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Winter, Jack

CTE photo
Jack Winter

Playwright and dramaturge Jack Winter was born in Moose Jaw, and raised in Montreal. He attended McGill University and the University of Toronto, and worked as a playwright and a teacher in Toronto. He has held university teaching positions in English dramatic literature, modern theatre, and creative writing at Collège Militaire Royal de St. Jean, University of Toronto, York University, Atkinson College, University of Prince Edward Island, Concordia University, University of Bristol.

During the 1960's and 70's he collaborated as resident playwright and dramaturge with George Luscombe at Toronto Workshop Productions/TWP , in collective creations and politicized docudramas. These include: Hey Rube! - an acrobatic, backstage look at circus life and the company's first group creation, staged in 1961, and revived several times, most recently in 1983; And They'll Make Peace (1962); Before Compiegne (1963); The Mechanic(1964); The Death of Woyzeck (1965); The Golem of Venice (1967); Mr. Pickwick (1972); and Letters from the Earth (1973). Ten Lost Years (1974), developed with musician Cedric Smith from Barry Broadfoot's oral history of the Depression, was one of the most successful plays in Canadian theatre history, playing for three months in Toronto, and touring across Canada for another three months before returning to Toronto for a second run. In 1976 it toured in Europe, and was revived in 1981 for a three-month run. You Can't Get Here From There (1975) is a critical documentary analysis of Canadian foreign policy during the 1973 Chilean coup. Winter's last play for TWP was Summer Seventy-Six (1976).

On freelance commissions he wrote, produced and directed Party Day (1969), which inaugurated the Studio Theatre of the National Arts Centre ; The Centre (1971) for the Ontario Housing Corporation; Waiting (1972) for the Department of Manpower and Immigration; and Family Matters (1988) for Concordia University.

He has written more than two dozen radio and television plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His cinema films include Selling Out (1972), which won an Etrog and was nominated for an Oscar.

As a dramatist his awards and prizes include: the Toronto Telegram Theatre Award for the "Best New Canadian Play" (1963/64); the Canada Council Senior Arts Fellowship (1965); the Canadian Film Award for the "Best Documentary Film" (1972); the Academy Award nomination for the "Best Short Subject" (Hollywood, California, 1973); the Chalmers Award (Toronto, 1974); the Ontario Arts Council Senior Writer's Award (1975); the C. Day Lewis Fellowship of the Greater London Arts Association (London, England, 1978/79); the Visiting Writer's Fellowship of the Eastern Arts Association (Suffolk, England, 1979/80); The Arts Council of Great Britain Creative Writing Fellowship (1980/81; 1981/82).

His manuscripts, correspondence, and personal papers are purchased by McMaster University where they are installed in the William Ready Division of the Archives and Research Collections at the Mills Memorial Library.

In 1978 he moved to England where he continues to write for stage, radio, television and cinema production, and extensively for publication.

Submitted by Jack Winter.

photograph taken by Stanley Fefferman.

Additional information from Alan Filewod and Diane Bessai, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre, eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1989.

Last updated 2009-09-15