Nolan, Yvette, 1961- : Born in 1961 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to an Algonquin (Anishinaabe) mother and an Irish father, Canadian playwright, dramaturge, director, actor and educator Yvette Nolan was raised in Winnipeg, where she graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1997. Early in her career, she worked in various capacities at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and later with several Canadian theatre companies, including Agassiz Theatre in Winnipeg; Popular Theatre Alliance of Manitoba; Manitoba Theatre Centre; Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse, Yukon; Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry; Eastern Front Theatre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; and Native Earth Performing Arts (NEPA) in Toronto, Ontario.
In 1990, Nolan's first play, Blade, premiered at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, and it was remounted in subsequent years. She went on to write such acclaimed plays as Job's Wife and Video (both produced in 1992 and published in 1995); A Marginal Man (1994); Child (first produced in 1994); Annie Mae's Movement (1996); Ham and the Ram (2011); The Unplugging (directed by Nina Le Aquino in 2015, produced by NEPA and presented at Factory Theatre), for which Nolan won the Jessie Richardson Award for new script in 2013; the opera librettos Hilda Blake (1999) and Shanawdithit (2018), Tapestry Opera, Toronto, performed in 2019); and the radio play Owen. She has also adapted repertory classics by Aristophanes and Shakespeare. Her plays have been produced in theatres across Canada.
In 1996, Nolan was the first-ever writer-in-residence at Brandon University in Manitoba, where she wrote the first drafts of Annie Mae's Movement (later produced in 2001 by NEPA). She has since been writer-in-residence at other academic institutions such as Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta (2009); the University of Regina in Saskatchewan (2011); McGill University in Montréal, Quebec (2018, Department of English); and at cultural and artistic institutions including the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario (2007-08), and the Saskatoon Library in Saskatchewan (2011).
Nolan has also directed and ensured dramaturgy for many plays written by Indigenous playwrights, such as Philip Adams, Drew Hayden Taylor (Girl Who Loved Her Horses, Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Toronto, 2004), Marie Clements (The Unnatural and Accidental Women, NEPA, 2004; Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, NEPA, 2011), Melanie J. Murray (A Very Polite Genocide, NEPA, 2008), and Kenneth T. Williams (In Care, Gordon Tootoosis Nīkānīwin Theatre, Saskatoon, 2016; Café Daughter, Gwaandak Theatre, Whitehorse, 2017); and she directed The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga at the Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, British Columbia, in 2009.
Nolan was President of the Playwrights Guild of Canada (formerly the Playwrights Union of Canada) from 1998 to 2001, Managing Artistic Director of NEPA from 2003 to 2011, and Artistic Associate at Signal Theatre in Toronto. She was also co-director of the 2017 dance opera Bearing, presented at Toronto's Luminato Festival. She has been President of the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, and has served on the boards of the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance and the Saskatchewan Association of Theatre Professionals.
Nolan has written and edited several publications pertaining to Indigenous theatre and culture. These include Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour (Playwrights Canada Press, 1996); Refractions: Solo, with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard (Playwrights Canada Press, 2014); Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture (Playwrights Canada Press, 2015); and Performing Indigeneity, with Ric Knowles (Playwrights Canada Press, 2016).
Nolan has received numerous distinctions in recognition of her work and career, including the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising New Writer (1995); the James Buller Award for Playwrighting from the Centre for Indigenous Theatre (1997); the Maggie Bassett Award for service to the theatre community (2007); the City of Toronto's Aboriginal Affairs Award (2008); the George Luscombe Award for mentorship in professional theatre (2011); the Bob Couchman Award for direction (2011); the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script (2013, for The Unplugging); and the Mallory Gilbert Leadership Award (2014). She was also awarded an Honorary Lifetime Membership by the Canadian Association of Theatre Research in 2017. Yvette Nolan currently teaches playwriting at the University of Saskatchewan.
