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Evalyn Parry | |
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Evalyn Parry is a Canadian performance-maker, theatrical innovator and singer-songwriter. She grew up in Toronto, Ontario in the Kensington Market neighbourhood. Her music combines elements of spoken word and folk.
Evalyn Parry is the daughter of David Parry, an English-born Canadian singer and theatrical director who died in 1995, and performer and author Caroline Balderston Parry. Her brother Richard Parry performs with the bands Bell Orchestre and Arcade Fire. She is married to Canadian writer Suzanne Robertson, and currently resides on farmland outside of Kingston, Ontario.
Parry is a theatre creator, actor, director, collaborator and educator. Her plays and performances have been produced and toured nationally and internationally. From 2015 to 2020, Parry served as the artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Parry's most recent collaborative work, Kiinalik These Sharp Tools, premiered at Buddies in 2017 and was presented at the Edinburgh International Festival (2019) and Cervantino Festival, Mexico (2019), Toronto's Luminato Festival, Vancouver's PuSh Festival (2019) and the GCTC (in collaboration with the National Arts Centre) (2020). Parry and co-creator/performer Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory were awarded the 2018 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play for Kiinalik; Parry and musician/performer Cris Derksen were awarded the 2018 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Sound Design/Composition.
Parry's acclaimed show SPIN, which features a bicycle played as a musical instrument (played by percussionist Brad Hart), charts the feminist history of the bicycle, and tells the story of Annie Londonderry, first woman to ride around the world on a bike in 1895. SPIN has toured festivals and theatres all over North America including Montreal's Edgy Women Festival in 2012. [1]
Parry writes and performs with the acclaimed feminist theatre collective Independent Aunties with Anna Chatterton and Karin Randoja. The Aunties have created six shows together; their most recent production Gertrude and Alice, about the love and lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, premiered at Buddies in Bad Times in 2016. It won a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, and was nominated for two Dora Mavor Moore Awards. Gertrude and Alice was remounted in 2018 as part of Buddies’ 40th Anniversary season, the same year the play was published by Playwrights Canada Press and was a shortlisted finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2018 Governor General's Awards. [2] The Independent Aunties other productions have been produced by Buddies in Bad Times (Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine—winner of Best New Play at SummerWorks, 2002); Theatre Passe Muraille (Frances, Mathilda and Tea, The Mysterious Shorts); The Theatre Centre (Breakfast—Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination); and The Cooking Fire Festival (Robbers’ Daughters). The Aunties’ Gertrude and Alice was co-produced with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in March 2016;
Parry was appointed artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times, a queer theatre company in Toronto, in 2015, succeeding Brendan Healy. [3] Prior to becoming artistic director, Parry served as the director of the Young Creators Unit at Buddies from 2007 to 2015. She was the recipient of the 2013 km Hunter Award for Theatre and the Ken McDougall Award for Directing (2009). In 2012, she directed Buddies' production of Tawiah M'carthy's Obaaberima, which was awarded the 2013 Dora for Outstanding Production; Parry also garnered a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding Direction of a Play. Parry left buddies in Bad Times in September 2020. Prior to leaving, Parry said that she hoped the company would pursue other leadership models rather than having a traditional 'artistic director'. [4]
Steeped in the folk tradition but born to innovate, Parry's genre-blurring work is inspired by intersections of social activism, history and autobiography, exploring themes that range from 19th century cycling heroines to bottled water, from queer identity to the quest for the Northwest Passage. Her unique combination of music and spoken word has been presented at folk festivals, theatres and campuses internationally; she has released five CDs of original music (with Borealis Records and her own Outspoke Productions). Parry performs solo and with a band. She was the inaugural recipient of the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award (2003) and the Beth Ferguson Award for Upcoming Songwriter (Ottawa, 2001). Parry has performed at numerous music, poetry and Pride festivals across North America, including Hillside Festival, The Vancouver Folk Festival, North by Northeast Music and Film Conference and Festival (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), the Lincoln Center Out of Doors in New York City. Parry has also performed with the group Girls with Glasses, a quartet of female songwriters including Parry, Eve Goldberg, Allison Brown, and Karyn Ellis.
Parry is married to Suzanne Robertson. [4]
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, Buddies in Bad Times is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical expression". It's the largest and longest-running queer theatre company in the world.
