Peter Hinton
Teaching: Re-reading Shakespeare: Traditions and Innovation in understanding text
Peter Hinton is one of English Canada’s most respected directors, playwrights and educators. He has been Associate Artistic Director at Theatre Passe Muraille and the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, Artistic Director of the Playwright’s Theatre Centre in Vancouver, Dramaturg in Residence at Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal, Associate Artist at the Stratford Festival of Canada, and Artistic Director of English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre. At the NAC, he produced the first all Canadian season of new works, re-instated a national acting company, made significant and annual commitments to Indigenous work and artists and was the first director in Canada to co-produce with Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company on the world premiere of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Since 1985 he has directed over 150 productions of contemporary plays, classical texts and operas. His plays for the stage include Façade, Urban Voodoo (co-authored with Jim Millan), Fanny Kemble, Shakespeare’s Universe and a trilogy of three full length plays entitled The Swanne, commissioned and produced by The Stratford Festival. He has created adaptations and new versions of plays by Brecht, Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Dickens, Thomas Dekker, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden and Lewis Carroll, as well as adapting poems and novels for the stage by Jeanette Winterson, Sylvia Plath, TS Eliot and Edith Sitwell. He has written the librettos for two operas with composer Peter Hannan, The Diana Cantata and 120 Songs for The Marquis de Sade. As an educator he has taught at Ryerson University, York University, The University of Alberta, The National Theatre School of Canada and is currently the professional mentor for the York University/Canadian Stage MFA in stage direction. He is a multiple Dora Mavor Moore, Betty Mitchell, Jesse Richardson, MECCA, Capital Critics Award Nominee and Recipient, and in 2009 was made an officer of the Order of Canada for his national contribution to the arts. In 2012 he was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.