PETER HINTON - Bio

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Director, playwright and dramaturge Peter Hinton has been an integral part of the Canadian theatre landscape for over twenty years.  In November 2005, he took the helm as Artistic Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where he recently announced his second season. During his tenure as Associate Artist of the Stratford Festival of Canada, his trilogy of three full length plays entitled The Swanne premiered to great critical and audience acclaim.  Mr. Hinton has written the librettos to two operas with composer Peter Hannan, and has a number of published critical essays to his credit.  He is also a respected teacher.

Recent directorial projects include the hugely successful Odyssey at the Stratford Festival, A Doll House at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal, Into The Woods, The Duchess of Malfi and Mr. Hinton’s own play, Fanny Kemble, all at The Stratford Festival of Canada, and the world premieres of Allen Cole’s The Wrong Son and Marie Clements’ Copper Thunderbird at the National Arts Centre. 

In the coming months, Mr. Hinton will direct Macbeth and The Way of the World at the National Arts Centre.  In September 2007, Mr. Hinton welcomed to the NAC, Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, with whom the NAC English Theatre proudly coproduced the world premiere of Margaret Atwood’s adaptation of her book The Penelopiad.  This collaboration marked the first artistic collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and a Canadian theatre company and played to sold out audiences in Ottawa.

In the Fall of 2007, Mr. Hinton will direct The Ark, an intensive three-week workshop where some of Canada’s finest actors, students of the National Theatre School in Montreal, historians, dramaturges, scholars and theatre practitioners come together in a unique exercise to explore the work of a given period, with a view to developing work for later production at the NAC.

June 2007