Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Teasdale, Laura
Actor/Playwright/Director/Musician Laura Teasdale was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. There she began her professional theatre career in the first season of Festival Antigonish, before going to theatre school at Acadia University and finishing her degree at Concordia University in Montreal.
She worked as an actor in Montreal with Geordie Theatre, Centaur Theatre, Saidye Bronfman Centre, Playwrights' Workshop Montreal, National Theatre School of Canada, Clowns Gone Bad, Infinithéâtre, Mime Omnibus, Hudson Village Theatre, and Theatre Lac-Brome, to name a few. She also voiced many cartoon characters in such shows as Mega Babies, City Mouse Country Mouse, Caillou, Kitou, Belleflower Bunnies, Kid Paddle, Fred’s Head, and Gofrette.
She helped found the irreverent and hilarious women’s choir, Out of the Mouths of Babes, which was a fixture of the Montreal cabaret scene for many years.
Laura Teasdale then moved to Quebec’s Eastern Townships and there took time to concentrate on her playwriting in earnest. She wrote Honky Tonk Blue – the Night Patsy Met Hank, for Theatre Lac-Brome which has since been remounted six times and toured from the Magdalen Islands to Nova Scotia. As a playwright, her passions are historical and site specific/outdoor theatre. Her plays include Woodswalker, Home Child, and the wildly successful “Love…” dinner theatre comedy series for Knowlton Players.
In 2019 she decided to split her time between Quebec and Nova Scotia in order to be closer to her aging parents, and since then she wrote and co-wrote several plays and radio plays including Robin Hood - The Great Escape produced by Festival Antigonish in 2021, Hector the Spectre, and Pete Poirier’s Gift Exchange, and The Unreliable Narrator. She also continues to act, direct and perform as a musician.
She teaches Comedy Improv, acting and play writing for grown-ups and kids, working closely with ELAN (English Language Arts Network). In recent years she particularly enjoys artist residencies in small towns in which she creates works of theatre based on local community history, and most importantly, brings together seniors and children.
Her band Bingley and the Rogues was nominated for an ECMA (East Coast Music Awards) in 2021 for its children’s album Critical Hit.
She is currently transforming her father’s old lumber mill into an outdoor performance space.
Last updated 2022-02-28
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