Ellen Chorley is a playwright, producer, performer and arts educator
Ellen Chorley | photos by Marielle TerHart
ABOUT
Ellen Chorley is an Edmonton-based playwright, producer, performer and arts educator. She is the current Festival Director of Nextfest, Edmonton’s annual emerging arts festival, and the Academy Director of the Theatre Network Summer Academy.
Ellen believes that arts education is vital to the development of young people and she is passionate about using the medium of theatre to create community and belonging. With a strong thread of feminism and body positivity woven through her work, Ellen endevours to be a voice for encouragement and empowerment for young artists and audiences alike.
As a playwright, Ellen has had her plays produced all over Canada. Most recently her play “Everybody Loves Robbie” was commissioned by Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta and received its world premiere in January 2020. “Everybody Loves Robbie” was nominated for multiple Sterling Awards including an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award Outstanding New Play and received for the 2021 Alberta Literary Awards/ Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama.
In 2006, Ellen founded Promise Productions, an independent theatre for young audiences company that has produced plays in theatres, libraries, gymnasiums and under a bridge in the Edmonton river valley. For Promise, Ellen has written over twenty-five new plays for children and teens including the Sterling nominated “The Fairy Catcher’s Companion,” “Princess Confidential” and “Birdie on the Wrong Bus” and the multiple Sterling award winning “Murielle” which she co- created and co-produced with Blarney Productions. Ellen has also toured Edmonton Public Libraries with her two educational plays “The Poorest Travelling Chautauqua in the Canadian Prairies” and “The Sky is Falling!” as part of their summer reading program.
Ellen has been commissioned to create plays by Calgary’s Heritage Park, Centre Stage Calgary, GP Productions, three plays for Mob Hit Productions “Bridezilla,” “Good Girls Don’t” and “Emma Burden,” as well as three plays for Calgary’s Evergreen Theatre: “Lost,” “Fever Pitch” and “The Legend of Four.”
Ellen has also had the pleasure of working with a number of Edmonton and Calgary schools to create original plays for students to perform, including “The Albright Pact” (Central Memorial HS Calgary), “Highlands at One Hundred” (Eastglen HS Edmonton), “How We Got Here” (Edmonton Catholic Schools 100 Year Gala), “Wildwood” and “The World’s Circus” (both for Vernon Barford Junior High Edmonton) and “Hockey Night in Glenora” (Glenora Elementary School Edmonton) and “Pranksters” (Victoria School Edmonton). She has also taught playwrighting workshops for many schools in Edmonton including Victoria School for the Arts, Ross Sheppard High School, McNally High School, Eastglen High School, and adjudicated high school one act play festivals at the school, city and zone level.
In 2010, Ellen co-founded Send in the Girls Burlesque, Edmonton’s award winning burlesque theatre company which combines traditional scripted theatre with the art form of burlesque to examine women in history through a modern day satirical lens. For SITG, Ellen has written and performed in every production the company has created including “A Bronte Burlesque,” “Bust ‘Em Up Burlesque” “Soiled Doves: A Burlesque With Boots On” “Take It Off Broadway” “Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls” and the Sterling nominated “Tudor Queens: A Burlesque,” “Shakespeare’s Sirens” and “With Glowing Hearts.”
Ellen is a graduate of the MacEwan Theatre Arts program and has performed all over Alberta as a TYA and musical theatre performer, actor and burlesque dancer. Most recently, Ellen starred in a one-woman play by Linda Wood-Edwards called Trail and Error, which she was nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Performance of by an Actor.
Ellen teaches acting and playwrighting to ages 8-18 with Foote Theatre School at the Citadel Theatre and is the Box Office / Patron Services Manager for Northern Light Theatre. Ellen was named one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2013 and received the Nextfest Emerging Artist Award in 2011. In her spare time, Ellen collects copies of the novel “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, she currently has 106 copies.
Please click here to see Ellen’s full CV.
Ellen is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Ellen Chorley | photos by dbphotographics.ca