Coleen Shirin MacPherson - Writer, Director & Actor
Photo: David Leyes
Coleen is an international theatre artist, playwright and director based in Toronto. She trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and is the artistic director of Open Heart Surgery Theatre , a female-led physical theatre company that creates new devised work that is poetic, relevant and experimental. She has been making theatre since 2014, an as a half Parsi-Indian, Irish-Canadian theatre maker, her work often engages with ideas of cross-cultural collaboration, bending borders and aims to speak to the current moment. Her play First Draft (Camden People’s Theatre, Mimetic Festival, London, UK) had a multilingual version produced in Cairo, Egypt at Falaki Theater with StudioZat. Most notably was her company’s play, This Is Why We Live had their U.S. premiere at La MaMa’s Experimental Theater as part of their 58 th Season with rave reviews. http://www.openheartsurgerytheatre.com/press
She has toured internationally and has worked with companies across Canada, in the UK, Northern Ireland, Spain and France. Her play, Erased, a film-play was developed across borders during quarantine (La MaMa, NYC and Angell Gallery, Toronto); she was Assistant Director to Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu for Trout Stanley by Claudia Dey (Factory Theatre) She is currently Creator in Residence at Cahoots Theatre (Toronto); was recently part of the Bedrock Creators Initiative with Factory Theatre (Toronto) and has been developing an audio-fiction podcast - a sonic theatre - called Wild Women with playwright, Martha Ross (Digital Now and Digital Originals, Canada Council for the Arts /CBC). She is also currently developing her play, Erased, a new work in co-production with Theatre Passe Muraille and supported by York University (premiere 2024). Coleen has taught Playwriting at The University of Toronto, Brock University, Sheridan College and Hairpin Arts and was Assistant Director at the Stratford Festival for Antoni Cimolino's Richard III in the 2022 season and is currently the Metcalf Intern in Directing at the Stratford Festival. She is developing a play, Searching for Aimait focusing on the complexities of her mixed race identity and Remnants, a play that recently had a workshop at Factory Theatre led by Mitchell Cushman (Outside the March). Coleen is part of the Post-Modernists Experimental Theatre Troupe with Modern Times Theatre. Coleen recently won the Ken McDougall Award for Emerging Directors and earned an OFFIE nomination (London, UK) through VOILA! Europe for her play, This Is Why We Live.
