Speaking in Draft is an interview series in which Intermission staff writer Nathaniel Hanula-James speaks with some of the artistic voices shaping the Canadian performing arts today. The column invites artists to share nascent manifestoes, ask difficult questions, and throw down the gauntlet at the feet of a glorious, frustrating art form.
Although I’m a devoted theatre rat — one who’s gnawed their way into the art form from many angles — I can say with utter certainty that I’m not a director. For that reason, I’m especially awed when I meet one operating at the top of their game. As The Directors Lab: Techniques, Methods, and Conversations About All Things Theatre, edited by Evan Tsitsias, puts it: “A director creates the world of the play for the entire team, and allows them a safe space to play and explore on this playground.”
But where are the safe spaces for directors themselves to explore? Like a therapist in training, a young-in-craft director needs adequate support as they learn to support others. Beyond hard skills like staging a scene, their education should include soft skills such as conflict management.
Yet in anglophone Canada, it’s increasingly unlikely that directors will hone their craft through formal training. Relatively few post-secondary programs devoted to directing exist, and it seems to me that directing-specific mentorship programs are less common than similar initiatives for actors or playwrights.
When Intermission editorial director Karen Fricker suggested that I convene a roundtable about director training, I reached out to five very different artists on a continuum of early- to mid-career. The participants got back to me with lightning speed, and a week later we all logged onto a video call.
The conversation needed little direction on my part. In response to a few guiding questions, these generous artists leapt into dialogue with each other (the Zoom chat was popping off), in a candid conversation that lasted almost two hours.
As a dramaturg, I love judicious cuts — but I couldn’t bring myself to condense this roundtable down to a single column. Instead, it will span two installments of Speaking in Draft. Part one focuses on how each participant forged a career as a director — where their journeys diverge, and where they overlap.
Their stories have been edited for length and clarity.
Jessica Carmichael
Freelance director. Artistic director of Carousel Players in St. Catharines from 2014 to 2017. Currently associate professor of theatre at Concordia University in Montreal.
Recent productions of note: There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (2025), and Hamlet at Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park (2024).
My path to directing professionally has always been rooted in this deep love for the actor’s craft.
I began performing at age five at a daycare where I was scouted, and then I started acting professionally at 13. I wanted to be an actor, but I dabbled in directing amateur youth productions in junior high in Edmonton. I did a controversial production of Juvie by Jerome McDonough that almost got stopped by the principal!
I was still very single-minded about performance at the time. I went to the National Theatre School of Canada [in Montreal], trained as an actor there, and built a career in new play development after graduating in 2003.
The turning point for me was when I became a single mom. I recognized that living out of a suitcase was incompatible with providing stability for my daughter, so I pivoted toward my longstanding interest in text and analysis. I was accepted to the text and performance program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in the U.K., administered jointly with King’s College London.
The faculty at RADA placed me in leadership roles that built my confidence. Their encouragement led me back home to pursue an MFA in directing at the University of Alberta. My background in acting gave me a language to guide performers through complex adaptations and symbolic emotional risk.
After graduating, I went to Toronto and was drawn to Native Earth Performing Arts, where I felt that I could bring my Indigenous heritage to the forefront. Then-artistic director Tara Beagan gave me opportunities to direct: for instance, a small touring production of Yvette Nolan’s Savage.
Tara’s artistic generosity and leadership showed me how to manage creative vision and community trust, and empowered me to go after an artistic directorship at Carousel Players in St. Catharines.
Participating in Stratford’s Michael Langham Directors’ Workshop [in 2014 and 2016] was instrumental in building a career in Ontario. But ultimately, my journey has been a beautiful mix of formal training and informal, deeply human mentorship. I’ve never had a conventional apprenticeship or shadowing opportunity.
Some of my most profound learning came from conversations by the poolside at the YMCA with Peter Sellars and his assistant director Charlotte Brathwaite; or receiving emails from one of my professors in the U.K., the late Tom Hunsinger, telling me to keep going; or seeing the work of artists like Pina Bausch, Crystal Pite, Lara Kramer, Akram Khan, and Katie Mitchell.
