Gregory Heyn

Theatrical

Gregory Heyn, of Sambro, Nova Scotia, is a member of the Writers Guild of Canada, has written over fifty TV scripts, and twenty plays. To date he has directed over one hundred productions, having worked at Toronto Arts Production, Young People's Theatre, Toronto Workshop Production, Columbus Centre, Nokee Kwee, Can-Asia Productions and Manitoba Theatre Centre. His interests, however, have led him to concentrate his efforts in the development of socially relevant theatre.

Gregory was active in the growth of the National Native Theatre School (which is now CIT the College of Indigenous Theatre) for six years, having served as Instructor and Director of the school and writer of numerous plays. He was Artistic Director of the Columbus Centre Theatre Productions, where he directed plays in both Italian and English.

Gregory was the first director to work at Emerald City, a company dedicated to non-traditional casting. He directed the highly controversial production of Private Lives, at the Factory Lab Theatre, with an ethnically mixed cast - the impetus for other companies in Toronto to adopt a colour-blind casting policy.

However, Gregory’s most unique achievement has been the founding of The Insight Theatre Company, a semi-professional group of mostly blind actors. His mandate - “to educate the public to the misconceptions of blindness” while providing a creative arena for the development of the talents of the blind in the performing arts.

The Children’s Star was commissioned by Manitoba Theatre Centre. It is a heart warming musical based on the escapades of a group of orphans (Home Children) who arrive in Canada from Europe at the turn of the century. Extreme Silence was commissioned by Young People's Theatre and is based on a drunk driving incident.

Grace and Lillian (about illiteracy, performed across the country) for Nokee Kwee and Juno is Missing (about the blind) for CNIB, after a successful theatrical run, were adapted for video.

He wrote for Fred Penner’s Place on CBC for six years, and presently is working on a novel The Shaman's Grandson, and Harmony a children's television series.

Gregory has received two nominations by the Writers Guild of Canada, for best new screenplay, Fiddle MacPhee and Galatea, the film adaptation of his hit play Grace and Lillian, which won the London Literacy Award. In 2006 his play Shadows on Oak Island won the Samuel French Canadian Playwrighting Award (a psychological thriller steeped in the history of Oak Island).

Presently Gregory is teaching acting for film at NSCAD university and is in production writing and directing a feature film Opus for a Miracle.