Biography
Leah is a Director, Actor and Teacher. She was the Co-Founder of Theatre Columbus along with Martha Ross, (now Common Boots Theatre) in Toronto. The company created over 30 new devised plays with an excellent reputation for innovative productions of classics. Leah studied theatre at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
She also has a substantial teaching career spanning the past 35 years. Leah has been teaching Clown and Directing at U of T. She taught an intensive Clown course for Toronto Metropolitan Theatre Acting Program (formerly Ryerson) for over 20 years and worked with The Soulpepper Theatre Company for over 15 years as The Academy Liaison and Resident Artist.
Every year, Leah works for The Shoe Project, an innovative ongoing project coaching women who write and then perform their stories of immigration to Toronto.
Most recently, Leah directed Perceptual Archaeology or How to Travel Blind at Crow’s Theatre in June 2023. With Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, Leah co-directed a multimedia play, Here are the Fragments, at The Theatre Centre. Leah also performed at Soulpepper in an adaptation of Antigone, directed by Alan Dilworth and an adaptation of Animal Farm, directed by Ravi Jain.
For Theatre Columbus Leah directed most of the company’s repertoire, including the multi award-winning published play, The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine, which has been produced all over the world, including Labrador, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and Los Angeles. Leah created and played the role of Jelly in The Attic, The Pearls and 3 Fine Girls for Theatre Columbus, another published and often produced play.
She was a co-writer and director in the Chalmers Award winning play The Betrayal, as well as directing many other memorable Theatre Columbus shows, including Gynty, (an adaptation of Peer Gynt), a musical adaptation of The Barber of Seville, Doctor Dappertutto and Lonely Nights and Other Stories. Before stepping down with Martha Ross as Co-Artistic Directors of Theatre Columbus, they devised with the cast, Dance of the Red Skirts, inspired from a painting by Paul Klee, and directed And Up They Flew by Martha Ross.
Other Directing highlights
For The National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Happy Days by Samuel Beckett and The Little Years by John Mighton in a co-production with The Neptune Theatre in Halifax; Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman for Theatre Columbus/Soulpepper; John and Beatrice, by Carol Frechette, Past Perfect by Michel Tremblay and Rune Arlidge by Michael Healey at The Tarragon Theatre; The Diary of Anne Frank and The Miracle Worker at The Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People and Schoolhouse by Leanna Brodie at The Blyth Theatre Festival and I Claudia by Kristen Thomson at The Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal.