Joy Coghill

Joy Coghill was born on May 13, 1926 in Findlater, Saskatchewan, 1939). Joy attended Kitsilano High School, took elocution lessons, and earned an Associate of Trinity College, London. In 1944 she entered the University of British Columbia (UBC) to study social work. Joy first appeared on stage at the age of 15, in a Vancouver Little Theatre production of Bunty Pulls the Strings, in 1941 at UBC, she became involved with the U.B.C. Players Club and The Summer School of the Theatre, acting, directing and teaching under early mentor Dr. Dorothy Somerset. She applied to the Goodman Theatre at The Art Institute of Chicago. Joy met John Thorne, a television production student at Northwestern University. They were married in 1955 and John became a successful television producer for the CBC. In 1950, Joy graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree. Joy returned to Vancouver to teach at UBC, directed and acted at Sydney Risk’s Everyman Theatre, and then returned to Chicago to teach and direct at Goodman Theatre. While in Chicago, Ms Coghill received a letter from Dr. Somerset inviting her to create Holiday Theatre, with a thriving school for children and youth. Holiday would present over one hundred plays most of them original Canadian works. In 1967 Holiday Theatre joined with the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Co. when Joy became its Artistic Director. The first female Artistic Director of the Playhouse made theatre history with a groundbreaking new play; George Ryga’s The Ecstasy of Rita Jo in 1967. The play received rave reviews and was one of the first play to address First Nations issues in Canada.

In 1971, Joy was appointed the first female Artistic Director, English Acting Section, of the National Theatre School. Joy appeared in films, on television and in theatre productions across Canada. Amongst her principal appearances in film and on television, she is best-known for her roles in Da Vinci’s Inquest and Ma (CBC) as Margaret “Ma” Murray, British Columbia’s first female newspaper publisher. Her theatre work included co-producing Noye’s Fludde (Britten) with Niki Goldschmidt, her prize- inning performances as Sarah Bernhardt in John Murrell’s Memoir, Puck in the opera of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Britten) and Miss Helen in The Road to Mecca.

In 1987, Joy wrote and produced Song of This Place based on the life of Emily Carr. Joy created The Alzheimer Project in 1998, produced by Western Gold Theatre, which she founded in 1994. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with actors all over 60, was the subject of a CBC documentary The Courage to Dream. Joy was the company’s Artistic Director until 1999, at which time she gave her energy to her most ambitious project; collaborating with colleague Jane Heyman to found PAL Vancouver in 2001. Among the first residents were Joy Coghill and Jack Thorne. The building, of course, includes a 100-seat theatre.

Joy passed away on January 20, 2017 (age 90) in Vancouver.