The Dora Mavor Moore Awards are awards presented annually by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA), honouring theatre, dance and opera productions in Toronto. Named after Dora Mavor Moore, who helped establish Canadian professional theatre, the awards program was established on December 13, 1978, with the first awards held in 1980. Each winner receives a bronze statue made from the original by John Romano.
Rebecca Northan is a Canadian actor, improviser, theatre director, and creative artist. She is known for playing the hippie mother Diane Macleod on the CTV & The Comedy Network sitcom Alice, I Think and for her role as Jane in the independent film Adult Adoption. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary, and an alumna of the Loose Moose Theatre Company where she did her improv training with Keith Johnstone.
Mark Brownell is a Toronto-based playwright and co-artistic director of the Pea Green Theatre Group with his wife, Sue Miner.
Bruce Dow is an American actor, best known for his five featured roles on Broadway, his 12 seasons in leading roles at the Stratford Festival, his Dora Mavor Moore Awards-winning performances at Buddies in Bad Times, the world's largest and longest running LGBTQ theatre, his voicing the character of Max for Total Drama Pahkitew Island and his appearances on the Rick Mercer Report and Murdoch Mysteries. He also appeared on Corn & Peg as Captain Thunderhoof's arch enemy, the Bad Bronco. He also voices Sir Topham Hatt and Harold the Helicopter (US) in Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go.
Nightwood Theatre is Canada's oldest professional women's theatre and is based in Toronto. It was founded in 1979 by Cynthia Grant, Kim Renders, Mary Vingoe, and Maureen White and was originally a collective. Though it was not the founders' original intention, Nightwood Theatre has become known for producing feminist works. Some of Nightwood's most famous productions include This is For You, Anna (1983) and Good Night Desdemona (1988). Nightwood hosts several annual events including FemCab, the Hysteria Festival, and Groundswell Festival which features readings from participants of Nightwood's Write from the Hip playwright development program.
David Christopher Richards, best known as Christopher Richards is a Canadian playwright, theatre designer and casting director.
Waawaate Fobister (Anishinaabe) is a Canadian actor, dancer, playwright, choreographer, instructor, producer and storyteller, best known for their semi-autobiographical one-man play, Agokwe.
The Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play is an annual award celebrating achievements in Toronto theatre.
The Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Production of a Play is an annual award celebrating achievements in live Canadian theatre.
Jonathan Wilson is a Canadian actor, comedian and playwright, who is best known for his 1996 play My Own Private Oshawa. The play, a semi-autobiographical comedy about growing up gay in Oshawa, Ontario, was also optioned by Sandra Faire's SFA Productions for production as a film, which won an award at the Columbus International Film & Video Festival in 2002 until being broadcast as a television film on CTV in 2005.
Tawiah Ben M'Carthy is a Ghanaian-born Canadian actor and playwright. He is best known for his 2012 play Obaaberima, a one-man play about growing up gay in Ghana.
Joel Ivany is a Canadian stage director and artistic director of Against the Grain Theatre in Toronto, Ontario and artistic director of Edmonton Opera. He is known for directing adaptations of the Messiah, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte. Ivany is currently the program director for opera at the Banff Centre.
Cris Derksen is a two-spirit Juno Award–nominated Cree cellist from Northern Alberta, Canada. Derksen is known for her unique musical sound which blends classical music with traditional Indigenous music. Her music is often described as "electronic cello" or classical traditional fusion.
Anna Chatterton is a Canadian playwright, who was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2017 Governor General's Awards for her play Within the Glass.
Karin Randoja is a Canadian theatre director and dramaturge. A partner with Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry in the theatre collective Independent Aunties, she is most noted for her work on the play Gertrude and Alice, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play in 2016 and for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2018 Governor General's Awards.
Rose Napoli is a Canadian playwright and actor. Napoli is an alumnus of Nightwood Theatre's Write From the Hip Program where she developed her play Lo.
Daniel Krolik is a Canadian actor and playwright. He is most noted for his 2022 Toronto Fringe Festival play Gay for Pay with Blake & Clay, which he cowrote with Curtis Campbell and co-starred in with Jonathan Wilson.
Allegra Fulton is a Canadian actress, best known for Frida K, a one-woman stage show in which she portrayed artist Frida Kahlo.
Vanessa Sears is a Canadian actress and singer. She originated the role of Nicola in the Canadian premiere production of Kinky Boots, which played at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. In 2022, Sears originated the role of Anaia in the Canadian premiere production of Is God Is, for which she was nominated for a Dora Award for Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role.
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