david gagnon walker.

“If David Gagnon Walker’s name appears on a theatre playbill, expect the unexpected.”
– Louis B. Hobson, Calgary Herald

“One of the most exciting and inventive of the new generation of Canadian theatre artists.”
– Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

David Gagnon Walker is an award-winning writer, performer, and translator working across Canada. He is a graduate of the playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada, and holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from the University of Toronto. With composer and video designer Tori Morrison, he produces experimental and interactive theatre projects as Strange Victory Performance.

David was the 2019-2020 RBC Emerging Artist-in-Residence with Halifax's 2b theatre company, the recipient of the 2019 Playwrights' Workshop Montréal Cole Foundation Mentorship for Emerging Translators, and the winner of the 2018 Playwrights Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Emerging Playwright Award for his play The Big Ship. His work has been supported by grants and residencies from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council, Banff Centre for the Arts, Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, Eugene O'Neill Theatre Centre (USA), CIRKO Centre (Finland), and Subtopia (Sweden). David has been a guest lecturer, workshop instructor, and dramaturgical mentor with the University of Alberta, National Theatre School of Canada, University of Waterloo, Manitoba Association of Playwrights, One Yellow Rabbit, Theatre Projects Manitoba, 2b theatre company, and Major Matt Mason Collective’s Wildfire program.

Strange Victory’s interactive performance This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear, a play read out loud by David and the audience, has been touring Canada since 2021 (Workshop West 2024/In the Soil Festival 2023/Theatre Projects Manitoba 2023/SummerWorks 2022/Pi Theatre 2022/High Performance Rodeo 2022/Found Festival 2021). The script will be published in 2024 by Playwrights Canada Press. Other recent projects include the mixed-reality performance 366 Days (Major Matt Mason Collective 2021), the theatre/film hybrid The Last Children (Curtain Razors 2021, created with 17 Saskatchewan children), Premium Content (MMMC/High Performance Rodeo 2020), Everybody's Everybody's Autobiography (Verb Theatre 2020), and Nothing but Flowers (New Words Festival 2019).

David’s translation of Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s The Retreat [La retraite] premiered to a sold-out run in November 2023 with Montréal’s Imago Theatre, in a production directed by Krista Jackson. Other translations include Splinters [Copeaux) and Walls [Murs] by two-time Governor General’s Award winner Mishka Lavigne, and French surtitles for Why Not Theatre’s production of Ravi Jain’s Prince Hamlet (Québec City, Le Diamant 2022). His poetry and art writing are published with outlets including SNAPLine, The Scores, The Quietus, Lemonhound, and Emergency INDEX, and he writes songs as Bigfin Squid.