Photo: © Mark Leslie
Kevin Loring is a playwright, actor and director from the Nlaka’pamux First Nation in Lytton, British Columbia. In his work, he uses Indigenous theatre methodologies and language to explore issues affecting Indigenous peoples and to bring Indigenous stories and songs to audiences in Indigenous communities and to stages across the country.
Mr. Loring is a graduate of Studio 58, Langara College’s prestigious professional theatre training program, and of Full Circle: First Nations Performance’s ensemble training program. Loring was honoured with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 2022. As an actor, he has performed in roles on both the big and small screens and on stages across the country. He is also a voice actor with numerous credits for animated characters, including the voice of Raven in Raven Tales: the Movie and two characters on Corner Gas: The Animated Series.
Mr. Loring won the Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama in 2009 for his first play, Where the Blood Mixes, which explores the devastating impacts of residential schools. The play also won both the Jessie Richardson Award and the Sydney J. Risk Prize for outstanding original script. Mr. Loring’s play Thanks for Giving was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2019. His latest play, Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, won the 2022 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script.
In 2012, Mr. Loring created the Songs of the Land project, which explores audio recordings from the late 1800s and early 1900s of songs and stories of the Nlaka’pamux First Nation. As part of this project, Mr. Loring has written several plays, including Battle of the Birds (2015), about domestic violence and abuse of power; The Boy Who Was Abandoned (2016), about youth and elder neglect; and The Council of Spider, Ant & Fly (2018), about the introduction of death into the universe.
Mr. Loring received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Mentorship Award in 2010. He is the founding Artistic Director of Savage Production Society, and in 2017 he became the first Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada. Under Loring’s leadership, Savage Society won a 2022 Jessie Richardson award for Outstanding Empowering and Uplifting of Indigenous Artists and Narratives.
