Guillermo Verdecchia

Bio

Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama and fiction as well as a director, dramaturge, translator, and actor. He is the recipient of a Governor-General’s Award for Drama for his play Fronteras Americanas and a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award. His work, which includes The Art of Building a Bunker (with Adam Lazarus), the Governor-General shortlisted Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Daniel Brooks), the Seattle Times’ Footlight Award-winning Adventures of Ali & Ali (with Marcus Youssef and Camyar Chai), A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), bloom, and Another Country has been recorded, anthologized, translated into Spanish and Italian, produced in Europe and the US, and is studied in Latin America, Australia, Europe, and North America.

A former Artistic Director of Toronto’s Cahoots Theatre Projects, Guillermo is a frequently sought-after collaborator. He assisted in the development of Jovanni Sy ’s A Taste of Empire for Cahoots, and directed the production in various demonstration kitchens around Toronto. He has also served as dramaturg on Sarena Parmar’s The Orchard at the Shaw Festial and David Yee’s Governor-General’s Award nominated lady in the red dress, which was produced by fu-GEN Theatre. Now Director of New Play Development at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre, Guillermo has served as dramaturge for numerous plays and productions including Vern Theissen’s multi-award winning adaptation of Sommerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, and Anthony MacMahon’s adaptation of Animal Farm. He has translated plays by Garcia Lorca and is particularly fond of Once 5 Years Pass.

He has an M.A. from the University of Guelph where he received a Governor-General’s Gold Medal for Academic Achievement. He has published a number of scholarly articles and contributed book chapters on aspects of intercultural theatre practice in Canada, and teaches regularly at the University of Toronto.

His most recent work includes an adaptation of the 12th Century Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds, which was featured in Soulpepper’s audio program Around the World in 80 Plays. His play Our Heart Learns opens in Genoa this fall, and he is working on a new play provisionally entitled Galicia.