Laura Burke

Laura Burke is a mad-identified writer/actor/performance poet based out of Halifax, NS. In 2009, she represented Halifax on the poetry slam team at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Victoria, BC. She debuted her first play, called Voices, in San Francisco in 2011. Since then, she has written Heartwood, a confessional one woman show about her journey as a psychiatric survivor. Heartwood has toured across Canada, including at the May Works Festival and as part of Neptune Theatre’s open spaces program with Doppler Effect Theatre. An excerpt from her play Iris has been presented at the Soloicious Festival and at The Women in Theatre Festival in Halifax. Laura was a 2017 member of the Eastern Front Theatre Playwright’s Unit, and is a new member of the Bus Stop Theatre Playwright’s Unit. In 2018, Laura worked with Tangled Art + Disability’s Flourishing Project to create an early draft and workshop production of Mad Ones, a project that Arts Nova Scotia had previously supported in its early creation. Laura’s work is often about vulnerable humans who fight through their marginalization to realize and reclaim their otherness as their birthright.

Halifax, Canada