Andrew G. Cooper

Andrew G. Cooper is a Canadian theatre creator, filmmaker, and puppeteer. They hold their Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from Thompson Rivers University and are the recipient of the Kamloops Mayor’s Emerging Artist Award as well as a nominee of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Award. He has won multiple awards for Outstanding Choreography for his work in Musical Theatre with the Academy of Dance and is the founding Artistic Managing Director of Chimera Theatre in Kamloops, BC and the founding and current Artistic Producer of Jupiter Theatre in Calgary, AB. Andrew’s artistic focus is on the creation of new works with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary art and storytelling through physical mediums such as puppetry, movement, mask, and stage combat.

 

Their stage directing credits include Epoch (Cirque Nuit), The Three Munsch-keteers (Project X Theatre), Mockus (Chimera Theatre/Jupiter Theatre), and The Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda (Thompson Rivers University). They wrote and directed One Day, The Untold Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Knights of the Sun, (Chimera Theatre), Frankenstein (Chimera Theatre/Jupiter Theatre), Crossroads, The Disordered Mind, The Witness, Padova: The Untold Story (Tranquille Tunnel Theatre), The Little Prince, and Matilda (Youth Theatre Canada). Andrew was also a co-director and co-creator of FOUR (Jupiter Theatre), a devised movement and mask creation, and Lights Out! (Kit & the Kaboodles), a TYA puppet musical. They have been fortunate to work at such incredible companies as Citadel Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, Catalyst Theatre, and Theatre: Calgary, Ghost River Theatre, BC Living Arts, and Western Canada Theatre.

 

Andrew has had the honour of training with Fight Directors Canada, Green Fools Theatre, Academie Duello, Shakescenes, Ghost River Theatre, Western Canada Theatre, Swallow-a-Bicycle, Loose Moose Theatre, and the Banff Puppet Theatre Intensive. He’s also had the pleasure of working as an assistant director with many talented professionals, including award-winning theatre directors such as Daryl Cloran, Jonathan Christenson, Stafford Arima, and James MacDonald.

 

Perseus & Andromeda, which Andrew co-created with Melissa Purcha, won the Best Design and Best of Fest awards at the 2018 Hydra Performing Arts Festival and their production of The Untold Tales of the Brothers Grimm was nominated for Best New Play and Best Comedy at the 2015 Victoria Fringe Festival. They also co-created a puppet adaptation of The Robber Bridegroom with Melissa Purcha, which toured across Western Canada to critical acclaim in 2019. Their short play The Grind won first place in Theatre New Vintage’s 10-Minute Playwriting Competition and then went on to win Third Place in the Judge’s Choice for the Wildcard Finals of the 2018 Sydney Short + Sweet Festival. Two other short plays, Dispatch and Phobia, were finalists of Theatre New Vintage’s 10-Minute Playwriting Competition in 2019 and Dispatch went on to premiere at the Newmarket National Playwriting Festival in Ontario later that year. Andrew wrote SuperZeroes and created the choreography and fight direction for its first production with Chimera Theatre in 2016. In 2021, Andrew was commissioned by Verb Theatre to write a new speculative fiction play titled Advent and Asunder.

 

Andrew’s short parody film Star Bars: A Brew Hope was produced by Kamloops Filmmaker Group in association with Mastermind Studios in 2015. They also wrote, directed, and produced The Grind, a 10-minute audio play, for Western Canada Theatre’s High-Wire Festival in 2016. He is the creator and executive producer of (exp)lore, a site-specific podcast anthology with Jupiter Theatre and Media Lab YYC, which was nominated for ten Audio Verse Awards in 2020 and three awards at the New Jersey Web Festival in 2021. Andrew wrote two episodes and directed two episodes of (exp)lore. He is currently the creator and one of the writers of a new science fantasy puppet adventure web series called Windchasers. As a performer, they debuted on television as a puppeteer on Apple TV+ with The Jim Henson Company’s Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.

 

Andrew is a lover of astronomy and animals and currently lives in Calgary, AB.