User:Kgligorijevic/Sharon Corder

Sharon Corder is a Canadian writer, producer, story editor, actor, and educator based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With her longtime partner Jack Blum, she has written and produced more than fifty hours of television drama for both Canadian and American broadcasters. Their feature film BABYFACE (produced and co-written by Corder, directed and co-written by Blum) premiered at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes in 1998. After training for the theatre at University of California at Davis, Corder moved to Vancouver and co-founded Genesis Company Theatre. As an actress she played leading roles in theatres across Canada. In 2005, she and Blum founded REEL CANADA, an educational program aimed at promoting Canadian film in high schools. Corder has taught courses in screenwriting, and been active as a lobbyist for indigenous Canadian film production.

Biography

Corder was born in Waco, Texas but grew up all across the American Southwest as well as in Hawaii and Japan before moving to Canada in the mid-Seventies and pursuing a successful career in the theatre. In 1985 she began working with co-writer Jack Blum. Together they co-created the celebrated and long-running series TRADERS, as well as a host of other episodes of television drama. They were Story Editors on the syndicated series CATWALK, Co-Producers on TRADERS (Global), and Supervising Producers on POWER PLAY (CTV). In 1998 they wrote and produced a feature film, BABYFACE. BABYFACE tells the story of a thirteen year old girl, LISA, her troubled mother, MARGARET, and the young man who gets involved with both of them, JIM. Unvarnished and raw, it is an unforgiving look at the complexities of gender politics. One reviewer described the film as “a riveting psychodrama, a fearless portrait of three characters who seek their redemption through the folly of sex” (Marc Glassman, Classical 96). In 2003, the team produced a short drama, DNA, with Corder scripting and Blum directing. The film stars Michael Riley as a grieving widower struggling to get over his loss. Television credits with Blum include episodes of POWER PLAY, CATWALK, ONCE A THIEF, KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, SCENE OF THE CRIME, MAX GLICK, TOP COPS, DRACULA:  THE SERIES, ON OUR OWN, THE TWILIGHT ZONE and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. Corder also co-produced FUNNY GIRLS, thirteen 30-min. episodes featuring female comedy, interviews and panel discussion, and LIFE, LIBERTY AND LAUGHTER, seven 60-min. comedy specials, both for WTN, The Women's Television Network Corder’s theatre credits include producing, co-writing and performing several productions for Genesis Company Theatre (LIFE SCENES, NORTH OF THE NORTH POLE, BOB GETS A JOB), and co-writing and performing in WAVES (Theatre Centre). She also starred in THE BELLE OF AMHERST (Piggery Theatre, Quebec), AUTOMATIC PILOT (Theatre Calgary), VISIONS OF SIMONE MACHARD (La Jolla Playhouse, California) and GETTING OUT (Harbourfront Theatre, Toronto) which won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Artistic Excellence and Theatrical Innovation. With Blum, she also scripted A CHILD’S LOOK AT… MOZART for Kids’ Records. As of 2010, Blum and Corder are developing a new feature film, CRETE ON THE HALF SHELL, based on the travel memoir of the same name by Byron Ayanoglu, and a four part miniseries, SUNNYSIDE, about Toronto’s Great Heat Wave of 1936.