Sitting with his coffee at Starbucks, John Wright is looking pretty relaxed for a guy who's holding the reins to a $250,000 project.

But don't let the casual posture and easy smile mislead you. Start talking to Wright about the latest job he's taken on with City Opera Vancouver, and you'll soon discover just how passionate he is about it.

Wright is on board as workshop director for the development of a new chamber opera based on the Iraq war experiences of U.S. Marine Sgt. Christian Ellis.

The opera is coming to life thanks to a $250,000 grant from the U.S.-based Annenberg Foundation, in connection with the philanthropic multimedia group Explore.

It's a coup on many levels - not the least of which is the fact that the American foundation chose to give a major grant to a small company in Canada.

That success, Wright says, can be laid at the feet of Charles Barber, City Opera Vancouver's artistic director, who met representatives of the Annenberg foundation at a function organized by former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan last year.

"Charles Barber is a very charismatic individual, a very brilliant man," Wright says.

And, of course, there's the amount of the grant - an unheard-of sum in the Canadian arts scene. In fact, it's believed to be the largest development grant ever given out in Canada.

"This is by far the biggest development job I've undertaken," Wright says, and his eyes widen a little.

Wright lives in Burnaby with his wife, Sandra Zinc - herself a longtime Burnaby resident and Burnaby Central Secondary grad. He comes to the opera project with a lifetime's worth of arts experience.

He's now retired - to use the term loosely - from teaching at the University of British Columbia, where he spent some time as head of the department of theatre, film and creative writing. He brings to the table a master of fine arts from Stanford and an extensive background in film, music and theatre, and he's now the artistic director of Blackbird Theatre, which he co-founded in 2004.

It was his work with Blackbird that opened this latest door for Wright. Last season, Blackbird co-produced Benjamin Britten's Curlew River with City Opera Vancouver, and City Opera invited Wright on board for this year's workshop process as soon as the grant was announced.

That announcement was made Feb. 21, and Wright is already in action. He's read the outline of the libretto and is ready to start casting for the first of four two-day development workshops that will be held over the next year. (He should really get moving on that, he muses aloud, since it's already March and the first workshop is in May.)

The workshops are held to help develop both the libretto and the score for the new opera.

The first workshop will be held with actors only, looking at the libretto that's now being written by award-winning American-Iraqi playwright Heather Raffo.

The story is inspired by Ellis's real-life experiences, set against the backdrop of the controversial battle of Fallujah, where the Americans were accused of using white phosphorous and napalm. In the opera, the marine is responsible for the shooting of innocent civilians - a mother and child - and must live with the consequences.

It's not so much as political story, Wright says, as a human drama, but it certainly carries an anti-war message.

"It's not anything which glorifies combat," he says. "But it's that strange thing: in order to be a Marine, ... you have to agree to combat. That's your job. That means that you have to agree to follow orders, and you have to be as efficient as you can - and that includes being efficient at killing people."

The toll paid by the soldiers who do the killing has only recently begun to be understood, he points out.

"There are, apparently, a great many damaged psyches," he says.

That damage will be the drama that drives the opera, centring around the character of Ellis.

Wright is now looking to cast actors for the handful of characters who make up the opera: one traumatized ex-Marine, one fellow soldier, an Iraqi woman and her son, an Iraqi so-called "insurgent" and a couple of minor characters.

For the Iraqi roles, Wright says, he'll likely start his search with Neworld Theatre, an intercultural Vancouver theatre group well-known for its satirical Ali and Ali. For the others, his own deep connections to the local theatre scene will undoubtedly be useful.

The next three workshops - the final of which is scheduled for May 2012 - will require opera singers, since they'll be looking at both the libretto and the score that's now being written by B.C. composer Tobin Stokes.

Wright doesn't yet know how the roles will be voiced, but he suggests with a grin that perhaps the lead doesn't need to be played by the traditional tenor - baritones are fine people too. (Yes, you guessed it, Wright is a baritone himself, a former chorister with the Vancouver Cantata Singers - in whose ranks, incidentally, he met his wife.)

The fourth and final workshop will be open to the public, he notes.

By that time, the opera should have taken shape in something resembling its final form.

But Wright notes that his involvement, and City Opera Vancouver's, ends at the end of the development process. Who will actually stage a production of the new opera, and when and where, is another question - and another grant.

Outside of his work on the new opera project, Wright has no shortage of work to keep him busy.

Blackbird is coming off a busy season, having just staged Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with the Arts Club Theatre (it closes March 12) and a co-production of Great Expectations with Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon that was just remounted at Gateway Theatre in Richmond.

Wright is already starting work on next year's Blackbird project: Waiting for Godot.

It is, he notes, a plan that raises a lot of people's eyebrows.

"Either they yawn or they're aghast or they're absolutely thrilled," he says with a laugh. "We're aiming our production at bringing all those folks into the theatre, including those who thought they wouldn't like it."

It's a tall order, he admits, but he says it can be done.

"There's a lot of humour in the play," he says, noting there's more to delve into than just the bleak and philosophical aspects. "If you play it as a play, if you just do it, the darker things will take care of themselves."

And no, he doesn't plan to take time off anytime soon.

"I don't understand retirement at all," he says with a laugh.

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For more about City Opera Vancouver and the development grant, check out the website at www.cityoperavancouver.com and www.annenbergfoundation.org. For more about Wright and Blackbird Theatre, check out www.blackbirdtheatre.ca.