Automatic Pilot

Erika Ritter's Automatic Pilot won the 1980 Chalmers Canadian Play Award. It was first produced in Toronto by New Theatre at Adelaine Court, starring Fiona Reid, and went on to run through the summer of 1980 at the Bayview Playhouse. Ms. Ritter has now completed the screenplay of Automatic Pilot.

Born in Regina, Ms. Ritter's other plays include A Visitor from Charleston, The Splits, Winter 1671, and The Passing Scene. She has published a collection of essays, Urban Scrawl, and is currently hosting a new CBC Radio daytime arts magazine. Erika Ritter spent the 1985 Stratford Festival season as playwright-in-residence with The young Company.

Charles McFarlene comes to the University of Waterloo, as Artist-In-Residence, from the Stratford Festival's Young Company, where he spent the 1985 season as Assistant Director of Antigone and The Beaux' Stratagem and Co-Director of The Two Noble Kinsmen. Educated at Cambridge University, Mr. McFarlene spent two years working in stage management before moving to Toronto. He has assisted on productions at Toronto Free Theatre, Centre Stage Co. and The Stratford Festival (Seperate Tables), and spent the 1983/84 season in New York, working off-Broadway with CSC: City Stage Co. on Hamlet and The Begger's Opera. His own productions in Canada range from Sophocles, Ajax to Joe Orton's The Ruffian on The Stair and, at Theatre London, a one-man show starring Bernard Hopkins as Truman Capote. Following Automatic Pilot, Charles McFarlene directed Children of a Lesser God at the Neptune Theatre, Halifax.