Cole Lewis
Associate Professor The Creative School School of Performance Toronto, Ontario cole.lewis@torontomu.ca
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Bio/Research
Cole Lewis (she/her) is an interdisciplinary performance, educator, and Mom. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and collaborating with technologies on the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, the design of moving im...
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Bio/Research
Cole Lewis (she/her) is an interdisciplinary performance, educator, and Mom. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and collaborating with technologies on the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, the design of moving image works, and emerging technologies. Her current focus is on developing new frameworks for emerging technologies, particularly Video Games and AI, in performance. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale School of Drama, is the Co-Artistic Director of Guilty by Association, and the current Director of the Acting Program.
Cole teaches acting, directing, and story design. She believes it is a big responsibility to set the aesthetic standard for the life of a young artist and provide the profession with dynamic and original leaders in the field. It is a responsibility she doesn’t take lightly. She empowers her students to reach their full capacity as smart, thinking, citizen-artists. Artists who are keen and empathetic observers of the world. Artists who are deeply curious about all aspects of human nature. Artists who are free from fear. Artists who make and/or perform work that is necessary today. Cole’s students have performed or directed at: Shaw Festival, Arts Club, Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, Banff Theatre, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, PuSH Festival, Theatre Centre, Crow’s Theatre. Her students can also be seen performing on Apple TV, The CW, Global TV, CBC Gem, Hallmark, and Lionsgate.
Twice-nominated for Dora Awards, nominated by Stratford Festival for the 2025 Bruntwood Playwriting Award, and named 2025 Established Artist by City of St. Catharines, Cole’s creative praxis uses humour, design, and technology, to explore notions of violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’. Select credits: Nominated for Bruntwood Playwriting Prize by Stratford Festival for her play, Untitled Nurse Project/REFUSE, seed commissioned by Stratford. Writing/Directing/Performing the Dora-nominated moving image performance of 1991 for Why Not Theatre’s RISER Projects. Adapting Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf for Geordie Theatre. Co-writing/originating the Direction of the Dora-nominated Keith Richards: The One Woman Show. Directing Canada’s largest wearable art show, STRUTT. Devising/Directing Redshift Music Society’s immersive experience Still Life Continuum at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. Directing a parade float,"The Wine King", designed by Graphic Novelist, SETH, with Niagara Artists Company.
Current projects: Cole is fine-tuning the AI, writing the text for, and performing in 2021, a live narrated video game designed for a participatory performance, accompanied by live music. 2021 is a collaborative storytelling event between performers, audience members, and AI that explores the significance of human data and the challenges of preserving dignity in death for those we fundamentally disagree with. Initially developed at Tarragon Theatre with partners at Playwrights Workshop Montreal and Brooklyn's Theatre Mitu, 2021 is under development with plans to prototype workshop performances across Canada in 2025 before premiering and undertaking an international tour in 2026. Additionally, Cole is beginning work on The Piñata Project where she teaches a robot to play piñata so she can explore notions of play and labour with community for a main space gallery exhibit TBA. Disparate, divergent, and wide-ranging, Cole’s works question received ideas about identity, violence, and systems of oppression to explore alternative futures.
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Cole teaches acting, directing, and story design. She believes it is a big responsibility to set the aesthetic standard for the life of a young artist and provide the profession with dynamic and original leaders in the field. It is a responsibility she doesn’t take lightly. She empowers her students to reach their full capacity as smart, thinking, citizen-artists. Artists who are keen and empathetic observers of the world. Artists who are deeply curious about all aspects of human nature. Artists who are free from fear. Artists who make and/or perform work that is necessary today. Cole’s students have performed or directed at: Shaw Festival, Arts Club, Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects, Banff Theatre, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, PuSH Festival, Theatre Centre, Crow’s Theatre. Her students can also be seen performing on Apple TV, The CW, Global TV, CBC Gem, Hallmark, and Lionsgate.
Twice-nominated for Dora Awards, nominated by Stratford Festival for the 2025 Bruntwood Playwriting Award, and named 2025 Established Artist by City of St. Catharines, Cole’s creative praxis uses humour, design, and technology, to explore notions of violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’. Select credits: Nominated for Bruntwood Playwriting Prize by Stratford Festival for her play, Untitled Nurse Project/REFUSE, seed commissioned by Stratford. Writing/Directing/Performing the Dora-nominated moving image performance of 1991 for Why Not Theatre’s RISER Projects. Adapting Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf for Geordie Theatre. Co-writing/originating the Direction of the Dora-nominated Keith Richards: The One Woman Show. Directing Canada’s largest wearable art show, STRUTT. Devising/Directing Redshift Music Society’s immersive experience Still Life Continuum at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. Directing a parade float,"The Wine King", designed by Graphic Novelist, SETH, with Niagara Artists Company.
Current projects: Cole is fine-tuning the AI, writing the text for, and performing in 2021, a live narrated video game designed for a participatory performance, accompanied by live music. 2021 is a collaborative storytelling event between performers, audience members, and AI that explores the significance of human data and the challenges of preserving dignity in death for those we fundamentally disagree with. Initially developed at Tarragon Theatre with partners at Playwrights Workshop Montreal and Brooklyn's Theatre Mitu, 2021 is under development with plans to prototype workshop performances across Canada in 2025 before premiering and undertaking an international tour in 2026. Additionally, Cole is beginning work on The Piñata Project where she teaches a robot to play piñata so she can explore notions of play and labour with community for a main space gallery exhibit TBA. Disparate, divergent, and wide-ranging, Cole’s works question received ideas about identity, violence, and systems of oppression to explore alternative futures.
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