Jillian Keiley

Last updated: February 23, 2023

Jillian Keiley has directed and taught across Canada and internationally.  She was the founding Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud.  Highlights from her 27 years with the company include In Your Dreams Freud, Under Wraps, AfterImage, The Cheat, The Chekhov Variations, and Salvage: Story of a House, Oil and Water, Between Breaths, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and I Forgive You, most of which were featured on tours across Canada including the NAC. Jillian assumed her role as NAC English Theatre Artistic Director in 2012 and finished her tenure in 2022.   Other NAC productions include A Christmas Carol, Twelfth Night, Metamorphoses: Based on the Myths of Ovid and Copenhagen. She also directed Bakkhai, The Diary of Anne Frank, and As You Like It for the Stratford Festival, as well as The Neverending Story and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, both produced as collaborations between the Stratford Festival and the NAC. Tempting Providence, her collaboration with Robert Chafe for Theatre Newfoundland Labrador, toured internationally for 12 years. Her production of Tell Tale Harbour at the Confederation Centre for the Arts was a blockbuster hit at the Confederation Centre this past summer and she looks forward to opening summer productions of Richard the Second at the Stratford Festival and Come From Away in Gander, Newfoundland.   Jillian holds Honorary Doctorates of Letters from both Memorial University and York University, and she was the winner of the Siminovitch Prize for Directing in 2004 and the Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize in 1997.

Upcoming events

Projects & initiatives

  • Midsummers creation

    Grand Acts of Great Hope

    NAC English Theatre is bringing together some of the country’s most inventive artists to create and perform innovative new works. These acts will inspire and embolden audiences for the brave new world facing us post-pandemic.

  • Gat-entretemps creation

    Grand Acts of Theatre

    The NAC has funded 14 of Canada’s most innovative theatre companies to create and perform large-scale, new works in response to these challenging times.

NAC media featuring Jillian Keiley