Shirley Barrie

Barrie was born on September 30, 1945, in Tillsonburg, Ontario.^[1][2] She was a member of the University Alumnae Dramatic Club at the University of Toronto.^[3] Barrie attended Western University in London, Ontario and Carleton University in Ottawa.^[1] While at Carleton, Barrie co-founded a college theatre group called Sock 'n' Buskin with Ken Chubb, who she would later marry.^[4]

In 1972, Barrie co-founded the Wakefield Tricycle Company in London, England with husband Ken Chubb.^[2][4] They named the company in reference to medieval mystery plays and a pub in King's Cross. In 1980, the two set up the Tricycle Theatre, dropping Wakefield from the name, at Kilburn High Road.^[5][6] Until 1984, Barrie was an associate director of Tricycle Theatre.^[7]

After returning to Toronto, Barrie and Lib Spry founded Straight Stitching Productions in 1989.^[2] Straight Stitching Productions produced Barrie's play Straight Stitching, about immigrant women working in the garment industry. The show featured songs by Arlene Mantle.^[8] Straight Stitching went on to become a runner-up for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.^[9] Straight Stitching Productions later produced Carrying the Calf, a play for children addressing violence against women from the perspective of young women attending a self-defense class.^[2] Barrie was inspired to write the play after reading a Globe and Mail article that claimed that, "81% of Canadian female university students admit to having experienced psychological, sexual or physical abuse on a date".^[10] Carrying the Calf won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding play for young audiences in 1992.^[11]

Working with the Workman Theatre Project, a theatre company that integrates people with mental illness, Barrie created the play Tripping Through Time in 1993. In the show, audiences are immersed in a mental asylum and given diagnoses at random. The play dramatizes experiences at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre from 1850 to the present.^[12]