Gerry Potter works as a writer, director, producer, script consultant and teacher in film and theatre. He founded Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre in 1978 and was Artistic Producer there for 17 years, during which time the company received the Edmonton Cultural Achievement Award, eighteen Sterling Awards and toured nationally. He currently is Artistic Producer of Red Heeler Media. Gerry has written twelve professionally-produced stage plays, eight professionally-produced films and has directed 48 theatre productions and eight films. He has an Honours BA in English, an MFA in Directing, and trained in filmmaking at FAVA in Edmonton.  He taught drama for ten years at the University of Alberta, and both film and drama for nineteen years at the University of Lethbridge and eight years at MacEwan University. He has won two Canada Council Arts Awards, the Mayor’s Award for Artistic Innovation, the MZD Progressive Artist Award, an Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award, and is in Edmonton’s Cultural Hall of Fame.

Gerry’s films Street Dance, Jake’s Gate and Rabbits & Monsters have screened at festivals across North America, and his documentary Honor Songs was on the Edmonton Poetry Festival website for five years. Other recent films include documentaries Stories about Us: the Movie; Creative Connections: The Mountain and The Arts Bridge and the organization narrative The BEST Story. His mini-lectures on documentary film, written and performed for ACCESS television, were broadcast in 2012 and 2013. He has also written for the National Film Board of Canada, for NewWest Press, and authored a chapter on Film and Dramaturgy in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. He is currently on the board of DOC Alberta, the provincial chapter of The Documentary Organization of Canada. His new documentary, In Search of Professor Precarious, will be released in spring 2020.