Andrew G. Cooper

March 27th is World Theatre Day and usually this is a day that's filled with celebration but this year feels very, very different. 

The times we're living in are unprecedented in my lifetime. News is coming out every day regarding the global COVID-19 pandemic and it's leaving me with whiplash. Though somehow I feel like I'm both overreacting and under-reacting to what's happening. I feel a overwhelmed but also somehow underwhelmed. Things seem so normal and yet so foreign. What does the world look like for me since the coronavirus came to Canada?

I've been working as the producer of Ghost River Theatre since January and it has been a dream job. I feel like I'm doing what I do best with a company whose aesthetic and values match my o...

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be directing the mainstage production for Jupiter Theatre's 2019/2020 season: Mockus by George M. Johnson! It's a terrific play and one that I'm so excited to be tackling again. 

I directed the world premiere of the show in 2016 with Chimera Theatre and since then the script has undergone serious changes (there's a whole new scene!) and it keeps getting better and better. I love directing and producing new works because seeing them evolve from workshops into productions is so rewarding. For this show, I'm also going to be doing the choreography and fight direction and I'm excitedto flex those muscles again. We start rehearsals at the beginning of February and the team I have right now I'm really looking f...

We made it! Not only is it the end of another year but it's the end of another decade! For the last three years I've been aiming to see over 52 plays per year and this year I really outdid myself. In 2019 I saw a whopping one hundred fifty-six plays over fifty two weeks! Most of these plays came from my time in the spring and summer spent at theatre festivals across Western Canada. This included six shows at the Festival of Animated Objects, nine at the 2019 Hydra Performing Arts Festival, eleven plays at Sage Theatre's annual IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists, and a whopping one hundred between the five fringes I attended in Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary, Victoria, and Vancouver during my summer tour with Chimera Theatre. You can read more...

I'm quite fond of this thrilling little play. I wrote Dispatch last October as I was getting in the mood for Halloween and after that's it's gone on to great success. It was a finalist in Theatre New Vintage's 2019 Play Competition and then went on to gain its first production in Ontario this past summer. After announcing that the play was shortlisted for two Short + Sweet Festivals around the world, I'm very pleased to announce that Dispatch will be receiving a production on the other side of the Pacific in Sydney, Australia early next year!

Kiana Woo, Katherine Cappellacci, Kayne Wylie in the NNPF 2019 production of Dispatch by Andrew G. Cooper. Directed by Trevor Curran. Scenic design, Ellen Brooker. Costume Design, Madeline Ius...

Theatre is, by its nature, collaborative. That's what I really love about it. It's what makes the art form so alive. When an author writes a book, there's usually only one interpretation of the text: the reader. Of course, there's input from the editors, the publishers, etc., but in the actual ingestion of the art it goes from the words that were written by the creator straight into the mind of the reader and that reader interprets the story.

With theatre it's different. A playwright writes words and then those words are interpreted by artists. A director creates the vision of the show. The designers create the world and space and texture of the play to come to life in. Actors bring the characters to life. Each of these add an interpret...

In 2018, The Grind became my first play to be produced internationally when it was performed at the 2018 Sydney Short + Sweet Festival in Sydney, Australia. That play went on to win first place in Judge's Choice and second place in People's Choice in its series in the festival and Third Place for Judge's Choice in the Wildcard Finals for the entire festival. This week, I got more excited news about these great festivals!

The Grind. Performed at Theatre New Vintage's Black Cat Cabaret in 2017. Directed by Ashley Plomp.

Today I was notified that my latest 10-minute play Dispatch (which was produced for the first time this summer at the New Market National Play Festival, in New Market, Ontario) has been shortlisted for not one but two Short + Sw...

Auditions can be a dreadful thing as a performer. It seems like nobody really likes them. Most people I talk to, whether they be actors, dancers, stage managers, or casting directors, don't like the audition process. But it doesn't seem like anyone has a better way of hiring artists for contracted theatre work (I certainly haven't thought of a better way) so here we are, season after season doing auditions the same old way. 

As a director, I actually really enjoy hosting auditions. So little of my job as an Artistic Producer is actually directing, so whenever I can flex my skills and practice my craft, even for 15 minutes at a time in an audition or callback, I'm happy.

Over the last two weeks, I held auditions for three productions I'm...

That's right friends! One Day will be my first play to reach the stages of the United States when it debuts at the Otherworlds Theatre's Paragon Festival! The play has been selected to be one of the forty shows in the festival running November 9th and 10th, 2019.

This is the fifth annual Paragon Festival, the world's largest Science Fiction and Fantasy Play Festival. And if you know anything about me...science fiction and fantasy are two of my favourite things. Having the opportunity to explore these genres (plus the supernatural and horror genres) on stage over the last few years has been incredibly rewarding. According the Otherworld's website:

"Paragon is a short-play festival dedicated to furthering Otherworld's mission of growing the gen...

After placing in the final four for New Vintage Theatre's 2019 Black Cat Cabaret Playwriting Competition this past February, my latest 10-minute play Dispatch will be receiving its world premiere this week in Newmarket, Ontario! This is the first of my plays to be produced in Ontario and I'm very excited that a new market (see what I did there?) of people are able to take in my work. 

The Newmarket National 10 Minute Play Festival was founded in 2017 and this is its third year of operation. According to their website: "Twenty-four original ten-minute plays are packaged into four “pods” of six shows playing at Newmarket's newly refurbished Old Town Hall Theatre. Plays are selected from submissions sent in from across...

I did it. 

I wrote, self-directed, and performed in a one-man show. Earlier this spring I announced that my newest show Other Deaths of the Universe would be debuting this spring (and explained why in the world I would undertake this daunting task). I wasn't sure how the project would turn out, but I survived it. It was the scariest thing I've done so far as a theatre artist and a performer but, most importantly, I learned a lot from the experience. Here's a few thoughts from the process: 

Lighting Design by Tauran Wood. Photo by Aiden Nidelet.

1. Being yourself on stage is very, very hard.
   This show was deeply personal. It was challenging as a performer not only to memorize and perform a 65 minute show by myself, b...