José Teodoro is a writer and performer working across forms such as theatre, literature, cinema, and music.
His plays include The Tourist, which was dubbed “a masterpiece” by The Edmonton Journal, as well as Steps, Mote, Slowly, an exchange is taking place, and Cloudless, which was adapted into an audio drama starring Carmen Aguirre and presented by Canadian Stage. His latest play, Binary Star, has been developed with the support of Playwrights Theatre Centre’s Associates program, the Banff Playwrights Lab, and Caravan Farm Theatre’s National Playwrights Retreat. His other latest play, Island, was developed with the support of Playwrights Theatre Centre’s WrightSpace program, the Banff Playwrights Lab, and Tarragon Theatre, and is the winner of the 2024 Lee Playwriting Prize for New Canadian Plays.
José is the author of Nothing But Time: Conversations with Peter Mettler on Life and Cinema, published by Anvil Press. José was also the curator of Nothing But Time: The Films of Peter Mettler for TIFF Cinematheque. A truncated version of this series has traveled to other cities.
Some of José’s other literary works include The Rusted Floor, Discrepancies Regarding the Disappearance of José Teodoro, and Sólheimasandur, which were published in Brick; Curtains and A Following Wind, which were published in subTerrain; Gesundheitskarte, which was published in Geist; and Cul-de-sac and Houston, We Have a Problem, which were published in The Fiddlehead. José is co-author, with Mexican artist Laura Barrón, of Cathedral, a bilingual 3.5-metre-long book of text and image, and, with Mexican author Andrés Acosta, of Mérida, a prose exchange published in both dANDelion and as a stand-alone volume from La Mano izquierda Press.
Along with composer-musician Stephen Lyons, José is the co-founder of Applied Silence. Their first major project was a recording of Screen Door, an adaptation of José’s work for actors and musicians, available online and on vinyl via Offseason Records. Watch the trailer here. You can listen or make purchases via the group’s Bandcamp page. Applied Silence debuted Screen Door live in December 2021 as part of Pi Theatre’s Provocateur series. They have since been developing a new project called Finisher, with support from Playwrights Workshop Montreal. They are currently busy preparing their live accompaniment to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 hallucinatory gothic Vampyr, the first iteration of which will transpire in Edmonton’s Metro Cinema on August 28. You can get tickets here. Applied Silence is also going to play an entirely different set of music on August 30 as part of a two-day music festival presented by Double Lunch at Edmonton’s Bent Stick Brewing. Tickets can be found here.
Applied Silence also created the soundscape for Snezana Pesic’s film Suture, which won Best Experimental Film at the 2022 Toronto Independent Film Festival, among other awards. In 2023, Applied Silence traveled to the Cali International Film Festival (FICCALI) with the short film Binary Star, which José wrote and directed, which is related to his eponymous play, and which was screened with live music and live voiceover. The film has since won Best Experimental Film at the 2024 Vancouver International ShortsFest.
José is also a culture writer, contributing essays, interviews and reviews to publications such as Brick, The Globe & Mail, Film Comment, Bloodvine, Quill & Quire, Cinema Scope, Stop Smiling, Long Takes, SubTerrain and The Literary Review of Canada. He has served on juries at over a dozen film festivals throughout Europe and the Americas. He was a juror for the 2019 Giller Prize for Canadian literature. José has designed and administered interdisciplinary thematic workshops, such as Dream Reportage, Object Study, Art & Ephemerality, and Memory Lines: New Approaches to Life Writing for organizations such as Geist Magazine, Historic Joy Kogawa House, the Institute for Creative Exchange, and Burnaby Public Library. José has also served as story editor on several acclaimed films, including Lina Rodriguez’s This Time Tomorrow and Hugh Gibson’s TFCA Roger’s Best Canadian Film Award-winner The Stairs, and served as co-scenarist and moustache expert in Richard Keating’s A Change of Face.
José is an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre’s Writer’s Lab, Historic Joy Kogawa House’s writer-in-residence program, Deer Lake Artist Residency, and Seattle’s Annex Theatre’s Hothouse. He is a two-time alumnus of Vancouver’s Playwrights Theatre Centre’s WrightSpace, is a current PTC Associate, and has been an invited participant in several thematic residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, such as the Playwrights Lab, Play-finding with Daniel MacIvor, and the Canada-Mexico Writing-Photography Exchange.
José has worked as a writer and editor for the Toronto and Panama International Film Festivals, and as a writer, editor. and programmer for the Miami International Film Festival. He has made food, delivered food, delivered singing telegrams, delivered urgent documents, delivered people, translated for people, played records for people, constructed shelves, cleaned shelves, and stocked shelves. He once did a fair bit of acting and will surely one day act more and better. He is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Toronto Film Critics Association and FIPRESCI. Available for all manner of public speaking engagements.