Celia McBride

Photo by Bruce Barrett

Celia McBride is an award-winning playwright whose plays have been produced in Europe, the US and Canada.

She graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1995 and, having received the Fox Fellowship Award, travelled to Ireland to work with Dublin’s TEAM Educational Theatre Company and Limerick’s Island Theatre Company. In 1996, her play Choke My Heart was selected for the National Playwrights’ Conference of Ireland in Waterford, which led to a production of the play by Waterford’s Red Kettle Theatre in 1998.

In 2001, Celia was commissioned to write a one-act play for the Stratford Festival of Canada and Walk Right Up was subsequently produced during the inaugural season of the Studio Theatre at Stratford in 2002, directed by Michael Shamata.

Celia’s creative process involves directing and performing her own work. Some of her past productions include: Hitching A Ride (infinitheatre, 1998; infinite Award for Best Direction/Production); What A Cad! (Journées de la Culture, 1999; infinite Award for Best New Play); Last Stop for Miles (Centaur Theatre, 2000); Cardboard Box (Rhubarb! Festival 2001); Happy ? (Rhubarb! Festival 2002); her only customer… (Studio 303, 2001); What A Cad! (Summerworks, 2004); Snore (Nakai Comedy Fest, 2005); and The Critical Success (Homegrown Festival, 2006).

From 2001 to 2004 Celia lived in Port Hope, Ontario and worked on various theatre projects in Toronto. She was a member of the Writer’s Lab at the Factory Theatre for two and a half years and a member of the Groundswell Playwrights’ Unit at Nightwood Theatre in 2004. Her plays Will Love Hunt & Punish and Snore were produced by Theatre Columbus in 2003 during the Mayhem Festival, directed by Leah Cherniak. Snore was later produced by Looking Glass Theatre in New York City, in 2005. Looking Glass also produced her only customer… in New York in June 2007.

In the spring of 2004, Celia returned to her hometown of Whitehorse, Yukon, as Nakai Theatre’s Playwright-in-Residence. Halfway through her residency, she co-founded Sour Brides Theatre with Moira Sauer in the fall of 2004. Friends since 1998 in Montreal, Celia and Moira (who had been living in Whitehorse since 2001) put their last names together and jacked up the Yukon theatre scene, embarking on a quest to tour original theatre across the country.

The Yukon also provided Celia with the opportunity to make the leap into film. As an actor, Celia appeared in Ernie’s Earth, written and directed by Ross Burnet; the CBC mini-series Northern Town, written by Daniel Janke and directed by Gary Burns; and Artifacts, written and directed by Andrew Connors.

In November 2006, Celia wrote and produced Last Stop for Miles, a six-minute excerpt of her feature-length screenplay. The Bravo!FACT film was directed by her sister, Clara McBride, and became a 2007 festival favourite in the Yukon, screening at Cinematic Territories, an Available Light Film Festival presentation, the Dawson City International Short Film Festival and Picturing the Yukon: Yukon Films on Tour. The short film also screened at festivals across Canada and the US, including the NSI Online Festival. The feature film is presently in development.

Following the success of Last Stop for Miles, Celia wrote another screenplay called Cleo et Celine, a 16-minute drama, which the McBride Sisters co-produced in Paris, France, in 2007-8. The film premiered at the Dawson City International Film Festival and screened in the Picturing the Yukon series and at the Bayou City Inspirational Film Festival in Houston, TX.

As an extension of her work as a professional writer, performer and Certified Yoga Instructor, Celia created Inspiring Works, a business dedicated to Higher Living. Celia is devoted to bringing humour, passion and dynamism to the practice of improving how we live and how we feel. As a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator and coach, Celia encourages people to push past their self-imposed boundaries, discover tools for daily motivation and develop flexibility and awareness of mind, body and spirit. For more information please visit her website at www.celiamcbride.com