Michael MacLennan

Last updated
Michael MacLennan
Michael MacLennan 2014.jpg
MacLennan at the Bell Media Prime Time TV Program Showcase in 2014
Born
Michael Lewis MacLennan

(1968-06-05) June 5, 1968 (age 55)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Alma mater University of Victoria
Occupation(s)playwright, television writer, producer
Known for Queer as Folk , Bomb Girls
Website Official website

Michael Lewis MacLennan (born June 5, 1968) is a Canadian playwright, television writer and television producer, [1] best known as a writer and producer of television series such as Queer as Folk and Bomb Girls .

Contents

As a playwright he is a two-time nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama, and the only playwright to win the Herman Voaden Playwriting Competition twice.

Career

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, MacLennan began his career as a stage actor. [2] In his first theatre role at age 13, he was cast to play a woman, and later in his career he produced a short performance piece about his fear at the time that his parents would see the play and realize that he was gay. [3] He moved to Victoria in 1986 to study English at the University of Victoria. [4]

His first full-length play, Beat the Sunset, premiered at the Victoria Fringe Festival in 1993. [5] It was later staged in Vancouver in 1995, [6] winning MacLennan a Jessie Award for outstanding emerging playwright [7] and the Theatrum National Playwriting Competition. [8]

His second play, Leaning Over Railings, premiered in 1995. [8] His 1996 Grace won the Theatre BC National Playwriting Competition, [9] and has been produced across Canada and internationally. During this era, he also wrote a number of short one-act plays, including Wake No Clocks [10] and Come On!. [11]

He then began to study screenwriting at the Canadian Film Centre, [4] although he continued to write plays during this time. [12] He won the Herman Voaden Playwrighting Competition in 1998 for his play The Shooting Stage, [13] and in 2001 for Last Romantics. [14] Both plays were later nominated for the Governor General's Award for English drama, The Shooting Stage at the 2002 Governor General's Awards [15] and Last Romantics at the 2003 Governor General's Awards. [16]

He began his television career as writer and story editor for Sullivan Entertainment's television series Wind at My Back , Anne of Green Gables: The Animated Series and Super Rupert . [4] He then became a writer and co-executive producer on Queer as Folk, writing 14 episodes over four seasons. [17] Concurrently with the final season of Queer as Folk, he co-created and produced the Citytv dramedy series Godiva's in 2005. [18]

In 2006, he created a theatrical adaptation of Douglas Coupland's novel Life After God , [19] resulting in Coupland inviting him to write and coproduce the television series adaptation of Coupland's novel jPod . [20]

He was cocreator and executive producer of Bomb Girls , which premiered in 2011. [21]

His other credits as a writer and producer have included The Guard , Being Erica , Flashpoint , Bitten and The Fosters .

Plays

Related Research Articles

Mark Leiren-Young is a Canadian playwright, author, journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker, and performer. He lives in Saanich, British Columbia and is married to Rayne Ellycrys Benu.

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.

The Governor General's Award for English-language drama honours excellence in Canadian English-language playwriting. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry or drama was divided.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Del Shores</span> American dramatist

Delferd Lynn Shores is an American film director, television writer, producer, playwright, standup comedian, and actor. He has written, directed and produced across studio and independent film, network and cable television and Los Angeles, regional and national touring theatre. He is also known for his LGBTQ+ activism. Shores was born in Winters, TX, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor and a high school drama teacher.

Hironobu Kanagawa is a Japanese-Canadian actor and playwright based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has appeared in numerous high-profile films and television series shot in the Vancouver area, including The X-Files, Smallville, Caprica, Godzilla, The Man in the High Castle, Altered Carbon, iZombie, Legends of Tomorrow, Heroes Reborn and Kim's Convenience and was a writer on Da Vinci's City Hall. As a voice-over artist, he was the original English-language voice of Gihren Zabi in the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise and played Reed Richards in Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes.

Dennis Foon is a Canadian playwright, producer, screenwriter and novelist.

Kent Stetson, is a Canadian playwright and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tarell Alvin McCraney</span> American actor and playwright

Tarell Alvin McCraney is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He is the chair of playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hedgebrook</span> Retreat for female writers in the U.S.

Hedgebrook is a rural retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Washington, founded in 1988. Hedgebrook's artist-in-residence program accepts up to 80 writers each year, who spend two to four weeks in residence working on their diverse writing projects. Each writer stays in her own hand-crafted cottage. Room and board are provided at no cost to the writers-in-residence. The retreat is a working farm, offering organic produce for the writers, and communal dinners each night prepared by in-house chefs.

Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman is a Canadian playwright, screenwriter and actress. Her 2008 play, Scratch, was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play in 2009, was a prizewinner in the Herman Voaden Playwriting Competition, and was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2010 Governor General's Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brendan Gall</span> Canadian writer, actor and producer

Brendan Gall is a Canadian writer, actor and producer living in Toronto, Ontario.

Kevin Loring is a Canadian playwright and actor. As a playwright, he won the Governor General's Award for English-language drama, the Herman Voaden Playwriting Competition and the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script, and was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, for Where the Blood Mixes in 2009. His 2019 play, Thanks for Giving, was short-listed for the Governor General's Award for Drama. In June 2021 Kevin Loring received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Arts.

Brian Drader is a Canadian stage actor and playwright. He is best known for his plays Prok, about Alfred Kinsey and Clara McMillen, and The Fruit Machine, about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's controversial 1960s fruit machine project to identify homosexual people.

The Herman Voaden Playwriting Competition is a biennial literary award, presented by Queen's University to plays by Canadian playwrights. The award was created in 1997, funded by a bequest to the university by the late playwright Herman Voaden.

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is a Canadian playwright, theatre director, emcee, and arts administrator. She is a three-time nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama, receiving nods at the 2011 Governor General's Awards for Gas Girls, at the 2016 Governor General's Awards for A Man A Fish, and at the 2020 Governor General's Awards for Sound of the Beast.

Sunil Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright from Waterloo, Ontario. He is most noted for his play Rice Boy, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2003 Governor General's Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeremy O. Harris</span> American playwright and actor (born 1989)

Jeremy O. Harris is an American playwright, actor, and philanthropist. Harris gained prominence for his 2018 Slave Play, which received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Play. Harris is also known for his work in film and television. He produced and co-wrote the A24 film Zola (2021), for which he received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. He acted in the HBO Max series Gossip Girl (2021), the Netflix series Emily in Paris (2022), and in the film The Sweet East (2023).

Janine Nabers is an American playwright and television writer.

Janet Munsil is a Canadian playwright based in Victoria, British Columbia. She is most noted for her plays That Elusive Spark and Be Still. Munsil is also a theatre director and has served as artistic director of Intrepid Theatre and the Victoria Fringe Festival.

Charles Tidler is an American–Canadian writer. He is a poet, small press publisher, playwright, novelist and spoken jazz artist. He is most noted for his early theatrical plays Straight Ahead and Blind Dancers and his later novels Going to New Orleans and Hard Hed: The Hoosier Chapman Papers.

References

  1. ↑ "Canadians in the closet". The Globe and Mail , April 5, 2003.
  2. ↑ "Overlooked gem deserves full houses". Victoria Times-Colonist , April 17, 1994.
  3. ↑ "Coming out inside". Victoria Times-Colonist , August 6, 1995.
  4. 1 2 3 "Musing on a Queer Career". Victoria Times-Colonist , July 2, 2003.
  5. ↑ "AIDS drama one of Victorians' best ever". Victoria Times-Colonist , December 2, 1993.
  6. ↑ "Sunset is best when its colors are subtle". Vancouver Sun , May 6, 1995.
  7. ↑ "Winners waltz twice with Jessie awards". The Province , June 12, 1995.
  8. 1 2 "Cruise-ship boors inspire playwright". Victoria Times-Colonist , February 22, 1995.
  9. ↑ "Victoria playwright wins national award". Victoria Times-Colonist , September 25, 1996.
  10. ↑ "Art gallery marks AIDS Day". Victoria Times-Colonist , December 1, 1993.
  11. ↑ "Gay plays ring true for straights, too". Vancouver Sun , July 3, 1997.
  12. ↑ "Shooting Stage's young talents hit target: Ambitious, complex production is by turns funny, disturbing". Vancouver Sun , April 24, 2001.
  13. ↑ "What happens when the Shaw meets gay theatre?: The result is a Winter Fling". National Post , December 11, 1999.
  14. ↑ "Voaden playwriting winners announced". Kingston Whig-Standard , June 9, 2001.
  15. ↑ "Mistry sidelined by Canada's literati: Lesser-known writers nominated for Governor General's Literary Awards". Ottawa Citizen , October 22, 2002.
  16. ↑ "Literary award short list reveals quirky choices; Governor General picks are mostly unexpected titles Awards veteran Margaret Atwood still makes the cut". Toronto Star , October 21, 2003.
  17. ↑ "Queer fear". Victoria Times-Colonist , March 21, 2005.
  18. ↑ "CHUM makes a deal with the devil for homegrown drama". The Globe and Mail , June 2, 2004.
  19. ↑ "Changing their city from backdrop to star". The Globe and Mail , October 30, 2006.
  20. ↑ "CBC has a winner in jPod". Toronto Star , January 8, 2008.
  21. ↑ "'Making pies to making bombs'; Drama looks at lives of women during wartime". National Post , December 29, 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.