Emily Paterson (21) is a Toronto-based jack of all trades. She’s a playwright, director, producer, and actor who just staged Theatre Passe Muraille’s season opener while still a uni student (with a cast and crew of mostly fellow uni students, I might add).
Emily was born in Bolton, Ontario, and talks about it like it was Oklahoma in 1906 despite being a 30-minute drive from Canada’s Wonderland. Still, one can imagine Emily in childhood, daughter of a chemist and a stay-at-home father, an only child, make-believing she was Laura Ingalls on the prairie. That version of Emily grew up and attended Mayfield Secondary School for Drama, then eventually U of T for English and Drama as a double major.
For most of her time at U of T, Emily has been a frequent performer in campus theatre, a recurring player on the U of T Improv team, and part of the Triple En-Genre Comedy show. I met Emily in both our second years of uni. We were fast friends, bonded by mandatory lectures, brisk walks across campus, and our shared 6–9 pm playwriting class. It was in that class that Emily wrote the beginnings of Butch/Femme, a scene study that, less than a year later won the President’s Award for Best Production at the Hart House Drama Festival.
Through Butch/Femme, Emily explores both the joys and anxieties central to her own lesbian identity, and concepts universal to coming of age while queer. Her work, like her friendship, is affirming and radical.
-Written by Salma Qureshi Wennekers, friend and Stage Manager
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Which ’hood are you in?
I live near the University of Toronto in a crumbling student apartment with 3 of my best friends and our cat named Dr. Pepper.
What do you do?
I am a writer and theatre artist! Mostly, I am a playwright; however, I also write poetry and creative non-fiction for campus journals. I am really interested in dramaturgical research and like to apply my niche research interests to my playwriting. I often explore themes of complex relationships, femininity, and sapphic love in my work—no matter the medium I am working within.
What are you currently working on?
Currently, I have just produced my debut play, Butch/Femme, at Theatre Passe Muraille. I began writing this play in my second-year playwriting course, and now two years later, I have brought it to the professional stage! This past winter, I produced it at the Hart House Drama Festival, where it was awarded the President’s Award for Best Production. From there, it was picked up by TPM to be produced as their season opener!
Now that the bulk of my work for Butch/Femme is done, I am turning my focus to my dramaturgical research study I am conducting this year at the University of Toronto. I am going to be studying the intersections of literature and drama and examining how and why theatre is depicted in non-dramatic forms. I am also planning on going back to playwriting projects I set aside to do Butch/Femme, so hopefully I will have new theatre developing in the next year or so!
Where can we find your work?
You can find my writing in various journals on the U of T campus, specifically the Mnerva Literary Journal. My next project will be dramaturging U of T’s production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller this November.
