Sharon pollock biography
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She was granted a doctor of laws degree from Queen's University that year, and in 2003 an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Calgary.
Blood Relations is based on Lizzie Borden, acquitted in 1882 in Massachusetts of the axe murders of her father and stepmother. Both Blood Relations and Generations are more personal stories. 1936)
Playwright, actor, and director Sharon Pollock was born Mary Sharon Chalmers in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on April 19, 1936, the eldest daughter of Dr.
Everette Chalmers, physician, a version of whom is the central character in Pollock's most personal play, Doc. She was involved in theater in school and in amateur companies, ran a box office, and did considerable acting, winning best actress in the Dominion Drama Festival in 1966. In 1998 she was elected president of the Alberta Playwrights Network, and in 1999 she received the Harry and Martha Cohen Award for her contribution to Theatre Calgary.
Her first effort, A Compulsory Option, won the 1971 Alberta Playwriting Competition. Bootcamp for Writers.
In addition to her on-going theatre work, she has served as Dramaturg and Librettist with the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada from 2006 – 2015, most recently for their national touring production of Ghosts of Violence. Current projects include a new work Hotel inspired by her time with Kosovar playwright Jeton Neziraj, development of a one woman play on American political activist, journalist and novelist Agnes Smedley, and final drafting of a commissioned work.
She began writing children's plays and plays for radio and television and in 1971 wrote her first stage play, Compulsory Option. Her play Whiskey Six Cadenza, a prison drama, was shortlisted for (but did not win) the 1987 Governor General's Awards, and in January 1988 she was awarded the Canada-Australia Literary Prize.
In 1992 Sharon Pollock founded the Garry Theatre in Calgary, where she wrote and directed Saucy Jack (1993), which tells the story of Jack the Ripper from a woman's perspective, and Death in the Family (1993), where she performed a major role.
Three of Pollock's plays - Moving Pictures (1999), End Dream (2000), which she directed, and Angel's Trumpet (2001) - were premiered by the ensemble company Theatre Junction in Calgary. Toronto: Simon and Pierre, 1980: 208-20.
Zimmerman, Cynthia. In 2005 Pollock played the role of early filmmaker Nell SHIPMAN in Moving Pictures at the University of Alberta's Studio Theatre.
Sharon Pollock received an honorary doctor of letters degree in 1986 from the University of New Brunswick.
In Theatre Calgary's 1981 production of the play, Pollock played the role of Miss Lizzie. Doc is loosely based on Pollock's own family background; like her other plays, it is brutally honest, and painfully telling. One Tiger to a Hill is again based on an historical event, a 1975 hostage-taking incident at a maximum-security prison.
Toronto: Simon and Pierre, 1994: 61-97.
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“Produced nationally and internationally, author of a long and varied canon, she has had a long and illustrious career in the theatre. From backstage to onstage, from front of house to director’s chair, from actor to author, from teacher to mentor to artistic director of venues both large and small, Sharon Pollock remains an active, controversial and prolific participant in the Canadian theatre scene.” Cynthia Zimmerman, editor “Sharon Pollock Collected Works” Playwrights Canada Press.
POLLOCK, SHARON (b. 2005.Abridged Biography:
Pollock’s stage plays are produced throughout Canada and abroad. Canada’s Stratford Festival Theatre has produced three of her works, Walsh, One Tiger to a Hill and Fair Liberty’s Call at the Avon, and Tom Patterson Theatre; Blood Relations at the Shaw Festival; Doc at Toronto’s prestigious Soulpepper Theatre.
She has visited numerous academic institutions at home and abroad as a guest speaker and visiting artist (Canada, United States, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia, Hungary, Taiwan, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo) as well as participating as a keynote speaker and/or guest panelist at various international conferences and gatherings including, among others, The International Olympic Arts Fair 1988; International Conference on Literature from English Speaking Countries, London, UK 1988; P.E.N.
Fair Play, 12 Women Speak, Conversations with Canadian Playwrights. She received the 1980 "Nellie"ACTRA award for Best Radio Drama (Sweet Land of Liberty); the 1981 Golden Sheaf Award for the television film The Person's Case; and the 1982 Governor General's Award for Blood Relations, about Lizzie Borden, the acquitted axe murderer.
Sharon Pollock also has written 6 plays for children, several television and radio scripts, and award-winning dramas. Her latest play, “Blow Wind High Water”, will open Theatre Calgary 50th Anniversary 2017-18 season.
Full Biography:
Ms Pollock’s stage play have been produced by major and alternative theatres throughout the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, India, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, and Canada. She has scripted a large number of plays for Young Audiences, written for both radio and television, and led playwriting and theatre workshops and labs both inside and outside Canada.
She has received, in addition to other awards, two The Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama, (1981 Blood Relations; 1985 Doc) and was shortlisted for the same award in 1986 for Whiskey Six Cadenza. In 1987 she was the recipient of the prestigious Canada Australia Literary Award for her body of work; in 2008 the National Theatre School of Canada’s Gascon-Thomas Award; in 2012 her contribution to the arts was acknowledged with her investiture as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Her historical drama Walsh, based on the relationship between Chief Sitting Bull of the Oglala Sioux and James Walsh of the North West Mounted Police, was produced by Theatre Calgary as a major theatrical component of the 1988 Cultural Olympics held in conjunction with the 1988 Winter Olympics.