Mike Czuba (He/Him)

Playwright, Screenwriter and Acting Teacher

Calgary, Canada

Member Since:
February 2012

Last online:
> 2 weeks ago

Invites sent:
0

About Mike

New Book - NO SHORTCUTS, available now!! https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CLQB7WJ7

Mike Czuba is a writer with a BFA and MFA in Playwriting. Originally from Montreal, he is currently an Instructor at the University of Calgary and co-founder of the performance collective Dancing Monkey Laboratories (). His play I AM I (Original Works Publishing) has been internationally produced and multiple plays have been presented in Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Texas and Amsterdam. A scene from his play REPRISE is published in Playwrights Canada Press’ new anthology, Refractions: Scenes (2020).

Most recently he received the competitive Digital Now Grant from the Canada Council of the Arts to produce the new hybrid live/streamed work Sublimity – a love supreme (2023). In 2020 he produced an exploratory digital performance of his play Like Tom Cruise Loves Running. His TYA play BOY SEES FLYING SAUCER was awarded the international Laurie Award from The Growing Stage – The Children’s Theatre of New Jersey, with a full production in March 2018, which has now been turned into a feature screenplay and is currently being developed – His most recent play AFTER MOURNING, about Johanna Bonger, the woman who saved van Gogh’s art, has had staged readings at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, in Red Deer, Alberta, the Art Studio Inc. in Beaumont, Texas, the South Simcoe Theatre in Ontario and Her Story Theatre in Chicago.

Gender:
Male

Certifications

Photos

Videos

Like Tom Cruise Loves Running (the play)

KARL NIMENI IS NOT DEAD I KILLED KARL NIMENI

Credits

I AM I
Theater Writer Synopsis: Man #1 and Man #2 are locked in a life long struggle between wants and needs, the rational and the desired, never fully understanding that they cannot exist without each other. Man #1 wants to quietly merge into the traffic of everyday life while Man #2 wants to cut a new path through the wilderness. This battle of ideals comes to a head with the introduction of Sonya, the latest object of interest and the metaphor for all that came before. I AM I exposes the inner workings of a dark heart and an over-worked mind, shattering any idea of a fourth wall, creating a visceral, funny and painfully honest meta-theatrical journey. Cast Size: 2 Males, 1 Female
Satie et Cocteau
Drama Writer "...a truly excellent piece of theatre which deals convincingly and imaginatively with one of the most fraught love-hate relationships in modern French art. It has real depth and excellent dramatic pacing and is a work of art in itself." Robert Orledge, Composer and Satie scholar. A surreal love story between a director and an actor, a poet and a composer and the madness and purity of art. Satie et Cocteau is a play about the classical composer Erik Satie and his complex relationship with the surrealist poet Jean Cocteau. We watch as Cocteau directs an American Actor playing the role of Satie, in a play that Cocteau wrote in 1939 called ‘Soyons Vulgaires’, 14 years after the death of Satie. Cocteau, in an opium haze, directs the Actor in a series of ‘scenes’, which run the length of Satie’s life and career. We discover, in this final rehearsal, that Cocteau’s intentions are for the Actor to fully possess Satie and bring him to life so he can finally exorcise him from his life. Cocteau has been attempting to do this since Satie refused to see him on his deathbed. On a half-finished set, with live music played on two pianos stacked on top of each other and a large shadow screen reminiscent of the Chat Noir in 1920’s Paris, Cocteau and the Actor embark on a journey which the Actor describes in his opening monologue as: “What you are about to see is a re-creation of a memory of a memory of actual events.” This is a play about the reality of memories, the possession of art, and the ‘truth’ of the theatre.