The last person I want to cite is Paul Gélineau, a wonderful director I worked with when I was in my youth. He taught me about emotional intelligence and collaborative grace.
I still feel like I’m just beginning.
Leora Morris
Freelance director. Currently assistant professor of directing and acting at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Recent productions of note: Behind the Moon at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre (2025), A Tale of Two Cities at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre (2024), and The Sound Inside at Coal Mine Theatre (2023).
My way into directing was through new play dramaturgy. I was at George Brown Theatre School training as an actor. Brian Quirt, [the artistic director of Nightswimming Theatre], who was doing workshops at George Brown, said, ‘I think you’re something else. I think you’re a dramaturg. Do you know what that is?’ I had no idea. He created a pathway for me: a Metcalf internship with Nightswimming in new play dramaturgy, which I undertook from 2010 to 2011.
At the same time, some of my teachers at acting school were doing Fringe shows, and invited me to come [be an assistant director]. Through those mentors I ended up assisting quite a bit, and they introduced me to Jacob Zimmer, who brought me on as a dramaturg at Dancemakers when he was in residence there, from 2009 to 2010. So I was in the new play world, indie theatre world, and dramaturgy world as an assistant, while also trying to self-produce.
Soon I realized, ‘I think I’m a director, but I don’t actually have enough reps at the gym.’
I tried to get into all the MFAs in Canada, and the Neil Munro directing internship at Shaw. Everyone was like, ‘It’s too soon for you. Keep self-producing.’ So I applied to programs in the United States on the recommendation of another mentor, Sarah Garton Stanley.
America was absolutely not on my radar — but I ended up going, partially because it was free. I got into the York University MFA [a Toronto directing program currently on hiatus], and it was going to cost me more than doing an MFA at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama. I was so lucky.
I started the Yale MFA in 2013, just shy of my 30th birthday. Part of what I was seeking was a program where I would land in community, with a group of people that were just like, ‘Let’s make stuff! And make stuff and make stuff and make stuff and make stuff.’ It wasn’t really about what I was learning in class; it was about being in the marines with a bunch of people who were just hungry to make art, and fail a lot, for three years.
I left Toronto in 2013, having been everyone’s little sister and assistant. Then I built a career in the U.S. Now that I’ve moved back to Canada — I teach at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver — it’s been interesting. I [joke that] I’m still everyone’s kid sister intern here, whereas in the States, I have a very different kind of career.
Ray Hogg
Freelance director. Artistic director of the Musical Stage Company in Toronto from 2021 to 2025. Founding artistic director of Prime Mover Theatre Company. Co-founder of the Canadian Guild of Stage Directors and Choreographers (CGDC). Based in Toronto.
Recent productions of note: & Juliet at Mirvish’s Royal Alexandra Theatre as resident director (2025), A Strange Loop at Soulpepper in a co-production with the Musical Stage Company, Crow’s Theatre, and TO Live (2025).
Musicals are a patchwork quilt: some people come to them from music, some from dance, some from acting, and many dabble in all those disciplines. It’s the same at the leadership level as well.
My route started with dance. I trained as a concert dancer at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and then I worked as a professional modern dancer in Toronto. But my childhood dream was to be in the company of Cats — which happened!
After doing Cats, I wound up at Stratford as well as on faculty at George Brown in the dance program. I quietly wanted to be a director, but I had no model of what that looked like. I didn’t have an example of a Black musical theatre director, or even just a Black director, in Canada. Philip Akin was one, but at the start of my career he wasn’t yet directing that much.
I knew I could be a choreographer. I followed a very conventional path: from dancer in the chorus, to small bit parts, to dance captain, to assistant choreographer, then associate choreographer.
I was doing a production of Guys and Dolls — a remount for Drayton Entertainment — in 2010 with a man named Michael Lichtefeld: a director and choreographer of many musicals for Stratford and Broadway. Michael got called away on the second day of rehearsal with an entirely new cast. I was just the dance captain, but Michael turned to me and said, ‘Ray?’
