Photo by Andrew Parry.
“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.
Strange Victory’s 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 (Ontario Presents 2025/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 is published by Playwrights Canada Press. Their new performance, I Would Prefer Not To, will premiere in January 2026 as part of Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo. Other recent projects include the dance performance ENTRANCES created with Lin Snelling and Tori Morrison (ReLoCate 2021), the mixed-reality plays Premium Content and 366 Days with Major Matt Mason Collective (High Performance Rodeo 2020/Online 2021), and the theatre/film hybrid The Last Children (Curtain Razors 2021, created with Judy Wensel and 17 Saskatchewan children).
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 Ame Henderson and Matija Ferlin’s Show Gone (L’Agora de la danse 2025/La Rotonde 2025) and Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet (Le Diamant 2022).
David has been a guest lecturer, workshop instructor, and dramaturgical mentor with the University of Alberta, National Theatre School of Canada, Queen’s University, University of Waterloo, Playwrights Guild of Canada, Manitoba Association of Playwrights, One Yellow Rabbit, Theatre Projects Manitoba, 2b theatre company, and Major Matt Mason Collective’s Wildfire program. He was the 2019-2020 Emerging Artist-in-Residence with 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).