Mary-Colin Chisholm is a Canadian TV, film and stage actor, writer, director, and co-assistant director of two theatre companies, LunaSea Theatre and Frankie Productions. She may be best known for her role as Eleanor Carr in the first season of Haven. Chisholm has been nominated many times for the Robert Merritt Award.^[1]

Chisholm was born and grew up in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. She has lived in Toronto and Edmonton, but has returned to Nova Scotia,^[2] currently residing in Halifax.^[3]

Partial career[link]

In 2000 Chisholm directed the one-woman theatrical piece called Frankie, starring Mary Ellen Maclean. Christian Murray coached movement and provided sound. The combination proved fruitful, for the three founded Frankie Productions, a theatre company which has continued to produce Canadian drama.^[3] About this time she was commissioned to write a radio series for the CBC which was called He'd Be Your Mother’s Father’s Cousin. Chisholm later transformed the radio play into a theatrical piece and later a one-woman show.^[4]

2005 included a performance of Daniel McIvor's How It Works, directed by the author for the Festival Antigonish. Chisholm played the sunny, helpful Christine.^[5] Chisholm performed in a co-op production of The Donahue Sisters by Geraldine Aron at the TNS Studio Space in Halifax in 2006. Four of the actors later decided to form a theatre company which was incorporated in 2007 as LunaSea Theatre. The company has performed, amongst others, Chisholm's To Capture Light, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, and an all-woman production of Twelfth Night (2009).^[6]

In 2008 she performed in the Christian Murray written and directed play, Bone Boy, as a mother of a child brought to life from a tooth.^[7]

On the small screen in 2010 Chisholm had a recurring role as the emergency medical technician, Eleanor Carr, in the SyFy produced supernatural TV series Haven. She also appeared in the Canadian horror thriller The Corridor. Both were filmed on location in Chisholm's native Nova Scotia.

Chisholm directed Lauchie, Liza and Rory by Sheldon Currie in 2010 for the Eastern Front Theatre^[8] and in 2011 for the Mulgrave Road Theatre, in association with Frankie Productions at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.^[9] In 2011 she also performed in Caryl Churchill's Top Girls for the LunaSea Theatre, as well as in Michel Nadeau's And Slowly Beauty ... playing Anita, the waitress, for which her performance was described as "riveting".^[10]

She performed the role of God in a modern mystery play, Creation, for NAC in 2012 and gave a short season of a one-woman version of her play He'd Be Your Mother's Father's Cousin at Festival Antigonish.^[4]

Chisholm, the writer[link]

Chisholm has written four plays:

• Safe Haven, 1991, which deals with AIDS related themes.
• He'd Be Your Mother’s Father’s Cousin, ~2000-, on rural life in Nova Scotia (the work has been trasformed a few times from a radio play to a theatrical work for four actors and as a one woman show).^[4]
• Strange Humours, 2000.
• To capture Light, 2008, the imagined life of a woman artist from Nova Scotia, Frances Jones Bannerman, in Paris.^[11]

She has had a hand in a number of other plays and has even written for the Canadian cartoon series Pelswick (2 episodes).

Selected screen appearances[link]

Name[link]

Chisholm has been billed as "Mary Colin Chisholm" (in the TV movie Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story), "Mary-Colin Chrisolm" (in the TV movie The Memory Keeper's Daughter), "Mary-Colin Chisolm" (in the film Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day), and interestingly as "Mary Colin Chrishholm" (on the Frankie Productions home page).

Private life[link]

Mary-Colin Chisholm lives in Halifax with her partner Christian Murray and their daughter Emlyn.^[3]

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Mary-Colin Chisholm at the Internet Movie Database
• Mary-Colin Chisholm at Northern Stars
• LunaSea Theatre
• Frankie Productions
• Mulgrave Road Theatre
• The Belfry Theatre