New Play Actor Training 2025

Rose is an award winning writer and actor. She recently starred in the premiere of her own play, Mad Madge, produced by Nightwood Theatre with Video Cabaret. Her musical, After the Rain, co-written with Suzy Wilde will premiere this season at Tarragon Theatre co-produced with the Musical Stage Company. Notable acting credits include: the title character in Wildwoman (Soulpepper Theatre), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (Canadian Stage), Juliet in Romeo & Juliet (Citadel), and Kate in Taming of the Shrew (SLSF). She is currently developing a new play with Crows Theatre and new television shows with Cameron Pictures and Circle Blue Entertainment. She was a writer on season six of Hudson & Rex and is an alumna of the Canadian Film Centre, where she now teaches. 

Keith Barker is a Métis artist from Northwestern Ontario. Keith is the director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program at the Stratford Festival, and the former Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto.
In 2023, Keith was a recipient of the Johanna Metcalf Prize, in 2020 he received a Dora Mavor Award for Outstanding New Play and the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt Award. Keith was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in 2018 for his play, This Is How We Got Here. He received a Saskatchewan and Area Theatre Award for Achievement in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change. Keith returned to the stage in 2023, playing Louis Riel in France Koncan's Women of the Furtrade for the Stratford Festival. Other acting credits include Richard Hannay in Bruce County Playhouse's The 39 Steps, Cornwall in the National Arts Centre's Production of King Lear, Roger Hughes in Seeds, and Bernard Smoke in Fury at the Blyth Festival.
 

Born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, and raised in Northern Ontario, Colleen Murphy won the 2016 and 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for English Language Drama for her plays Pig Girl and The December Man / L'homme de décembre respectively. Both plays were also awarded a Carol Bolt Award. Other plays include The Breathing Hole (shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Carol Bolt Award), The Society For The Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius, I Hope My Heart Burns First, Armstrong's War, The Goodnight Bird, The Piper, and Beating Heart Cadaver, which was shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award. She is also a librettist - Fantasma for composer lan Cusson, My Mouth On Your Heart for composer August Murphy-King, and Oksana G. for composer Aaron Gervais - and is an award-winning filmmaker. She has been Writer-in-Residence at seven universities and Playwright-in-Residence at two Canadian theatres as well as at Finborough Theatre in the UK. She is a member of the Order of Canada. 

Erin Shields is a Canadian playwright best known for radical adaptations of classical texts which bring neglected female characters centre stage. Her additional text for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at The Stratford Festival gives a voice to silenced Hero at the climax of the play. Queen Goneril, which premiered at Soulpepper Theatre in rep with King Lear, centres Lear’s stifled daughters as they contend for power in a world that insists they remain powerless. Erin’s illuminating and hilarious adaptation of Paradise Lost (Stratford Festival), won the Quebec Writers Federation Prize for Playwriting. And her harrowing tragedy about sexual violence, If We Were Birds, won the Governor General’s Award for playwriting. Other plays include: Jane Eyre (Citadel Theatre), Piaf/Dietrich (Mirvish Productions/Segal Centre), Beautiful Man (Factory Theatre), The Lady from the Sea (The Shaw Festival), The Millennial Malcontent and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre) and Instant (Geordie Theatre). Upcoming: Ransacking Troy (Stratford Festival). Erin’s plays are published by Playwrights Canada Press and you can read more about upcoming projects on her website.

Anusree is a Governor General’s Award-nominated and four-time Dora Award-winning writer, actor, and director.

For theatre, Anusree’s plays include: Through the Eyes of God, Sisters, Trident Moon, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, Sultans of the Street, Brothel # 9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, and Pyaasa. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, the RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Carol Bolt Award and the Siminovitch Protégé Prize. She was the 2018 finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (the largest and oldest playwriting prize for women writing for English-speaking theatre). Currently, she is the commissioned playwright at Tarragon Theatre, writing her new play, 147, 8th Street. Anusree is presently developing a feature film inspired by her audio play, Sisters, as well as directing and premiering her short films, The Birthday Party and God’s Plan (winner of Best Performance & Best Editing at WIFF). She is also an adjunct professor of playwriting at the University of Toronto and a professor of creative writing, teaching advanced drama to MFA students, at the University of British Columbia.

Anusree's playwright residencies include: Nightwood Theatre, Young People's Theatre, Factory Theatre, The Blyth Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille, The Canadian Stage Company and Tarragon Theatre. Anusree spent two seasons as an actor at the Stratford Festival of Canada. She holds a B.A. from York University and an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and most of her plays have been published by Playwrights Canada Press. 
 

Kat is an award-winning playwright, director, screenwriter, and served as the Artistic Director of Theatre Brouhaha in Toronto. Her plays have been performed across Canada and internationally. As a writer/director she has staged nineteen of her original plays in the last decade, including most recently, the world premiere of WILDWOMAN at Soulpepper Theatre. Awards include the Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding New Play, the Austin Film Festival Award for Best Fiction Podcast, the Summerworks Spotlight Award and the Best of Fringe Award. She has written for Kim’s Convenience, Good Question Media, Limetown (Podcast), Film Coop and Little Engine, and she is developing a handful of feature films and television shows with eOne, Gunn Films, TJ Content and the Donaldson Company. She is a graduate of Queen’s University and the Canadian Film Centre.