Tara Beagan wins 2025 Governor General’s Award for drama
iPhoto caption: Headshot by Andy Moro.
The Canada Council for the Arts has announced Tara Beagan’s Rise, Red River as the recipient of the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for drama. Published by Playwrights Canada Press, the multilingual play connects environmental devastation with the intergenerational impacts of colonial violence.
Set in a future marked by drought and devastation, Rise, Red River follows a woman searching the dry bed of a once-mighty river for her loved ones, while an ancestor watches from nearby. Told in Anishinaabemowin, English, and French, the play links the treatment of the Earth to the treatment of Indigenous peoples.
Commissioned by then-Prairie Theatre Exchange artistic director Thomas Morgan Jones, the play began as a response to a prompt about climate change. Drawing inspiration from Drag the Red — a volunteer group in Treaty One Territory that searches the Red River of the North for missing persons — Beagan later expanded it into an exploration of environmental and colonial violence, framing it as a story of reclamation and survival.
The drama peer assessment committee consisted of playwrights Kanika Ambrose, Sharon King-Campbell, and Bruce McKay. In a press release, they called Rise, Red River an “evocative, empowering reclamation of space, voices, families, and stories,” as well as “creative, original, important, and impressive.”
Beagan’s win marks a milestone in the history of the Governor General’s Awards: her play The Ministry of Grace was also shortlisted in the same category this year, making her the first playwright with two drama nominations in one cycle. She will receive a prize of $25,000.
Rise, Red River premiered in Winnipeg in March 2024 through a collaboration between ARTICLE 11, Prairie Theatre Exchange, and Théâtre Cercle Molière.
The script of Rise, Red River is available through Playwrights Canada Press. More information is available here.
Playwrights Canada Press is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Krystal Abrigo
Krystal is Intermission's Publishing and Editorial Coordinator. A Scarborough-based writer of Philippine and Egyptian descent, she graduated cum laude with an Honours BA in Professional Writing from York University, specializing in Book Publishing and Corporate/Organizational Communication. She enjoys reading bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin. At any given moment, you can probably find her at a concert or on a long walk somewhere in Toronto.
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