Photo by Megan Kras
Playwright. Director. Actor. Magician. Content Creator. Consultant. Producer. Educator. Creative Human Person.
“One of the important rising playwrights of the contemporary Canadian theatre ecology” - Colin Bruce Anthes (Artistic Director, Essential Collective Theatre)
Michael Kras is one of Hamilton’s most prolific young theatre artists and creative voices, specializing in challenging, wildly entertaining, highly theatrical stories for new-generation audiences.
His acclaimed play The Team - about a high school girls’ basketball team in their final season - received the Herman Voaden National Playwriting Prize, as well as nominations for the Tom Hendry TYA Award and the Safe Words New Canadian Play Award. The play’s world premiere production with Essential Collective Theatre and Theatre Aquarius was met with sold-out houses and praised as “a phenomenal piece that has audiences whispering in shock, stifling laughter, and crying in silence.” (DARTcritics). The script is published by Scirocco Drama in Fierce: Five Plays for High Schools (edited by Glenda MacFarlane) alongside works by Judith Thompson, Dave Deveau, Ali Joy Richardson, and Tanisha Taitt.
With his independent company Broken Soil Theatre, Michael has written and directed several new plays for in Hamilton including The Year and Two of Us Back Here, which was called “funny, devastating, and heartwarming” by Centre Stage (101.5 The Hawk) and has seen multiple productions in Canada and the USA; Lydia, written for the Frost Bites Festival; and #dirtygirl, a techno-horror play which received the Hamilton Fringe Audience Choice Award.
Most recently, Michael’s play for high school audiences about toxic masculinity - No Big Deal - made its world premiere in the 2022/2023 season at Roseneath Theatre after the play was developed in an OAC-funded residency with the company in 2020. The production was nominated for six BroadwayWorld Toronto Awards including Best New Play and Best Theatre for Young Audiences Production.
Michael is currently at work on multiple new works in development, including rip it out of my THROAT, a play written with support from Essential Collective Theatre as their 2021 OAC Playwright-in-Residence; and The Start-Up, a play about millennial and Gen-Z hustle culture being developed with the support of the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the 2023 Caravan Farm Theatre National Playwrights Retreat.
Michael is one of Canada’s most in-demand magic directors, designers, and consultants. Working on theatre productions of all sizes in Canada and abroad, he was part of the creative team behind the record-breaking Canadian premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Mirvish/Sonia Friedman Productions, dir. John Tiffany) as the show’s Resident Illusions & Magic Associate. His other magic direction & design credits include The Extinction Therapist (Magic Director, Theatre Aquarius) and A Christmas Carol (Associate Illusion Designer, Maltz Jupiter Theatre).
He has also directed the world premieres of many of his own plays, including the acclaimed production of The Year and Two of Us Back Here (Hamilton Fringe/Broken Soil Theatre) and his site-specific short work Lydia (Frost Bites Festival 2022).
Michael was a Canada Council Artist-in-Residence at Theatre Aquarius for the 2022/2023 season to develop a new electro-pop chamber musical about loneliness, fame, and consent in the TikTok era with composer Stephen Ingram. The musical’s initial development has also been supported by the Ontario Arts Council through the Theatre Projects program as well as grants recommended by Carousel Players, Suitcase in Point, and Talk is Free Theatre.
As an educator and speaker, he has led workshops through Mirvish Productions, Humber College’s theatre performance program, the Hamilton Fringe Festival, schools in the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Roseneath Theatre. He has also been a guest speaker with Momentum Stage, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Queen’s University.
On top of writing and directing new works, Michael is also an actor, having appeared in the ensemble cast of A Few Good Men at Theatre Aquarius under the direction of Ted Dykstra, his own play Lydia at the Frost Bites Festival, and the original company of Your Own Sons with Same Boat Theatre at the Hamilton Fringe Festival.
You can also catch Michael doing other cool stuff like serving as head writer and digital media manager at Hamilton’s largest lifestyle brand Urbanicity, writing raps to be performed live by the Mayor of Hamilton, helping brands and small businesses tap into their unique written voice, serving on juries for arts granting bodies, and teaching impressionable youth about theatre-making.
A graduate of Humber Theatre School, Michael is also a three-time Hamilton Arts Award emerging nominee, an alumnus of the Theatre Aquarius Playwrights Unit, and was named a 2023 Hamilton Artist to Watch by Beyond James. He is represented by Ian Arnold at Catalyst TCM. He loves craft beer, tree branches, exploring his city, Dirty Projectors, food, and exciting ideas.