The\u00a0Manitoba Association of Playwrights\u00a0has\u00a0named\u00a0the\u00a0best\u00a0locally-created\u00a0theatre piece of this year’s\u00a0Winnipeg Fringe Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Happy Valley,\u00a0written by and starring\u00a0Winnipeg theatre creator and disruptor\u00a0Debbie Patterson, was\u00a0named\u00a0the\u00a02026 winner of the\u00a0Harry S.\u00a0Rintoul\u00a0Award\u00a0at the festival\u2019s conclusion on Sunday night.\u00a0The award\u00a0is\u00a0presented\u00a0annually\u00a0by the association\u00a0to the\u00a0best\u00a0new Manitoba-made\u00a0theatre piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source: Winnipeg Fringe Festival.<\/p>\n
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Disability meets derision\u00a0<\/p>\n
A solo stand-up-oriented show,\u00a0Happy Valley\u00a0featured Patterson telling her family story based in her hometown in northwestern Ontario which is widely considered to be one of the most polluted places on Earth\u00a0due to mining operations. Patterson uses her trademark unabashed and caustic humour to share how mining practices and pollution impacted people in that community, including her.<\/p>\n
“It’s a play about our bodies and the earth\u00a0and disability and reconciliation,” Patterson said in an interview with Classic 107 earlier this month. “These are the things I love to talk about and things that I feel really intersect in really interesting ways.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The play marks one of the first projects in a new chapter for Patterson. Earlier this summer, the erstwhile performer and creator announced that she would be stepping down as artistic director of\u00a0Sick + Twisted Theatre, the Winnipeg company creating space for performers of all abilities that she had led for over a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n
Spotlighting local\u00a0talent\u00a0<\/p>\n
Happy Valley\u00a0was chosen out of a field of\u00a0six local works that were presented over the past two weeks. The nominees this year included\u00a0Kevin Reid’s\u00a0Unzipping the Cat,\u00a0Sonya Ballantyne’s\u00a0How Bono\u00a0Saved My Life (Three Times),\u00a0Logan Stefanson’s\u00a0The Ghost of a Flea, and\u00a0Dead Chef\u00a0by brothers\u00a0Cuinn and Connor Joseph,\u00a0Ian\u00a0Ingram\u00a0and\u00a0Monique Gauthier.<\/p>\n
The poster for ‘Our Father’ at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. (Source: Winnipeg Fringe Festival)<\/p>\n
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In addition to naming the winner, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights named\u00a0Ethan Stark’s\u00a0Our Father\u00a0as an honourable mention. The play centres on a pair of estranged siblings who reunite to plan their father’s\u00a0funeral, and\u00a0marks the second time that Stark has received a Rintoul honourable mention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The award comes with a $750 cash prize, with $250 awarded to\u00a0the honourable mention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Manitoba Association of Playwrights\u00a0has\u00a0named\u00a0the\u00a0best\u00a0locally-created\u00a0theatre piece of this year’s\u00a0Winnipeg Fringe Festival.\u00a0 Happy Valley,\u00a0written by and starring\u00a0Winnipeg theatre creator and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":828753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-828752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}