Patricia Joudry
Patricia Joudry (1921-2000) was a notable Canadian playwright and radio writer, recognized for her contributions to the performing arts. Born in Spirit River, Alberta, she displayed an early talent for theater and radio, writing her first successful radio play at just eighteen. Following her high school graduation, she moved to Toronto, where she worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and gained popularity as the star of her radio comedy series, "Penny's Diary." Joudry's most acclaimed work is "Teach Me How to Cry," which is celebrated as one of the most commercially successful plays in Canadian theater history.
Throughout her career, she produced a diverse range of plays characterized by well-developed characters and psychological depth. Joudry also ventured into novel writing, producing works such as "The Dweller on the Threshold" and "The Selena Tree." In addition to her writing, Joudry received several accolades, including being named Canadian Woman of the Year in 1955. Her life included personal challenges, such as her experiences with religious delusions, which she humorously chronicled in her book "Spirit River to Angels' Roost." Joudry's legacy endures in Canadian literature and theater, reflecting her significant impact on the arts.
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Patricia Joudry
Playwright
- Born: October 18, 1921
- Birthplace: Spirit River, Alberta, Canada
- Died: October 28, 2000
- Place of death: Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Biography
Patricia Joudry was born on October 18, 1921, in Spirit River, Alberta, Canada, to Clifford G. Joudry, a magazine editor, and Beth Gilbart Joudry, a potter. As a child, Joudry performed in theater, and as a teenager she performed in radio, writing her first successful radio play, Going up Please, when she was eighteen years old. She would grow up to be one of Canada’s most prolific dramatists, who wrote plays in which the characters were developed with an unusual degree of psychological depth and accuracy.
After graduating from high school, she moved to Toronto in 1940 and worked as a script writer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), also playing the title role in her radio comedy series Penny’s Diary. She married Delmar Dinsdale and the couple had two daughters, Gay and Sharon, before their divorce in 1952. She moved to New York for a time, where she continued writing radio scripts from 1945 to 1949, coauthoring the National Broadcasting Company’s popular radio series, The Aldrich Family. She then returned to Toronto, working again for CBC radio.
In addition to writing and starring in the series Affectionately, Jenny from 1951 to 1952, she also began writing for the stage. The Stranger in My House is her first stage work, a one-act piece produced in Toronto. Her second is the play for which she is perhaps best known and the one considered the most commercially successful Canadian play ever written, Teach Me How to Cry.
Several plays quickly followed, two comedies and two dramas, though none as successful as her second. By this time, Joudry had remarried and followed her second husband, photographer and later producer John Steele, to England. While there, Joudry came to believe for a time that Bernard Shaw was transmitting plays through her. Spirit River to Angels’ Roost: Religions I Have Loved and Left, published in 1977, is Joudry’s humorous account of this troubled time of religious delusion. Joudry also wrote two novels, The Dweller on the Threshold (1973), and The Selena Tree (1980). She died on October 28, 2000.
Joudry was named Canadian Woman of the Year by the Toronto Press in 1955. She received the best play award from the Dominion Drama Festival in 1956 for Teach Me How to Cry and a prize from Stratford-Globe playwriting competition for Walk Alone Together.