Taylor Marie Graham (she/her) is an award winning playwright, librettist, director, theatre researcher, and educator. She lives and works in Cambridge, Ontario, on Treaty 3, Haldimand Tract, the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Both her creative and scholarly work often explores rural feminist identities, the decolonization of bodies in space, and relationships to land/environment. Her plays and operas have been described as, “arresting and funny” (Lynn Slotkin), “an uncommonly cool theatrical experience” (MoT), “charmingly twisted” (Toronto Star), “searingly written” (Bill Mandel) and “profound, beautifully crafted . . . one of the most exciting new Canadian plays I’ve seen in a long time” (Hoile). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently completing a doctoral degree in English/Theatre at the University of Guelph. She also loves working with students as a sessional English and theatre professor at various institutions in South Western Ontario.
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LATEST EVENTS & UPDATES
Frog Song is a joyful, funny, and thoughtful new children’s opera about facing your inner fears and discovering your inner song. Navdeep and Wyatt, two Canadian pre-teens who seem different in every possible way, are paired together for a fairytale inspired singing competition at the magical Camp Songbird. They have one secret thing in common though: both Navdeep and Wyatt are having the most mysterious dreams starring an ominous wall of singing frogs! With help from the other entertaining campers and their dramatic singing director Jay, these two must find a way to work together to defeat the wall of frogs and sing their truth for all to hear.
Frog Song is Taylor’s latest opera collaboration with composer William Rowson. Their first opera together The Virgin Charlie was nominated for a Dora Award! They are very excited to share this wild new work for children July and August 2023 at Here For Now in Stratford, Ontario.
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It’s midnight in St. Jacob’s, Ontario, and two local teenagers are breaking into an old abandoned factory. Will both of them make it out alive? Corporate Finch is Taylor’s latest play. This one act thriller was one of three winners of Flush Ink’s 22 hour writing contest. Catch it Summer 2023 at the Toronto Fringe, Here For Now Theatre, & Fringe North.
Taylor is a member of the Canadian Association of Theatre Research Working Group and helped develop a teach-in on fostering Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education. Specifically, Taylor ran a session focused on new play creation.
Fall 2022, Taylor taught the class Reviewing Performance at Western University. Intermission Magazine published a collective review written by the class focused on Grand Ghosts by Trina Davies at the Grand Theatre in London.
Taylor shared a fifteen minute excerpt of her play-in-progress Burn of Lyth at Draft 17.4 alongside some incredible other writers. Check out this lineup! This reading was supported by the Canada Council funded Playwrights Guild of Canada Playwright Reading Program.
Burn of Lyth was first developed on an international playwright residency at the Lyth Arts Centre in Caithness, Scotland where Taylor spent July 2022. The play’s development is supported by the Waterloo Regional Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.
Read Taylor’s review of Buffoon by Anosh Irani published by Canadian Literature, September 2022.
June 2022, Taylor read from her critically acclaimed play Post Alice at Tjarnarbio Theatre in Reykjavik, Iceland. This reading was supported by the Playwrights Guild of Canada Reading Program.
Also while in Iceland, Taylor shared a theatre research paper at the International Federation of Theatre Research Conference: Shifting Centres, The Middle of Nowhere.
TAYLOR MARIE GRAHAM 