Dora Mavor Moore: Pioneer of the Canadian Theatre

David E. Kemp is a professor of drama at Queen’s University and the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Many people know of Dora Mavor Moore simply as the woman who lent her
name to a number of Toronto professional theatre awards. Paula
Sperdakos’s insightful and eminently readable biography rescues
Moore’s remarkable achievements from ill-deserved obscurity. Moore’s
life was filled with adversity and triumph. By the time she established
the New Play Society in 1946, she had worked tirelessly for some 40
years as an actress, director, producer, and teacher. In founding the
NPS, Toronto’s first indigenous professional theatre, she prepared the
ground for all professional theatre in Canada. Sperdakos’s engaging
style should win this book a readership beyond the theatre professional.