Tetsuro Shigematsu is a writer, actor, performance artist, broadcaster, stand-up comic, scholar, filmmaker, and theatre artist. Originally trained in the fine arts, he found a similar creative outlet writing for CBC Television’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Then in 2004, he became the first person-of-colour to host a daily national radio program in Canada when he took over The Roundup on CBC Radio, where he co-wrote and co-produced nearly a thousand hours of network programming. He has written and produced more than fifty pieces of radio drama as well as the feature film Yellow Fellas (2007).
As a creator conversant across a wide variety of media, Tetsuro begins by examining the subject matter and asking what form the story should take. Rather than forcing narratives into the traditional constraints of that medium, he often innovates new aesthetic forms that express with greater fidelity the contours of lived experience. His resulting pieces are often singular and groundbreaking. His most recent theatre work, Empire of the Son, sold out its run before it opened and was named the best show of 2015 by the Vancouver Sun before being remounted at The Cultch in 2016. It has been produced across Canada, including the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Centaur Theatre in Montreal, Factory Theatre in Toronto, and Festival Players of Prince Edward County in Ontario, and into the United States through National Asian American Theater Association Conference and Festival in Ashland, Oregon, and will be playing in the Atlantic Provinces, as well as the Prairies.
Tetsuro’s award-winning body of work in film, television, radio, new media, and theatre continues to be taught in Canadian and American universities as examples of creative possibility.
