Marjorie Chan 陳以珏
Performance
Born in Tkaronto (Toronto) to Hong Kong immigrants, Marjorie has written for opera, theatre, radio drama and various intersections of performance and media, including collective forms. Her operas include Sanctuary Song (with composer Abigail Richardson Schulte) and M’dea Undone (with composer John Harris, also with Tapestry), The Lesson of Da Ji, and The Monkiest King (both with composer Alice Ping Yee Ho) and The Nightingale of a Thousand Songs (with composer Serouj Kradjian). Sanctuary Song, M’dea Undone and The Lesson of Da Ji received the Dora Award for Outstanding New Opera. M’dea Undone was also awarded the Broadway Entertainment Award for Best New Large Work.
Two of her plays, China Doll and Lady Sunrise, were finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her other plays include a nanking winter, The Madness of the Square, and Tales from the City, as well as co-creations The Ward (with David Buchbinder and others), The Year of the Cello (co-created with composer Njo Kong Kie) and Fare Game: Life in Toronto’s Taxis (with Ruth Madoc-Jones and Alex Williams.)
Nominated for 11 Dora Awards in acting, writing and directing categories, Marjorie is also the recipient of an Outstanding Performance Dora for TYA, as well as the K.M. Hunter Artists Award, Bra D’Or Award, as well as the George Luscombe Award for Mentorship. Currently, she is adapting the novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien into an opera with composer Tim Brady, and she is serving as a dramaturge for Madeleine Thien and Alice Ping Yee Ho’s opera CHINATOWN.
Marjorie is the Artistic Director of Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto.