Originally from White Rock, British Columbia, Ashlie Corcoran directs both theatre and opera, working across Canada and internationally. She is the Artistic Director of the Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver where she has directed The Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime,  The Matchmaker, Bed & Breakfast, Cost of Living and The Sound of Music.   In January 2020, Ashlie directed Il barbiere di Siviglia for Vancouver Opera.  Other past opera directing projects include Die Zauberflöte at Opera Philadelphia in 2014 and for the Canadian Opera Company in 2017. (Ashlie actually began her career in opera in the 2006/2007 season, when she was a member of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio as their Intern Director.)  Other projects for the COC include directing The Magic Victrola – an opera for families, as well as William Walton’s The Bear.  She has also directed numerous COC touring productions including Cinderella, Isis and the Seven Scorpions, The Brothers Grimm, The Bremen Town Musicians, Operation Superpower and Second Nature.  Further opera and new music credits include Don Giovanni, Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters and Le Laureat for the Glenn Gould School (Royal Conservatory), Soundstream’s Electric Messiah, as well as assistantships at Opera North in the UK and the Städtische Bühnen in Münster. Ashlie was the Artistic Director at the Thousand Islands Playhouse from November 2012 to October 2017, during which time, she directed Das Ding (The Thing), Into the Woods, Blithe Spirit, The Pirates of Penzance, Dear Johnny Deere, Bed and Breakfast, Don’t Dress for Dinner, The Ugly One, She Loves Me, Waiting For the Parade, Driving Miss Daisy, Salt-Water Moon, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Third Floor. Ashlie is also the co-founder and Artistic Producer of Theatre Smash, for whom she has directed Abi Morgan’s Tiny Dynamite, the company’s Dora-nominated inaugural production, the staged reading of Lukas Bärfuss’ The Bus, co-produced by Theatre Smash and the Goethe-Institut, Layne Coleman’s Tijuana Cure, Graeme Gillis’s A Boy Called Newfoundland and Marius Von Mayenburg’s The Ugly One (which won the Outstanding Production Dora Award for Independent Theatre), Julia Cho’s Durango and Phillip Löhle’s Das Ding (The Thing) and Guillermo Calderon’s Kiss, both produced in association with Canadian Stage. In addition, she produced Theatre Smash’s second main stage production Norway.Today. Other theatre credits include: Mamma Mia, Citadel Theatre, Me & My Girl at the Shaw Festival, Bed and Breakfast, Belfry Theatre, GCTC, The Globe and Centaur Theatre; Mustard and The Ugly One, Tarragon Theatre; The Gay Heritage Project, Buddies in Bad Times and National Tour; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Waiting for the Parade, Driving Miss Daisy, Blithe Spirit, Don’t Dress for Dinner, and The Birds and the Bees, Western Canada Theatre; Die Fledermaus, Cowtown Opera; The Gay Heritage Project, Buddies in Bad Times’ Rhubarb Festival; The Venetian Ball, Villa Charities Opera & Pop Gala; Third Floor, Summerworks Festival; Short Story Long, Toronto Fringe Festival (invited to Best of the Fest Berkeley and Uptown); The Secret Garden & The Jungle Book, Resurgence Theatre; Tijuana Cure for Summerworks Festival; Luna, Luminato Festival’s opera concert; A Boy Called Newfoundland, Gateway Theatre; Electronic City, Goethe-Institut; The Futures Market, The Wrecking Ball; Plighted Troths, Foundry Theatre; Be Kind To Mimes, Alumnae Theatre; The Play About the Baby at the Battersea Arts Centre; Moo, Beyond Chutleigh Productions. She has worked as an assistant director at Tarragon Theatre (No Great Mischief, assisting Richard Rose), the Shaw Festival (Afterplay, assisting Daryl Cloran), and Theatre by the Bay (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo And Juliet, assisting Daryl Cloran and Mark Wilson). Ashlie began her training at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Degree in Drama. She received a Master’s Degree in Directing, awarded with distinction, from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. These studies were funded through a British Foreign & Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholarship. Other awards and grants include: Theatre Ontario Professional Theatre Training Program Grant, Herstmonceux Castle International Study Centre Award and the Queen’s University Lorne Greene Award (given to a graduating student for excellence in theatre practice). Ashlie has been nominated for three directorial Dora Mavor Moore awards (The Ugly One, Mustard and Kiss) and was short-listed for the Pauline McGibbon Award. Ashlie was one of the Shaw Festival Director Interns for the 2009 season. At Shaw, Ashlie directed Seán O’Casey’s Bedtime Story and assistant directed Brief Encounters (directed by Jackie Maxwell) and Albertine in Five Times (directed by Micheline Chevrier). Ashlie is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, participated in a Goethe-Insititut / International Theatre Institute’s directing residency at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, took part in Nightwood’s Penelopiad Lab, was a member of Canadian Stage’s Bash! program and was the Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist at Tarragon Theatre. During this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ashlie is busy working on leading the Arts Club Theatre Company through this time of crisis for the performing arts sector. When it is once again safe to gather in large groups and share the experience of storytelling, Ashlie is confident that theatre and opera audiences will come together with joy and a hunger for empathy and imagination – qualities that our art forms are built upon.