Born in Kitimat and raised right here in Kamloops, Kim Collier is no stranger to the Kamloops Arts community. In fact, Kim is well-known in Arts communities across Canada and the United States! A graduate of Westsyde Secondary and an accomplished, award-winning director, writer, creator, actor, and teacher, Kim is a co-founder of Electric Company Theatre in Vancouver where she was the Artistic Producer for 17 years and is still a Core Artist. Kim’s work has been recognized across the country, and she has won many awards for her creative, innovative works. In addition to being the recipient of the prestigious Siminovitch Prize for Direction in 2010, she has also received 4 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, a Sterlying Award and an Ottawa Critics Award for directing, as well as numerous creation, production and innovation awards. She was the recipient of a Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, she received an Honourary Doctorate of Letters from Thompson Rivers University, and she was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award from Langara College. Kim's training has included time studying acting at the University of Victoria, performing Vaudeville at the Palace Grand Theatre in the Yukon, working with Mime Unlimited in Toronto, and graduating from Studio 58 in Vancouver as an Actor in 1994. She was also Artist in Residence at Canadian Stage, and then became head of a Masters in Directing program with York University.

Kim also has a rich history with Western Canada Theatre, both onstage and behind the curtain. You may actually remember seeing her onstage in the 1985-86 season in one of her first professional contracts; WCT’s production of Village of Idiots. Today, Kim is back at WCT directing our first show of the season, The Woman in Black!  We are thrilled to have Kim back in Kamloops, and we cannot wait to share The Woman in Black with you!

In her 2010 acceptance speech for the Siminovitch Prize for Direction, Kim explains her philosophy behind creating live theatre:

I believe that ultimately, at the bottom of it all, beneath the love of artistry, beneath my ambition, beneath the sweat and tears and worry and excitement and pressure and doubt, creating community is what my theatre work has been about. To create moments in time that will be undeniably present and shared. To engage audiences directly. To jump-start their emotional or intellectual connection to the material, to themselves and to each other. To provoke or inspire or even insist on dialogue after the show. To give the audience an incredible opportunity to feel alive. Alive because they just participated in an event they had not experienced before and which they never expected.

I believe all people need to feel this quality of being an insider, being a part of some entity larger than themselves, where there is true physical, emotional and spiritual connection to others.

For me, live performance is a rare place where we share the investigation of who we are, what we believe, and find a collective experience in an increasingly mediated world that pulls us apart and forces us into isolation. Theatre is that bottomless place of discovery where we can always find the new, the curious, the remarkable, the insight, the wisdom. It is the muse of my questing life.

The work that Kim has done in live theatre over the years has set the stage (no pun intended!) for directors and performers Canada-wide. In addition to her work with The Electric Company Theatre, Kim also helped to spearhead the creation of Progress Lab.  Progress Lab is not only home to 4 Vancouver-based theatre organizations (Boca Del Lupo, Electric Company, Neworld Theatre and Rumble Productions), it is also a collaboration-based initiative that provides accessible, low-cost creative space to workshop and develop productions, including show creation and rehearsal. It is through initiatives like Progress Lab that we see theatre thrive and grow in our communities, which then allows theatre to become more accessible to everyone.

We are honoured and thrilled to have Kim return to her hometown to bring the beautiful, mysterious Woman in Black to life. The Woman in Black runs from October 10 – 20^th, 2024 at the Sagebrush Theatre.