March 22, 2026
10:00 AM – 4:30 PM MT
The Gateway Theatre
8529 Gateway Boulevard
Fee: $20 – $40 (Sliding Scale)
Lunch is provided
Please register by Friday, March 20, 2026 to ensure we can meet your dietary needs.
We’re calling all writers to join The Writers’ Guild of Alberta and Workshop West in an all-day writers’ retreat to ignite your imagination and get those words flowing. Led by award-winning writer Conni Massing, you’ll explore creative prompts, and exercises to shake loose stubborn drafts, discover new ideas, and play with possibilities! Bring your poems, novels, or scripts – this playground is for everyone!
Workshop West’s signature yearly new play festival celebrates playwrights and their plays, inviting audiences to get up close and personal with the creative process. The festival features readings of plays in development with just enough sound, light, and staging to spark audiences’ imaginations.
Springboards is an exciting convergence of local and national theatre artists, with readings, talk-backs, discussions, classes, and cabarets that hot-spot the electrifying Canadian theatre of tomorrow.
About Conni Massing
Conni is an award-winning writer working in theatre, film and television. Recent stage credits includeDead Letter (Workshop West Playwrights Theatre), Fresh Hell (Shadow Theatre), Matara and The Invention of Romance, both premiered at WWPT,Oh! Christmas Tree (Roxy Performance Series), and her widely produced stage adaptations of W.O Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid and Bruce Allen Powe’s The Aberhart Summer. Conni has written several short films andworked as a screenwriter and story editor on television series such as Mentors, The Beat, North of 60, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Taking it Off, Horse Warriors, and Family Restaurant. Her published work includes seven plays and a full-length comic memoir, Roadtripping: On the Move with the Buffalo Gals. Her writing has been recognized by the Betty Mitchell Awards, the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards, Alberta Film and Television Awards, Academy of Cinema and Television, Writers Guild of Alberta, Writers Guild of Canada, and the Alberta Playwrights Network Playwriting Contest. A recipient of a Queen’s Jubilee Medal (for contributions to the arts), she was also honoured as one of 100 people who have made a contribution to Alberta theatre in the last one hundred years.
Registration for the 2026 Springboards Retreat is now full. If you would like to be notified should a spot open up, please email us at [email protected].
