Mike McPhaden

Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba,[2] he began his career doing sketch and improvisational comedy with the Higher Than the Ground comedy troupe,[3] and began to have stage acting roles in the late 1990s,[4] later branching out into writing with his stage play Poochwater premiering at the 2000 SummerWorks theatre festival.[5] The play was inspired in part by rummaging through his grandfather's possessions after the older man's death, and discovering a stash of old electronics textbooks from his grandfather's service as a radio operator during World War II.[6] He returned to SummerWorks the following year both with his own play, Flight 198, and as an actor in Shawne McKeown and Marilo Nuez's play North East Side Story.[2]

After Poochwater received a followup staging at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2002,[7] McPhaden won two Dora Mavor Moore awards in 2003, for Outstanding New Play, Independent Theatre and Best Leading Actor, Independent Theatre.[8] The play received another follow-up production at Passe Muraille in 2005 due to its popularity.[9]

He also received a nomination for Best Original Play, General Theatre in 2007 for Noble Parasites,[10] and a second nomination in the independent theatre category in 2009 for The Gladstone Variations, a collaboration with Brendan Gall, Rick Roberts and Julie Tepperman.[11]

After noting as early as 2005 that his Dora award for writing Poochwater had opened far more professional doors for him than his award for acting in it did,[12] he enrolled in the television writing program at the Canadian Film Centre in the 2006-07 cohort,[3] and had his first television writing credits on the series Taste Buds. He is now associated principally with television writing and production,[3] although he has continued to appear in occasional guest acting roles.

As a television writer he was a Canadian Comedy Award nominee for Best Writing in a Television Series at the 12th Canadian Comedy Awards for his work on the writing team for Men with Brooms,[13] a WGC Screenwriting Award nominee in 2018 for Bruno & Boots: This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall[14] and in 2020 for Jann,[15] and a Canadian Screen Award nominee as a producer of Jann at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.[16]

He is married to actress Christine Horne.

• Mike McPhaden at IMDb