Morris Panych has stage directed over a hundred professional stage productions, operas, and original works in Canada and the U.S. including Art, Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, Sweeney Todd, Flight, Susannah, The Barber of Seville, Macbeth, and The Overcoat. He spent twelve seasons as stage director with Shaw Festival in Canada, directing productions such as Sweet Charity, Doctor’s Dilemma, and You Never Can Tell. He spent three seasons as stage director at Stratford Festival in Canada, directing productions of his original works, such as Frankenstein Revived, Moby Dick, The Trespassers, and Wanderlust. Panych has also directed television, directing CBC’s DaVinci’s Inquest and the TV movie, The Overcoat, which was a finalist for the Prix Italia award.
Panych is the writer of forty stage plays, including adaptations of Ibsen’s Ghosts, Feydeau’s L’Hôtel du libre échange, Gogol’s The Overcoat, and original works including Vigil (which has been produced seventy-five times, and has been translated into twenty-five languages), 7 Stories, The Ends of the Earth, Earshot, and The Dishwashers.
Panych is a fourteen-time recipient of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award in writing, acting, and directing, a four-time recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore Award in writing and directing, twice-recipient of the Governor General Literary Award – Drama for The Ends of the Earth (1994), and Girl in the Goldfish Bowl (2004), and is was awarded Honourary Lifetime Member status for the Playwrights Guild of Canada (2017).
