Coleen Shirin MacPherson (she/her) is a an award-winning director, playwright, actor, and educator. She trained at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and is the artistic director of Open Heart Surgery Theatre, a female-led physical theatre company creating original and devised work that is poetic and experimental. As a half Parsi-Indian, Irish-Canadian theatre maker, her work often engages with ideas of cross-cultural collaboration, bending borders and aims to speak to the current moment.  Her plays include: First Draft (Camden People's Theatre, Mimetic Festival, London, UK and Falaki Theatre, Cairo, Egypt); This Is Why We Live (The Theatre Centre, La MaMa, NYC) and Erased (Theatre Passe Muraille).  Her play, Erased,  was named one of the top ten productions of 2024 with critics calling it "unmissable ...[and] one of the most gutsy and original new plays." (Toronto Star)

Coleen has worked with a variety of theatre companies in Canada and internationally; has toured productions to France, Poland, the UK, China, Egypt, and the US. She has taught Playwriting at the University of Toronto; been a guest artist at Brock University, Sheridan, Jiangsu Performing Arts Centre in China and StudioZat in Cairo, Egypt. Currently, Coleen is Creator-in-Residence with Cahoots Theatre; part of Modern Times Theatre’s experimental theatre troupe and is the Metcalf Intern for Directing at the Stratford Festival, where she recently was Associate Director of The Winter's Tale. Coleen won the Ken McDougall Award for Directing and earned an OFFIE nomination (London, UK) through VOILA! Europe for her play, This Is Why We Live. Coleen wishes she could fly.