Sketches
Sample of sketches written by Jana for CAUTION: May Contain Nuts season 5
2020 AMPIA nominated for Best Screenwriter (Drama Under 30 minutes) & Best Musical, Comedy, Variety Program or Series
Plays
Read excerpts Jana’s plays, and send rights requests via New Play Exchange.
Photo by Mat Busby, featuring Rachel Bowron and Andrew MacDonald-Smith
Going, Going, Gone!
Sterling Award Nomination - Outstanding New Play (2018)
An elegant whirlwind of misunderstandings and misdirected luggage, set in 1930s Boston and New York, and featuring an affable antiques dealer whose earnest quest for a pair of prize candlesticks is complicated by his having one fiancee more than is perhaps ideal. A screwbelle comedy!
Premier production by Teatro la Quindicina: “Going, Going, Gone!, a sparkly, appealingly warm-hearted new 30s-style screwball by sketch and improv comedy star Jana O’Connor.” - Liz Nicholls, 12thNight.ca
Photo by Epic Photography, featuring Graham Mothersill
CTRL-ALT-DEL
(Theatre for Young Audiences - Jr/Sr High)
Sterling Award Nomination - Outstanding Achievement in Theatre for Young Audiences (2019)
CTRL-ALT-DEL is an emotionally-charged new play exploring cyber bullying through the eyes of 3 teens set in the theatrical world of a carnival side show. Led by a ringmaster who may or may not be the Internet himself, the play, which was commissioned by Concrete Theatre, explores issues of online safety, sexuality and sexual coercion and personal responsibility and care.
Photo by Epic Photography
Ntara Curry, Farren Timoteo, Ming Na
The Early Bloomer
(Theatre for Young Audiences - K to 6)
Commissioned by Concrete Theatre, with support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts
Follow Maisy Daisy and her best buds in their hilarious adventures in the 5th Row of the Garden Plot, as Maisy faces the embarrassing and exciting challenges of growing up a little sooner than her pals. In spite of a couple of "bad seeds" in the school, with the help of kind but forgetful Principal Gardener, her parents and her fellow daisies, Maisy figures out how to stand tall, be proud and discover a new found be-leaf in herself! Oh yeah, and make the tumbling team!
Curriculum Ties: English Language Arts; Health and Life Skills: coping with change and transition, personal health, puberty, body image, relationships, responsibility, respect and caring, inclusive behaviors.
Photo by Laura O’Connor
Mike Peng, Colin Matty, Belinda Cornish
The Lonely Hearts
Winner of the Alberta Playwriting Competition, Discovery Prize (2007)
Sterling Award Nomination - Outstanding New Fringe Work (2013)
Inspired by the nefarious antics of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, The Lonely Hearts is set in the midst of the media circus that surrounded their 1949 trial.
The pair were dubbed “The Lonely Hearts Killers” for their propensity to lure unsuspecting women to their death through a Lonely Hearts newspaper column. When the public learned of their dastardly deeds, Martha was pilloried far more for her mass than for the murders that she committed.
A sordid tale of lust, murder, and betrayal—truly bizarre and bizarrely true!
Read Liz Nicholls' Edmonton Journal review of The Lonely Hearts - 2013 Fringe Festival Production
Commissions
Jana has worked with Evergreen Theatre in Calgary since 2010, creating custom science-based Theatre for Young Audiences shows built around fairy tales.
The shows have enjoyed multiple successful tours of Alberta schools.
Goldie Locks and the Three Polar Bears
The Three Little Pigs and BB Wolfe
The Wicked Witch of the Wetlands