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Nearly a decade after she began writing for the stage, a Windsor-born playwright and actress is now in the national spotlight.

Rose Napoli received the Playwrights Guild Comedy Award for her latest work, Innocents, which has yet to make its stage debut.

This honor is part of the Tom Hendry Awards, presented by the Playwrights Guild of Canada to celebrate the best of Canadian playwrights and theater makers.

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“I’m thrilled and honored,” Napoli told the Star. She began her journey in the Windsor theater scene and is currently based in Toronto.

“We have an incredible list of playwrights and theater makers in this country who have inspired me to do what I do. To be recognized and celebrated among and by them is something of a dream.

Naples play Innocents explores a puzzling case of children passed out in an art gallery. What follows is an unlikely duo of security agents determined to solve the case.

Drawing inspiration from real events, Napoli was working at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2012 when a similar incident made headlines, inspiring his stage play.

“A lot of my work starts with something true, and then I stretch the rubber band until I turn it into something almost unrecognizable dramatic,” she said.

“I’m always investigating something that is, at heart, quite substantial, but through a comedic lens. I would call myself a tragic comedian. All of my plays tackle a fairly serious topic in one way or another through the lens of comedy, but they always have an undercurrent of substance and truth.

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The playwright said it took her seven years before she felt Innocents was ready to take the stage. The next step, she added, is to program the piece.

“Innocents is for me a kind of marker of my journey as a writer,” Napoli said. “I started writing this piece when I was still figuring it out. Looking back on the different versions and iterations of this piece, I can see a writer in the process of understanding his voice and figuring out how to do the thing.

Her theater journey began while earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater at the University of Windsor. During this period, she participated in numerous productions on the University Players stage.

Since then, she has worked as both an actress and writer of six plays, including Lo, which was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play. Its musical adaptation of Mavis Gallant, Sister Carrettewas also nominated for Outstanding New Musical.

His new musical, After the Rain, will debut next year at the Tarragon Theater from May 27 to June 22.

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