Ed MacDonald
Ed Macdonald was born and raised on Cape Breton Island. The youngest of five children, Macdonald had little interest in anything other than comedy and aliens. Though he had no love for academics he went to school because the classroom had a captive audience. At The University of Cape Breton Macdonald spent most of his time in the playhouse, directing and often acting his plays.
Ed Macdonald can be seen in episodes of Trailer Park Boys, Hatching Matching and Dispatching, The Bette Show and, briefly, in The Jon Dore Televsion Show. He was also that show’s producer. Macdonald’s first film role was in 1984 opposite Josephine Chaplin in Daniel Petrie’s The Bay Boy. In the mid 90’s, Macdonald began staff writing on TV shows such as 22 Minutes and many others. Since then, he has written and produced countless hours of television and has won three Gemini Awards for excellence in writing. He has been nominated numerous times. He has won the Writers’ Guild of Canada Award and The Golden Sheaf Award, among others.
In 2001, Macdonald’s play Gemini opened at the 78th Street Theatre Lab and received great reviews, including a rave from The Village Voice. Gemini was later remounted by NBC in their showcase space, PSNBC. Since then, several of his plays including Mutant Sex Party, The Escape Artist, Erratica and Titus Lucretius Carus have been produced by The Drilling Company. Titus Lucretius Caras was nominated for the New York Innovative Theatre Award.
His first novel, Spat The Dummy was written in Montreal where Macdonald lived for a decade. Released in 2010, Spat won rave reviews and was was nominated for the QWF First Book Award.
Ed Macdonald’s acclaimed second novel, Atomic Storybook, was released in 2013.
Though focused on acting as of late, Macdonald continues to write both prose and scripts. Ed Macdonald lives in Toronto.
