Catherine Banks was inspired to begin writing plays after she saw a production of Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles-Soeurs.
Banks’ plays have been performed across Canada and include It Is Solved By Walking; Bone Cage; Three Storey, Ocean View; and Bitter Rose, which aired on Bravo! Canada. Her plays are characterized by black humour and compelling dramatic metaphor. They have been described as “Atlantic gothic” because of their unflinching exploration of poverty, monotony, and the addictions that often provide an escape from such social limitations. Her work is poetic, darkly humorous, courageous, and beautifully theatrical.
Bone Cage was showcased at the National Arts Centre’s On the Verge in 2005, premiered in 2007, and went on to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in 2008. It Is Solved By Walking won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2012, was translated into Catalan by Tant per Tant, and was one of three Canadian plays to tour Catalonia in 2012.
Catherine received Nova Scotia’s Established Artist Award for her body of work in 2008. Her newest play, Miss N’ Me, is about a small-town hairdresser who steals her husband’s plumbing van to drive to New York to meet the American rapper Missy Elliot. Catherine is currently adapting Ernest Buckler’s novel The Mountain and the Valley for the stage.
Catherine Banks has lived in fourteen communities in Nova Scotia and currently resides in Sambro.
