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Williams, Alan

Playwright, actor, Alan Williams was born in England and immigrated to Canada in 1983. He is perhaps best known for his infamous Cockroach Trilogy, three monologues first presented with England's Hull Truck Theatre which he brought to Canada as part of the Toronto International Theatre Festival in 1980. The monologues, entitled "The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati," "The Return of the Cockroach" and "The Cockroach Has Landed," were adapted for film and released in 1996 under the title, The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati, produced and directed by Michael McNamara. Playing the role of the “Captain,” a burnt-out British relic of the counterculture 1960s, Williams ponders the effects of one generation's fixation on rock-and-roll, from the initial euphoria to the subsequent confusion as the true believers come to realize that world peace may not come about as the direct result of a psychedelic song by The Ultimate Spinach. En route to madness, the Captain engages in tirades on hero worship, drugs, hallucinations, rebellion, personal integrity and nuclear madness.

The Cockroach Trilogy is published in the anthology entitled Solo, edited by Jason Sherman.

Williams’ other plays include Mean Streaks for which he received the Most Promising Playwright Award, and The King of America Trilogy, which earned him the Pierre Trudeau Award for the best one-person show. He wrote, directed and starred in The Duke of Nothing and appeared with Linda Griffiths in the film adaptation of The Darling Family in a role he originated for the stage.

His many TV credits include an episode of ITV's popular crime series Wycliffe (1994), and two episodes of Rome (2007). His film credits include the role of the husband in Vera Drake (2004).

Last updated 2015-11-24

Williams, Bill

Lighting designer for over forty years, with 600 credits including for theatre, expositions, World Fairs and Olympic Games across Canada and internationally.

Bill Williams trained at the Lester Polakov Studio and Forum of Stage Design in New York and at the New York Institute of Photography.

He also consults, teaches, writes and works as a photographer. He is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada.

Among his stage credits are works for the Banff Centre for the Arts, Belfry Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Neptune Theatre, Persephone Theatre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Shaw Festival, Theatre Calgary, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Network, Theatre New Brunswick, Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Vancouver Playhouse, Young People's Theatre, and for many other lively arts companies.

His free e-book, A History of Light and Lighting is available on-line.

Last updated 2022-03-08

Williams, Kenneth T.

Cree playwright from the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan. He is the first Indigenous writer to earn an M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of Alberta. He then worked for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Saskatoon as a reporter for six-and-a-half years.

His early plays include: Suicide Notes; AWOL: Aboriginals Without Official Leave; and Three Little Birds (Workshop West Theatre 2009, directed by Vinetta Strombergs and starring Tantoo Cardinal). He has also written an adaptation for Indigenous youth of Are We There Yet?, a touring participatory play by Jane Heather.

In Thunderstick (Persephone Theatre/Theatre Network 2010), two antithetical cousins, one an out-of-control alcoholic journalist, the other a highly controlled photographer, chase down a potentially hot political story, while battling each other over their past and present traumas. In Bannock Republic (Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company and Persephone Theatre (2010), the cousins Jacob and Isaac Thunderchild are reunited ten years after the mayhem of Thunderstick, when a beautiful and vengeful third-party manager brings chaos into their lives. Jacob is working as a video journalist and barely clinging to his sobriety. Isaac is now chief of their reserve and trying to get the band out of debt. Both plays are published by Scirocco Drama.

His play, Gordon Winter was workshopped at the 2009 Weesageechak Begins to Dance Festival at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto, and premiered at Persephone Theatre, Saskatoon in October 2010, directed by Del Surjik, with set design by Jim Guedo, and featuring Gordon Tootoosis in his last role before his death in July 2011. It subsequently played at the Arts Court Theatre in Ottawa, in May 2011 as part of the National Arts Centre Prairie Scene celebration of Manitoba and Saskatchewan arts and culture. Loosely based on the life of David Ahenakew (former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations whose anti-Semitic statements occasioned controversy in 2002), the protagonist, Gordon Winter is an RCMP hero, a lifelong champion of First Nations’ rights, a residential school survivor, and a bigot who clings to entrenched prejudices.

Café Daughter is a one-woman show inspired by the life of Dr. (and Senator) Lillian E. Quan Dyck, whose father was Chinese, and mother was Cree. She grew up in rural Saskatchewan cut off from her connections with her Indigenous heritage. As Williams explains: "This is a story about Canada. It’s a story about family. The Chinese Immigration Act and the Indian acts were designed to break families. They were designed to fracture families. The story of this play is about how a new family was formed because of these pieces of legislation. Lillian’s parents would not have met if the Chinese Immigration Act didn’t exist." Café Daughter was produced by Gwaandak Theatre in 2011 and 2013, and toured to Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto, Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay, MT Space in Kitchener, and the Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver (dir. Yvette Nolan with PJ Prudat as Yvette). The Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company (now GTNC) production starred Rose Kristin Friday (April 19-28, 2013). Café Daughter was produced by Workshop West Theatre in association with Alberta Aboriginal Performing Arts in November 2015, with Tiffany Ayalik as Yvette. In June 2018, the play was performed in Belgrade, Serbia at the Festival of Mime and Monodrama, with the Workshop West cast and crew, and took home two festival prizes: the Golden Medallion as the best of the festival, and the Audience Jury award to Tiffany Ayalik for her portrayal of Yvette Wong. The play is published by Scirocco.