Then he left, and didn’t come back for five days.
I directed and choreographed the remount of Guys and Dolls with about half of the new cast. When Michael came back, he said, ‘I think you’re my associate director now.’ That was the first time I thought I could be in charge of more than just tippy-tappy toes.
Over time I went from an assistant director, to an associate director, to a director-choreographer. A friend of mine asked if I’d heard of Obsidian. I said, ‘Nope. What’s that? Glass?’
It turned out Obsidian Theatre had an apprenticeship program connecting young Black artists with mentors of their choosing. I applied. They said, ‘We cannot match the scale of your vision.’ That was the first time I’ve heard that. I’ve heard it every year since.
I went and sat in the park and cried a little. A day later, Philip Akin — who was artistic director of Obsidian at the time — called me back. He said, ‘How dare we? That was a terrible answer. I got on the phone and made some calls. Jackie Maxwell, the artistic director of the Shaw Festival, will be your mentor if you’re interested.’
Was I ever.
I worked on Ragtime with Jackie in 2012. Then she asked me to stay on at Shaw, to work on Come Back, Little Sheba as her assistant director and movement director-choreographer. Now my theatre dad is Michael Lichtefeld and my theatre mom is Jackie Maxwell. Whenever I feel like I don’t know how to do anything, I call them and say, ‘Help!’
With the artists I mentor now — I call them my theatre children — I lead them through a series of questions: ‘Who are you as an artist? Where are you trying to go? What’s the artistic knot you’re trying to untie?’ I wasted about 10 years quietly wanting to be a director but not doing anything about it, until I started answering those questions.
Margot Greve
Freelance director and co-founder of the company Mixtape Projects. Based in Toronto.
Recent productions of note: CAMP! at the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival and Iris Says Goodbye at the 2025 Toronto Fringe.
It’s so great to hear all these stories, because I’m the most early-career artist in this group. I completed a four-year acting degree at TMU in 2019. In my last two years, I realized, ‘I think I’m a director.’ I met my partner, Ben Kopp, in that program: the two of us formed a writing team, and started making shows that I direct.
The first show I self-produced — funnily enough, Ray — was about a group of amateur actors putting on a production of Cats. It was called Rebecca Love, and it happened at Supermarket Bar in Kensington.
Ben and I founded Mixtape Projects, which has done three full-scale productions now, mostly debuting at Toronto Fringe. Our first musical was called Killing Time: we self-produced it at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse in 2022. From that, we managed to get a few Dora nominations, which helped me get my foot in the door for opportunities.
Strangely, those nominations might have also held me back a bit, with people thinking I was working at a higher level than I actually was — not in terms of skill or ambition, but in terms of getting those reps in, as Leora said.
We brought Killing Time to the Toronto Fringe in 2023, and it sold out and won patrons’ pick. Two years later, we came back with an interactive, randomized musical called Iris Says Goodbye, which made it into TO Live’s Best of Fringe. This past year, we debuted CAMP! — a musical about Canadian sleepaway summer camps. We did it with an entire cast of teenagers, which was a definite learning curve as a director!
From my point of view, it’s been hard to get paid opportunities to be an assistant director in Toronto. I’m always knocking down doors, but unfortunately, I’m not really in a financial position to do it for free. I will say, I’ve found a lot of success in being extremely persistent and a little bit annoying. If there’s somebody I really want to work with, I’m emailing them once every month, possibly more.
I’ve found some footing recently directing at colleges and universities. I also direct a bit on the commercial side of Toronto: events like the Candlelight Concerts and The Jury Experience: An Immersive Courtroom Case. They’re not necessarily the most artistically fulfilling projects, but they pay the bills, and for that I’m grateful.
Sophie Gee
Freelance director and artistic director of the company Nervous Hunter. Based in Montreal.
