Talia Pura
Playwright
Talia Pura is a stage and film writer, actor, director, designer and producer, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her plays, films and aerial dance performances have been seen around the world. She has shared her brand of devised theatre through workshops in many countries and has published numerous plays, two drama teaching resource books and co-written two books of monologues. Talia has twice represented Canada at the Woman Playwrights International Conference (WPIC), in Cape Town and Stockholm. In 2010, she was part of the Canadian Armed Forces war artists program and traveled to Afghanistan as research for several plays and screenplays. She is the artistic director of Blue Raven Theatre.
Highlights
I have written over 30 plays, including Emily, a commission from Emily Lindin of the UnSult Project, Perfect Love, premiered by Blue Raven Theatre in Santa Fe, in 2018 and Lovers of the Enlightenment: Emilie & Voltaire. I have seen most of my plays produced, several published and held a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio drama commission. As well, I have performed many of my solo dramas, including La Femme Shakespeare, in Santa Fe, NM, Monterey, CA, Confessions of an Art School Model, in New York City, Minneapolis, Toronto and Winnipeg. I performed This I Have Believed, at the Women Playwrights International Conference (WPIC) in Cape Town, 2015, and again at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, in NYC in 2019. In 2010, I was the first playwright chosen to participate in the Canadian Forces Artists Program, traveling with Canadian Forces troupes to Afghanistan. Based on this experience, I wrote several plays and screenplays, including a full-length drama, Cry After Midnight, which was read at the WPIC in Stockholm, 2012, The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, 2013, and published by the University of Michigan journal in 2014. Ten O’clock also came out of this experience, and was produced by the Santa Fe Playhouse Theatre in 2016, and received a reading at the Performers’ Arts Lodge in Vancouver, in 2012. My play, A Friend for Life, was included in an anthology, Long Story Short with the Playwrights Canada Press in 2016, and my monologue, The Strawberry Confession, was included in a collection with Heinemann Publishing. The play, Paul and Ruth, was included in a/crosssections: NEW MANITOBA WRITING. My adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written for a large cast, has been a favourite of high school drama groups, as has On Point, the story of young journalists for a college newspaper who get caught up in college politics. I have contributed to the 365 Women a Year: A Playwriting Project, with plays based on the lives of famous women, from Mata Hari, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich, to women who should be more famous, like Harriet Bosse and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. My book, STAGES: Creative Ideas For Teaching Drama was published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc., in 2002, with a revised 2nd edition in 2013, along with a follow-up book, CUES: Theatre Training and Projects from Classroom to Stage. I co-wrote 75 New Monologues Kids Will Love! and 101 Awesome Monologues for Twenty-somethings, with Joyce Storey.