In October, 2020, his play, The Herd was slated for a world premiere at Tarragon Theatre in association with the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic that closed theatres across Canada and around the world, the production was cancelled, but was streamed on-line in an "acoustic" format (dir. Kevin Loring). The Herd premiered at the Citadel Theatre in April, 2022 (dir. Tara Beagan). Twin white bison calves are born in a herd owned by a First Nation on Treaty 4 Territory. The event creates both hope and controversy about the calves’ spiritual, commercial and scientific significance.

In his plays, Williams creates interrogative scenarios from the fraught circumstances of Indigenous history, while portraying possibilities for positive change.

From 2016-17, he was Interim Artistic Director of Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre in Saskatoon (formerly Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company), where he worked "to stay true to the legacy put forth by Gordon Tootoosis," and work with young artists in the development of their craft. (Theatre statement).

He is currently an Associate Professor in the Drama Department at the University of Alberta. For the final year BFA students, he wrote Deserters, a violent portrait of an Orwellian dystopia, in which different socio-political groups in a continuous state of warfare torture and murder each other, affording the cast of six women and six men an opportunity to exercise their training in physical combat.

He was presented with a Saskatchewan Arts Award for Artistic Excellence in October, 2017.

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University

Last updated 2026-04-06

Williams, Nigel Shawn

Widely respected and acclaimed actor and director, graduated with a BFA from the School of Dramatic Art, University of Windsor. Nigel Shawn Williams is currently based in Toronto Ontario. He has persuasively played a wide range of roles in major Canadian theatres.

Williams has appeared in Belle (Factory Theatre); Two Words for Snow (Volcano Theatre); Dying is Easy, A Guide to Mourning by Eugene Stickland, as Salieri in Amadeus (Alberta Theatre Projects); Angels in America Part I, and Democracy by John Murrell (Manitoba Theatre Centre); Macbeth (Young People’s Theatre); The Wars of the Roses Trilogy (Canadian Stage); Wade in the Water by George Elroy Boyd (Black Theatre Workshop at Centaur Theatre); Love’s Labour’s Lost (National Arts Centre); Girl in the Goldfish Bowl by Morris Panych (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Consecrated Ground by George Elroy Boyd (Obsidian Theatre Company); The Overwhelming (Studio 180 at Berkeley Street Theatre, 2010); Cruel and Tender by British playwright Martin Crimp, dir. Atom Egoyan (Canadian Stage, 2012); and The Virgin Trial by Kate Hennig, dir. Glynis Leyshon (Alberta Theatre Productions 2018).

At the Stratford Festival, Williams has performed in Guente Ovejuna; Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears (2006); The Odyssey by Derek Walcott, dir. Peter Hinton (2007); Palmer Park by Joanna McClelland Glass (2008); Treasure Island; Twelfth Night; Our Town.

For the Shaw Festival he has performed in The Millionairess, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Rashomon, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, The Petrified Forest, and The Six of Calais. For the 2011 season, he played Lincoln in Topdog/Underdog, and Morrell in Candida.

He has won three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for his performances in the Canadian Stage production of Six Degrees of Separation; in Volcano Theatre’s production of Two Words for Snow; and in the Shaw/Obsidian Theatre production of Topdog/Underdog.

Of his role as Odysseus in The Odyssey, Richard Ouzounian wrote: “Williams has been a tower of strength throughout as Odysseus, but now he offers us the full extent of his wounded soul. The effect is shattering. By the time he delivers the final line of the text, ‘Monsters, we make them ourselves,’ the intent of both Walcott and Hinton's vision becomes clear.” (Toronto Star, 10 Aug 2007)

Williams has also performed in film and television, including a recurring role in the Disney series The Famous Jett Jackson.

More recently, he has directed in a wide range of productions in theatres across Canada, including an acclaimed production of A Line in the Sand by Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef at Factory Theatre in March 2016. In 2017 he directed Art at the Grand Theatre London, The Merchant of Venice at Bard on the Beach, and a production for Cahoots Theatre. In 2018, he directed To Kill a Mockingbird at Stratford as a memory play, disrupting the entrenched film interpretation of the characters. For the 2019 season at Stratford, he directed Othello.

He teaches and directs the graduating class at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University

Last updated 2022-03-08

Williams, Norman

Playwright, born in 1924. His plays won the Ottawa Little Theatre prize in 1953, 1954 and 1955. The settings were variously Hollywood, the Deep South, ancient China, present-day Japan and Alexander's Macedonia.

Six of his one-act plays were published under the title, Worlds Apart (Copp Clark, 1956): “The Night of the Storm,” “The King Decides,” “The Mountain,” “A Battle of Wits,” “Dreams,” and “Protest. ” The last was also published in Curtain Rising: Seven One Act Plays (Longman Green 1958). “Don’t Touch That Phone” and “Take to the Trees” were published by Playwrights Press in 1972.

Herbert Whittaker wrote in his Preface to Worlds Apart that "his talent is not imitative...Williams' plays stand the real test of any play - which is performance... Here is a fresh and imaginative writer."

Profile by Malcolm Page

Last updated 2022-03-09