Colleen Winton’s career of 40+ years as an actor/director/singer/choreographer has taken her from Chemainus to Charlottetown (and most cities in between), at the Arts Club, Playhouse, Citadel, Theatre Calgary, Persephone, Tarragon, Shaw and Stratford Festivals, to name a few. As a director and choreographer, her work includes Taming of the Shrew (Showcase Festival), Merry Wives of Windsor (Graffiti), Waiting for the Parade, Pirates of Penzance and Little Women (Chemainus), Queen Lear (Western Gold/Presentation House), Come Rain or Come Shine (Belfry), and Little Shop of Horrors (TUTS). On stage, Colleen has recently played everything from Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy and Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! to Shelly Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross and received Jessie and Ovation awards for her performance as Mrs. Lovett in the acclaimed site- specific Sweeney Todd. She is proud to have been in the company of The Unnatural and Accidental Women, the inaugural production of the NAC Indigenous Theatre in Ottawa and most recently appeared as the beleaguered Dotty Otley in Noises Off at the Arts Club Theatre. On the small screen, she lately appeared in Man in the High Castle, You Me Her, iZombie, Van Helsing, and a collection of Hallmark movies. Her credits in voice work include the audiobooks of Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island, available from https://www.posthypnoticpress.com/.
Colleen is married to acclaimed actor, Russell Roberts, and they make their home in New Westminster where they have raised two amazing young men, Sayer and Gower, who have both found their way into the theatre as an actor and technician, respectively.
Photo: C.P. Detloff,, Vancouver Daily Province
Oct 1, 1940
Growing up in New Westminster where generations of her family before her were born, this iconic image, “Wait for Me, Daddy”, the most published Canadian photo of its time, was always a part of Colleen’s understanding of WWII. Taken in 1940 in New Westminster, it depicts the British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) marching in a column down Eighth Street towards Columbia Street and a waiting train, and the little boy who just couldn’t say goodbye. For Colleen, there has always been a fascination with the other “column” – that straggling, resolute group of women who followed alongside with equal valour in the face of the terror and uncertainty that lay ahead.
