Winnipeg theatre company Prairie Theatre Exchange (PTE) and the Manitoba Association of Playwrights (MAP) are welcoming a new cohort of eight playwrights to the PTE/MAP New Playwrights Unit from 2026 to 2028. 

Led by Brian Drader and Ann Hodges, the New Playwrights Unit aims to support playwrights through dramaturgy and mentorship, offering workshops, readings and peer support. Throughout the two-year program, those in the cohort will be able to develop their personal projects, attend monthly meetings together at PTE and receive access to the company’s resources. 

Winnipeg native Kinsey Hollis, a recent graduate of the National Theatre School’s playwrighting program, is one of the playwrights joining the cohort. Hollis was initially interested in acting and began a degree in acting at the University of Winnipeg. According to her, she later took a playwriting course with Brian Drader after finding she had a few credit hours to make up. 

“I found I really liked [the course], and then it was 2020 when I was supposed to graduate, and so theatre shut down,” she recalled. “To continue to be involved in theatre, I thought I would take playwriting [part two] that year online just to keep in it, keep going.”

Hollis described her writing style as being on the “grittier” side, tending to lean darker. She hopes to write a comedy one day. She said one of the main reasons she became a playwright was to write “better roles for young women,” describing a focus of her writing being “complicated, messy female characters.” This interest arose when she was trying to audition for roles. 

“I found myself drawn to roles for women who had more life under their belts, who were a bit more complicated,” she explained. “I found that the women I knew who were my age, who were in their early 20s at the time, were just as complicated and had as much experience under their belts […] but were not being given the opportunity to be that on stage. The roles that I was seeing for women my age were, ‘ingénue,’ ‘sad girl in love, ‘happy girl in love.’ And I found that kind of disappointing.” 

Hollis was aware of the New Playwrights Unit prior to applying as she knew playwrights that had been in the previous cohort. Wanting to connect with other playwrights following her graduation, she decided to apply to the program. “It’s so nice to […] be a part of a group,” she said. “Playwriting is so solitary that if you don’t have some sort of structure or format with which you can meet and work with other playwrights, it’s really easy to just be a bit of a hermit and a loner […] Now I have built-in playwright friends, which is just a treat.”

When it comes to the cohort, Hollis is most looking forward to hearing the other playwrights’ voices and getting to know them better. 

“I’m really excited to get to know my fellow playwrights and their voices and get to engage in their work at different levels of progress,” she stated. 

For more information on Prairie Theatre Exchange, visit pte.mb.ca