding professional skill development opportunities coming to Halifax this Fall.

Every year the Live-In Festival enjoys the support of many individual participants and attendees whose donations at the door make this festival possible in all of its breadth and diversity.

We would, however, also like to acknowledge the support of a few arts organizations without whom our Script Series, with an emphasis on professional development and community outreach in the area of playwriting, would be far less varied and exciting.

These organizations have generously helped us cover travel costs and provide reading fees for guest artists, attending the DaPoPo Live-In, including Guillermo Verdecchia (2012), Sky Gilbert (2014), Sharon Pollock, (2015) and Haley McGee (2015).

Guest artist Guillermo Verdecchia reading The Art of Building a Bunker, co-created by Guillermo Verdecchia & Adam Lazarus at the DaPoPo Live-In Festival 2015: Further to the Left. 

This year, we are again delighted to announce the support of these organizations – The Playwrights Guild of Canada, Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre, and the Canada Council for the Arts – in working together with us to bring in guests artists from across the country, as well as play readings and playwriting/development workshops for the DaPoPo Live-In Festival 2016: Working Together.

DAPOPO THEATRE is requesting NEW PLAYS for its octennial play reading series. 

The workshop turns the pages of KAMP, a new musical, book by Jamie Bradley, at the DaPoPo Live-In 2015.  

Submissions will be reviewed by a curatorial committee of DAPOPO CORE ARTISTS and presented throughout October as part of the LIVE-IN FESTIVAL 2016. Works relating to this year's theme, WORKING TOGETHER, are especially encouraged. Preference will also be given to writers able to attend their reading in October.  

High students read Insomniac Society by Stacey Lane at the DaPoPo Live-In 2015.  

We are interested in UNTRIED IDEAS: One-acts, works-in-progress, third drafts, total revisions, and detailed project descriptions (as-yet-undrafted) are welcome. DaPoPo champions style-mashing, genre-hopping, unusual perspectives, and all manner of diversity.

Kim Parkhill leads a talk-back after The Library of Missing People by Kate Cayley in collaboration with Zuppa Theatre
at the DaPoPo Live-In 2015. 

Winning submissions will be notified in SUMMER 2016. Script analysis and talkback sessions are available to interested writers.

DEADLINE: JULY 31 2016.

Please submit to dapopolivein@gmail.com as word-compatible (.doc.docx) or (if formatting/typography is non-standard) .pdf files.

Questions are also welcome.

DaPoPo's LIVE-IN FESTIVAL is a community-focused, socially-charged, month-long jamboree mostly in North-end Halifax. Venues include Theatre Nova Scotia's LIVING ROOM and multiple cultural hubs in and around Gottingen street.

Every year as the summer rolls in, we start getting excited about October. For the month of October, we bring together a troupe of local and visiting artists to work together in our play reading, workshop, performance, and special event series. We host premiere readings of new works; offer skill-development workshops; present workshop performances; facilitate panel discussions; create pop-up community hubs.

2015 Live-In panelists Kathryn MacLellan, Sharon Pollock, and Tessa Mendel. (Not pictured: Juanita Peters, Lee-Anne Poole, and facilitator Colleen MacIsaac.) 

This year, we are working together once more to provide challenging programming, unique opportunities, and creative spaces. The Live-In Festival seeks to remain an affordable platform for professional development and creative exploration.

2015 Live-In guest artist Haley McGee in rehearsal for a workshop performance of I Am Doing This For You. 

We invite you to be part of the process, join us on our amazing art journey, and build at least some of your life around the Live-In Festival 2016.

From Steve Cloutier's Live-In 2015 illustrated lecture on the plays of Clifford Odets: (from left) Kyle Gillis, Kim Parkhill, Ira Henderson, Jeff O'Hara, Andrew Chandler, Maggie Hammel, Daniel Gervais, and Garry Williams in O'Regan Hall.