Ensemble Bios

Jackie Maxwell, celebrated director and dramaturge, is now in her tenth season as the Shaw Festival’s Artistic Director. In 2011, Ms. Maxwell directed Lennox Robinson’s Drama at Inish and Maria Severa by Paul Sportelli and Jay Turvey. Previously for The Shaw, she directed Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and Linda Griffiths’ Age of Arousal as well as Brief Encounters – three one-act plays by Nöel Coward, The Entertainer, Mrs. Warren’s Profession and the North American premiere of The Stepmother. Her directorial work at The Shaw also includes Picnic, Candida, Merrily We Roll Along, The Three Sisters, The Coronation Voyage, Pygmalion, Rutherford and Son (which later played at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa), Gypsy, Bus Stop, Arms and The Man, and The Magic Fire. In 2007, Ms. Maxwell directed an acclaimed production of Saint Joan, which traveled to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. For the 2012 season, Ms. Maxwell will direct the musical Ragtime by Terrance McNally, Lyn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty along with William Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba.

Born and educated in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jackie Maxwell studied Drama at the University of Manchester. She acted in both Ireland and England before coming to Canada in 1978. Throughout her long and varied career in Canada, Ms. Maxwell has worked extensively as a freelance director and been instrumental in programme creation at many theatre companies. She first worked in Canada for the National Arts Centre as Assistant, then Associate Director, where she set up and ran both an Apprentice Training and New Play Development Programme. In 1982 she headed to Toronto to become Associate Director at Factory Theatre, where she later became Artistic Director (1986 to 1994). While at Factory, Ms. Maxwell created, developed and produced works by some of Canada’s most respected and vital playwrights such as George Walker, Michel Marc Bouchard, Sharon Pollock, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Michel Garneau. She also held the position of Head of New Play Development at the Charlottetown Festival (1997 to 2000) where she created a new program to foster new main stage Canadian musicals.

Of her many productions in theatres across Canada, Ms. Maxwell’s selected credits include The Weir and Dancing at Lughnasa for Canadian Stage Company; Elisa’s Skin, Motel Hélène, The Four Lives of Marie and The Memory of Water (later remounted for Mirvish Productions at the Elgin/Winter Garden) for Tarragon Theatre; Emily and Johnny Belinda for the Charlottetown Festival; The Orphan Muses and Past Perfect for Montreal’s Centaur Theatre; Susannah for Opera Ontario; Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) for London’s The Grand Theatre; A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Young People’s Theatre; Doc for Manitoba Theatre Centre; and among many for Factory Theatre, Zadie’s Shoes (also remounted for Mirvish Productions at the Elgin/Winter Garden), Stone and Ashes, Still Alive, Girls in the Gang (for which she received a Dora Award for Best Direction) and Moo. In 2008 she directed Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, her U.S. directorial debut.

Ms. Maxwell has been dramaturge and teacher for such institutions as the Banff Centre for the Arts, York University, George Brown College, Queen’s University, and especially the National Theatre School in Montreal. For eight years she was Guest Artist/Lecturer at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto. In October 2005, Ms. Maxwell was the recipient of the National Theatre School’s prestigious Gascon-Thomas Award; in June 2007, she was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities from the University of Windsor and, in 2008, she was awarded the Herbert Whittaker/Drama Bench Award, all in recognition of her exceptional achievements in Canadian theatre.