MICHAEL CLARK

Workshop West’s 4th Artistic Director is Michael Clark. He returned to Edmonton in 2006 after seven years in Whitehorse, Yukon as artistic director for Nakai Theatre.

At Nakai, he developed and produced new plays by Sally Clark, Mitch Miyagawa, Patti Flather, Dean Eyre, and Sara Graefe. He also directed The Drawer Boy, Vigil, Perfect Pie, and Snowman. Between 2002 and 2006, four of Nakai’s new plays received subsequent productions from nine “southern” theatre companies. Miyagawa’s The Plum Tree went to ATP’s playRites Festival, then five other companies. Flather’s West Edmonton Mall toured to Toronto, and his other play Where The River Meets The Sea won the 2005 National Playwriting Competition. To Nakai’s new play development work, Michael added national and international presenting, a children’s theatre festival, a cabaret, a new works festival and a comedy/arts festival with a large theatre component. The company nearly tripled in budget size, increasing its audience from under 1,000 annually to over 6,000.

A graduate of the U of Alberta’s MFA Directing program, Clark has directed in Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Whitehorse, New York, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. He’s trained and taught in Italy, New York City, and several Canadian cities at the U of A, the Café La Mama International Symposium in Spoleto, Italy, the Director’s Lab at New York’s Lincoln Centre Theatre and the Juilliard School, the Directors’ Master Class in Toronto’s World Stage Festival and the Tapestry New Opera Works directors’ intensive, also in Toronto. Clark was the Directing Intern at the Cleveland Play House.

Names Clark can drop include workshops with Peter Brook, Polly Teale, Arianne Mnouchkine, Yoshi Oida, Philleda Lloyd, Mike Alfreds, Tadeusz Bracecki, Richard Scheckner and others. He’s studied Shakespeare with John Barton, Cecily Berry, David William, Patsy Rodenberg, Robin Phillips, Michael Langham, Carl Hare and Nicholas Hytner. A 1997 John Hirsch Emerging Director Award nominee, Clark has directed over forty productions.