Ashlie Corcoran – Artistic Producer
Originally from White Rock, British Columbia, Ashlie is a co-founder and co-artistic producer of Theatre Smash. For Theatre Smash, she has directed Abi Morgan’s Tiny Dynamite, the company’s Dora-nominated inaugural production, the staged reading of Lukas Bärfuss’s The Bus, co-produced by Theatre Smash and the Goethe Institute, Layne Coleman’s Tijuana Cure and Graeme Gillis’s A Boy Called Newfoundland. In addition, Ashlie produced Theatre Smash’s second mainstage production Norway.Today.
A former Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio intern director, Ashlie directed the COC’s production of William Walton’s The Bear and the school tour of Cinderella (original production and remount). She has apprentice directed Ring Cycle, Faust and La Traviata and assistant directed Tosca, Don Giovanni, Fidelio and Idomeneo at the COC, as well as assistant directed in the UK for Opera North’s production of Romeo et Juliette and Der Fliegende Holländer at Städtische Bühnen Münster.
Ashlie was one of the Shaw Festival Director Interns for the 2009 season. At Shaw, Ashlie directed Seán O’Casey’s Bedtime Story and assistant directed Brief Encounters (directed by Jackie Maxell) and Albertine in Five Times (directed by Micheline Chevrier).
Other directing credits include: Short Story Long, Toronto Fringe Festival (invited to Best of the Fest Berkeley and Uptown); The Secret Garden & The Jungle Book, Resurgence Theatre; Tijuana Cure for Summerworks Festival; Luminato Festival’s opera concert Luna; A Boy Called Newfoundland, Gateway Theatre; Electronic City, Goethe-Institut; The Futures Market, The Wrecking Ball; Plighted Troths, Foundry Theatre; Be Kind to Mimes, Alumnae Theatre; The Play About the Baby at the Battersea Arts Centre; Moo, Beyond Chutleigh Productions; Sad, Lion & Haunted, Driftwood Theatre Company; Jabberwocky, Studio 102; Heart’s Desire & The Lesson, Queen’s Drama. She has worked as an assistant director at Tarragon Theatre (No Great Mischief, assisting Richard Rose), the Shaw Festival (Afterplay, assisting Daryl Cloran), and Theatre by the Bay (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, assisting Daryl Cloran and Mark Wilson).
Ashlie began her training at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Degree in Drama. She received a Master’s Degree in Directing, awarded with distinction, from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. These studies were funded through a British Foreign & Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholarship.
Other awards/grants Ashlie has received include: Theatre Ontario Professional Theatre Training Program Grant, Herstmonceux Castle International Study Centre Award and the Queen’s University Lorne Greene Award (given to a graduating student for excellence in theatre practice). Ashlie is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, participated in a Goethe-Insititut / International Theatre Institute’s directing residency at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, took part in Nightwood’s Penelopiad Lab and was a member of Canadian Stage’s BASH! 2010 program.
Ashlie is currently the recipient of the Urjo Kareda Residency Grant at Tarragon Theatre, where she is focusing on Artistic Direction.