Bio
Mieko Ouchi is an actor, writer, and director working in theatre and film/TV. Mieko trained at U of A’s BFA Acting Program, the Women in the Director’s Chair Program and the National Screen Institute. Film roles include Nori Sato in Global TV’s The Guard, The Orange Seed Myth and Other Lies Mothers Tell, Fear Itself, A People’s History of Canada, Trouser Accidents, For The Love of A Child, Two, Silent Cradle and the lead in Anne Wheeler’s MOW The War Between Us.
She wrote/directed the award-winning documentaries Minor Keys (NFB/CBC’s The Nature of Things), Shepherd’s Pie and Sushi (NFB), as well as shorts: Saiki: Regeneration for the Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation, Assembly, Paper Cut, By This Parting and Samurai Swing which have screened at over thirty festivals across North America and Europe. As a playwright, her plays The Red Priest (Eight Ways To Say Goodbye), The Blue Light, The Dada Play, Nisei Blue and I Am For You have been finalists for the 4 Play Series at The Old Vic in London, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award and the City of Edmonton Book Prize, and Ouchi has also been the recipient of both the Carol Bolt Award and the Enbridge Award for Established Canadian Playwright.
Ouchi is a co-founder and Artistic Director of Concrete Theatre, an Edmonton-based nationally recognized TYA Touring Company. She is currently working on a slate of new projects including Makepeace, which has received support from the Citadel Playwrights Forum, the Banff Centre and the Stratford Festival; Mariam, co-written with Syrian refugee Amena Shehab, and three commissions: Consent (Concrete Theatre), Burning Mom (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre) and The Silver Arrow: The Untold Story of Robin Hood, which will be the centrepiece of the 2018 Citadel Theatre/Banff Centre Professional Theatre Program.
Her multidisciplinary work has often explored the Japanese Canadian experience, as well as themes of history, art and politics.
