A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than mere reading. Ben Jonson coined the term "playwright" and is the first person in English literature to refer to playwrights as separate from poets.
Tomson Highway is an Indigenous Canadian playwright, novelist, children's author and musician. He is best known for his plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Floyd S. Chalmers Award.
Sharon Pollock, was a Canadian playwright, actor, and director. She was Artistic Director of Theatre Calgary (1984), Theatre New Brunswick (1988–1990) and Performance Kitchen & The Garry Theatre, the latter which she herself founded in 1992. In 2007, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Pollock was one of Canada's most notable playwrights, and was a major part of the development of what is known today as Canadian Theatre.
Michel Marc Bouchard, is a Canadian playwright. He has received the Prix Journal de Montreal, Prix du Cercle des critiques de l'Outaouais, the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, and nine Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards for the Vancouver productions of Lilies and The Orphan Muses.
Kevin Kerr is a Canadian playwright, actor, director and founding member of Electric Company Theatre. From 2007 to 2010, he was Lee Playwright in Residence at University of Alberta.
Ian Ross, the son of Grace and Raymond Ross, is a Métis-Canadian playwright.
Joy Dorothy Coghill-Thorne, CM, was a Canadian actress, director, and writer. Her obituary in The Vancouver Sun described her as having had "a seven-decade run at the top of the Vancouver theatre world."
James Crerar Reaney, was a Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol." Reaney won Canada's highest literary award, the Governor General's Award, three times and received the Governor General's Awards for Poetry or Drama for both his poetry and his drama.
Judith Clare Thompson, OC is a Canadian playwright. She has twice been awarded the Governor General's Award for drama, and is the recipient of many other awards including the Order of Canada, the Walter Carsen Performing Arts Award, the Toronto Arts Award, The Epilepsy Ontario Award, The B'nai B'rith Award, the Dora, the Chalmers, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, both for Palace of the End, which premiered at Canadian Stage, and has been produced all over the world in many languages. She has received honorary doctorates from Thorneloe University and, in November 2016, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
The Arts Club Theatre Company is a Canadian professional theatre company in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded in 1958. It is the largest urban not-for-profit theatre company in the country and the largest in Western Canada, with productions taking place at the 650-seat Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage, the 440-seat Granville Island Stage, the 250-seat Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre, and on tour around the province. The company celebrated its 50th season in 2014 and produced its 600th production in 2017.
Vern Thiessen is a Canadian playwright.
Hironobu Kanagawa is a Japanese-Canadian actor and playwright based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Tracy S. Letts is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He started his career at the Steppenwolf Theatre before making his Broadway debut as a playwright for August: Osage County (2007), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. As an actor, he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2013).
Walter John Learning was a Canadian theatre director, actor, and founder of Theatre New Brunswick.
Dennis Foon is a Canadian playwright, producer, screenwriter and novelist.
Leo Alan Orenstein was a Canadian director, producer and writer who worked primarily in television and theatre. At CBC Television alone, he was director or producer in over 150 works there, many of which were adaptations of works by such authors as Chekhov, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw and Ionesco.
Hannah Moscovitch is a Canadian playwright who rose to national prominence in the 2000s. She is best known for her plays East of Berlin, This Is War, "Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story", and Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, for which she received the 2021 Governor General's Award for English-language drama.
Hélène Joy is an Australian-born Canadian actress, who is best known for her work in television series Durham County and Murdoch Mysteries.
Melissa James Gibson is a Canadian-born playwright based in New York.
Sarah Grochala is a British playwright. Her plays have been performed at the Finborough Theatre, Theatre503, Hampstead Theatre, Arcola Theatre and Soho Theatre in London. Her plays have been produced internationally by the Griffin Theatre, Sydney, Tiyatro Yan Etki Istanbul, Turkey and on the Toronto Fringe Toronto Fringe Festival, Canada. Her book on playwriting, The Contemporary Political Play, was published in 2017.