Recent productions of note: Nervous Hunter’s Bonnes Bonnes, which premiered at Théâtre Aux Écuries in 2023 and toured to Factory Theatre in April 2026; and Murmuration: A Year in Parades — co-created by Gee, designer Eo Sharp, and residents of the Verdun neighbourhood in Montreal — which took place over a full year from 2023 to 2024.
I grew up in Edmonton, like Jess, but I was in London, England for seven years. During that time, I decided I was going to take evening courses in acting. As often happens, we moved through different levels of training together and at the end we decided to form a troupe. We did a show.
One day, I woke up and thought, ‘Our next show should be The Fires Raisers by Max Frisch, and I want to direct it.’ That’s how it started.
I landed in Montreal in 2006. Once there, I think I directed two shows, one of which was an immersive piece I created inspired by the U.K.-based company Punchdrunk.
I asked friends back in Edmonton for advice, and they said that I should apply for the National Theatre School. I tried three times, and on the third try I got into their directing program. My mentors were Yaël Farber and Kelly Thornton!
Before going to NTS, I was able to do some assistant directing gigs. I hear what Margot’s saying, because all of those opportunities were unpaid. A lot of the time, you’re not given any responsibilities, either. You really have to push for it, at least in the rooms I’ve been in.
In London, I’d seen a wide range of world-class theatre, including contemporary performance and physical theatre — both of which are more precious to me than standard narrative work. It turned out that the NTS program, at the time, was focused on training people to work at Stratford and Shaw [where text is often central]. So there was a bit of friction there — though since I graduated back in 2012, the program has changed a lot.
After graduating, there weren’t a lot of opportunities. I’d say, ‘I’ll direct any reading, I’ll do this, I’ll do that.’ Five years later — in between, I had a kid — I did Black Theatre Workshop’s artist mentorship program. It turned out to be a wonderful bridge between my education and the professional world. Since then, so many more training programs have started running, at least in the Montreal anglophone scene.
In 2018 I got a residency through Conseil des arts de Montreal. I tried to make a show for the first time in French — Lévriers — because it just wasn’t happening for me in English. I had a francophone mentor: Nini Bélanger, from the company Projet MÛ. As she was watching me make the show, Nini said, ‘I think there’s another layer. This show is about success, but it’s also a story of Sophie trying to make a show in French to find success.’
The [francophone audiences] loved Lévriers. I think the [anglophone audiences] were a bit, like, ‘Uh?’ But I was invited to do a two-year residency and make a show at Théâtre Aux Écuries, Bonnes Bonnes. It’s been touring off and on for the last three years. We were just in Toronto this past April.
After the directors shared their origin stories, the back-and-forth started heating up.
Ray: I grew up in Montreal, but I don’t have the bravery to pursue French work. But I should! My husband’s French, my kids barely speak English. I live in a very parlez-vous household. We need to have a coffee, Sophie, so you can be my mentor.
Jessica: Ray, tu dois venir à Montréal ! On peut prendre un café !
Sophie: I have to say, after three hours of devising, my brain was done in French. It’s horrible on the ego, but the more you do it, the better you get.
Jessica: You can have a translator. Eda Holmes [the artistic and executive director of Montreal’s English-language Centaur Theatre] has told me that she works with a translator when she directs in French.1
Sophie: I had no idea Eda did that. I just thought her French was awesome!
Jessica: I know! And her French is awesome, but Eda said it helps, especially with exhaustion.
Ray: I’m hearing a through-line from everybody about the bravery to do your own thing and have a vision of your own, or to pragmatically think, ‘That’s where the work is, so I’m going to figure out how to express myself in that language, and what are the tools that can help me do that?’ I don’t know that post-secondary always encourages or models bravery. There, we’re bringing it back to the article!
With the focus back on me, I brought up a pattern that Morris had pointed out earlier, in the chat thread running parallel to the call: the crucial role that self-education and informal learning had played in each director’s journey. The dialogue grew even more lively, and the hot takes started flowing — but it’s time for our scheduled Equity break. We’ll be back next week with part two.
WRITTEN BY
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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