“Style is to forget all styles.”
— Jules Renard
Watson has been working as a professional writer since 2020. She has written interviews for Intermission Magazine and CBC, and works with a number of Canadian screenwriters as a developmental editor on an ongoing basis.
Her work in published under the name “Jessica Watson.”
Love is the first step: in conversation with A Wrinkle in Time’s Thomas Morgan Jones
Not every playwright has the opportunity or resources to work with a live-in assistant dramaturg. But while adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time for the Stratford Festival, Thomas Morgan Jones found his surprisingly close to home: his six-year-old son….
To train, or not to train: exploring Stratford’s Birmingham Conservatory
It’s hard to find anyone living in Canada who hasn’t at least heard of the Stratford Festival. As the largest classical repertory theatre in North America, the internationally recognized festival offers more than a dozen shows every year across four venues. But incredible staged Shakespeare productions aren’t the only artistic opportunities the festival offers. For more than twenty years, artists across the country have looked to the Birmingham Conservatory, Stratford’s artist incubator, for opportunities to develop their craft and refine their classical technique. But despite more than two decades spent training early and mid-career artists, the conservatory remains under the radar of many theatre-makers and audience-members…
“Everybody has access needs”: in conversation with Stratford Festival’s Kayla Besse
Kayla Besse has what might be described as a highly specific set of skills. She has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Guelph’s school of English and Theatre Studies. Despite the school not offering a standalone disability studies program or department, she integrated disability studies into her work in English literature and theatre, examining representations of disability in the writing and performing arts, as well as the the histories of disabled people and the degrees of autonomy they have/have not had when telling their own stories and representing themselves.