Biography
Playwright, screenwriter and Shakespearean actor, Jim Lair Beard has performed all over the United States with the American Shakespeare Center and later became one of their resident company members in Staunton, Virginia.
His one man show, Mammas, Don’t Let Your Cowboys Grow Up To Be Actors, carried him to various states across the U.S. and was one of the opening acts for the inaugural Capital Fringe Festival in Washington D.C.
Jim was recognized by Craig Newmark of Craigslist for being 1 of 16 People and Organizations Changing the World in 2012, for his writing on the Occupy Movement and has been a contributing writer for the award-winning online publication, Capital and Main - devoted to the investigation of power and politics.
A script analyst for both writing schools and literary agencies. In April 2022, Jim was hired as the theatre critic for The Calgary Guardian.
He lives in Calgary, Alberta and is both a U.S. Citizen and a Canadian Permanent Resident. His new play, Blue-Eyed Hag debuted in June/July 2022 with The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company in Grand Haven, Michigan. His play Love’s Heavy Burden had its recent world premiere production in Calgary Alberta, produced by the Shakespeare Company.
Writing Style
Jim Lair Beard is a Shakespeare-adjacent playwright. He writes in a pseudo-classical style with an aim toward the staging conditions that Shakespeare and his contemporaries worked with.
In his plays, words build worlds and direct address to the audience is purposeful. Cross-gendered casting and doubling are both functional considerations as well as aesthetic choices. An actor may play 2-3 roles in a single production.
Large casts, multiple plots, heightened language and music...Jim's tone is not tied to any one genre in his works. Humour, pathos and darkness often fuse together in single scenes, defying contemporary genre constraints.
Though he likes to stay within the “Shakespeare Universe”, his plays also work as standalone pieces, not tethered strictly to the ideas of classic prequels or sequels. His work is often modern, progressive and socially aware. Addressing inequitable distributions of power among women, people of colour and the LGBTQ community are among his primary concerns while narratives are often driven by important contemporary issues.
Bullying, abortion, misogyny, remnants of colonialism, race, current national politics and the #metoo movement have been addressed in Beard’s plays, both subtly and obviously.