Terry Watada
Location Toronto 43° 39' 53.93" N, 79° 26' 45.43" W Arts Literature Poetry Theatre Person Moderator
Terry Watada is a Toronto writer with many productions and publications to his credit. His publications include Ten Thousand Views of Rain (poetry, Thistledown Press 2001), Seeing the Invisible (a children’s biography, Umbrella Press 1998), Daruma Days (short fiction, Ronsdale Press 1997), Bukkyo Tozen: a History of Buddhism in Canada (history, HpF Press 1996) and A Thousand Homes (poetry, Mercury Press 1995). His latest publications are his third collection of poems called Obon: the Festival of the Dead (Thistledown Press 2006) and his first novel, Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes, published in October 2007 by Arsenal Pulp Press. He is currently working on a sequel.
As a playwright, he has seen five of his plays receive a mainstage production, starting with Dear Wes/Love Muriel during the Earth Spirit Festival at Harbourfront in 1991. Perhaps his best known is Vincent, a play about a Toronto family dealing with a son with schizophrenia. It has been remounted several times since its premiere in 1993. Most notably, it was produced at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the first Madness and Arts World Festival in Toronto (2003). The second Madness and the Arts World Festival invited Vincent to be included in its program in Muenster, Germany, during May 2006. His other plays include Mukashi Banashi I and II (children’s plays) and Tale of a Mask. He recently expanded the play into a two-act play. The new version was successfully featured in the fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company’s Mega Potluck Play Reading Festival in June 2008.