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ELLENCHORLEY@HOTMAIL.COM (780) 906-2365
Ellen has written many theatre plays that are suitable for young audiences or student actors, including:
THE FAIRY CATCHER’S COMPANION
After sisters Charlotte and Beatrice Starling are sent to live with their mean and gruff Aunt, they stumble upon an old-withered book called “The Fairy Catcher’s Companion” and meet a precocious fairy named Fusser. The Fairy Catcher’s Companion deals with themes of imagination, grief and faith. Nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Best New Work.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions, The Snow Globe Festival, Capitol Theatre Fort Edmonton, Lighting Banjo Productions
Amateur Productions: Archbishop MacDonald High School
THE PRINCESS CONFIDENTIAL TRILOGY
PRINCESS CONFIDENTIAL
PRINCESS CONFIDENTIAL: Familiar Melody
PRINCESS CONFIDENTIAL: Fortress Falls
This trilogy of lighting-paced plays pair two beloved genres together- film noir and fairy tales. It’s a dark and stormy night when a princess struck with amnesia wanders into the office of Detective Reid Simon. But the princess’s identity is the key to a complicated web of crime, dirty deals and deceit. Each play is approximately an hour long and can be produced as a stand alone play or as a trilogy. Nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Best New Work.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions, Goodger-Pink Productions
BIRDIE ON THE WRONG BUS
This home-town play is a love letter to Edmonton, told by the bright fourth grader named Birdie Reimer who takes the wrong bus home. Nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Best New Work.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE
The classic tale of “The Tortoise and the Hare” is updated from a foot race to SPACE race, as two teams of scientists compete to launch a Storyland Satellite in the atmosphere. With characters such as the Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, Mayor Hemsworth and of course Theodore Tortoise and Habitha Hawthorne-Hare, this modernized fairy tale is both educational and entertaining.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions
Amateur Productions: Foote Theatre School
MADAME MAMBELLA’S LAST DAY
Today is the day that Madame Mambella’s retires and hands the operation to Sully – that is, after her learns the ropes around the big top. A vaudevillian theatrical with two actors playing multiple characters.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions
NEVER, NEVER
Originally created as a found space play which challenged audience members to follow Wendy through the Edmonton River Valley, NEVER NEVER reimagines the last act of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan after Wendy, John and Michael ask to return home to London and fall from the sky.
Professional Productions: Promise Productions, Found Fest
Amateur Productions: Ross Sheppard High School
Ellen also has written a number of plays for adult actors/ audiences, including:
EVERYBODY LOVES ROBBIE
Chloe and Robbie find that the rules of their relationship change when the all-star high school theatre couple head to advance training at Limelight North and each begin to question their own sexuality. Nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Best New Work.
Professional Productions: Loud and Queer Cabaret, Northern Light Theatre
For more information about Everybody Loves Robbie, please click here
BIG WINNER
Roomates and underachievers Reggie and Jackson cook up a scheme to scam Timmie’s and collect the most “Try Again Soon” cups to win twenty grand during Roll Up the Rim to Win.
Professional Productions: Hope in Elle Productions
EMMA BURDEN
An intertwining fairy tale spanning generations told by an ensemble of eight actors who play multiple characters. Emma is about to be married to her love, Augustus when she finds her family is cursed. Unable to except her fate, Emma and her twin brother Will set out to break the curse and restore the natural order of the world.
Professional Productions: Mob Hit Productions
Amateur Productions: Central Memorial High School, New Vintage Theatre
Click here for Ellen’s CV and more information on her plays.
Ellen has worked with professional theatre companies, TYA companies and schools to create new plays suited to their needs of their project.
Professional Commissions: Everybody Loves Robbie (Northern Light Theatre), Bridezilla, Good Girls Don’t, Emma Burden (Mob Hit Productions)
Professional Theatre for Young Audiences Commissions: Lost, Fever Pitch, The Legend of Four (Evergreen Theatre), Win the Warrior: A King Arthur Tale (Googder – Pink Productions), The Heights of Love (Heritage Park Calgary)
School Commissions: The Albright Pact (Central Memorial High School), Highlands at One Hundred (Eastglen High School), Wildwood, The World’s Circus (Vernon Barford Junior High School), Hockey Night in Glenora (Glenora Elementary School).
Got an idea for a project and a need a playwright to make it happen? Contact Ellen and to discuss your needs!
Ellen creates acting, directing and playwrighting workshops based on the Drama curriculum and the needs of the students. She’s worked at many schools in Edmonton including: Strathcona High School, Ross Sheppard High School, Old Scona High School, Archbishop MacDonald High School, Victoria School for the Arts, and McNally High School.
Looking for way to add interactive fun, entertainment and education to your next family event? Ellen’s one-person play THE SKY IS FALLING is a modernized, musical version of the story of Chicken Little where the audience gets to be a part of the story-telling! This play was created to be toured to Edmonton Public Libraries as part of the Summer Reading Program and also played outdoors at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival as part of KidsFringe. Best suited for audiences of 15 people or more, aged 3-10 years old. Contact Ellen to bring THE SKY IS FALLING to your school or next event.
Ellen has adjudicated at High School One Act Festivals at the school, city and zone levels and loves to collaborate with emerging theatre artists to give strong (but kind) feedback.
As Head of Story with Mob Hit Productions from 2007-2010 and many years working with playwrights through High School Nextfest and MainStage Nextfest, Ellen loves working with plays and playwrights to find the very best they can be.
Ellen is the Festival Director and Theatre Curator for The Nextfest Arts Company, which presents Nextfest- Edmonton’s annual multidisciplinary emerging arts festival.
Are you an emerging artist looking to get involved with Nextfest? Check out the submissions calls on www.nextfest.ca or e-mail Ellen at ellen@nextfest.ca for more details!
Ellen is a graduate of the MacEwan Theatre Arts program and has performed all over Alberta as a TYA and musical theatre performer, actor and burlesque dancer. Most recently, Ellen starred in a one-woman play by Linda Wood-Edwards called Trail and Error, which she was nominated for an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Performance of by an Actor.