Catherine Frid is a Toronto playwright whose work focuses on contemporary issues that challenge our society including domestic terrorism (Homegrown), drug testing (GuineaPigging), homelessness (Dead Cat Bounce), the destruction of athletes through competitive sports (Over the Edge) and empowering rural seniors (Our Voices). Her plays have been presented across Canada and in the United States.
Frid has received Canada Council for the Arts and Toronto Arts Council grants to support her work and had scenes published in Scenes from a Diverse World and Thirtysomethings: Mother-Daughter Monologues. She has presented workshops and storytelling on her plays.
She is a member of the Playwrights’ Guild of Canada, Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, and Women Playwrights International. Frid also holds an LLB degree from Osgoode Hall Law School.
As one of two Artists in Residence at Osgoode in the 2014-15 academic year, Frid created a project to explore Canadian informants and whistleblowers who are cast as heroes or traitors, altruists or publicity-hounds, martyrs or revenge-seekers. She designed a course for students to explore cases of informants and whistleblowers, and to improvise and role-play scenarios around their situations. From this material Frid created a new stage play, Thistlepatch, that received a reading at the Law and the Curated Body Conference in March 2015 that was hosted by Osgoode and York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design.
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Thistlepatch
Synopsis: A child psychologist and an investigative reporter struggle to piece together the tragic puzzle of a 14-year-old girl’s suicide in a juvenile prison. Thistlepatch is based on the true story that catalyzed the complete overhaul of Ontario’s child welfare services in the 1970s.