Actor
Director
Choreographer
Playwright
Drag personality

Jay Whitehead grew up in Calgary and Edmonton Alberta. He is an actor, performer, drag personality, choreographer, director, writer and teacher, with a diverse performance and training background, who currently resides and works in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

 

Whitehead has worked across Canada with companies including Leave it to Jane Theatre, Nobody's Business Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, ACT Productions, Third Street Theatre, Frank Theatre, The Saint John Theatre Company, Buddies in Bad Times, Keyano Theatre, and New West Theatre and has helped create new theatre companies and performance collectives including The Plain Janes, Boylesque TO, and, most recently Theatre Outré, a company, with a queer mandate which, among other projects, produces Lethbridge's annual queer theatre cabaret event: Quaint, Quirky & QUEER.  Whitehead is the co-founder and former artistic director of Theatre Outré. Whitehead's work has been seen in cities including Charlottetown, Sackville, New York City, Dublin, Calgary, Fort McMurray, Halifax, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Vancouver, Saint John and Lethbridge.

 

Whitehead holds a Diploma in Musical Theatre from MacEwan Univervisty, a BFA from the University of Lethbridge and an MFA in Acting from York University. He has studied under theatre practitioners including Timothy Ryan, David Rotenberg, Denise Clarke, David Smukler, Larry Silverberg and Steve Jurand, and received his certification to teach the Meisner method of acting through Larry Silverberg and the True Acting Institute.  

 

Directing and choreographic work includes The Addams Family, Montparnasse, Tab & Landon, A Thought in Three Parts, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Birth of Casper G. Schmidt , several musical comedy revue shows for New West Theatre, including Barndance, Twist and Shout, Razzle Dazzle and Bandstand as well as Festen, Spring Awakening, The Rocky Horror Show Ubu Roi and Carrie the Musical, If We Were Birds, and Late Company.

 

As a playwright Jay has written CRABS, Tab & Landon,  UNSEX'd (co-written with Daniel Judes), A Very Carole Christmas Carol (co-written with Kathy Zaborsky), and 333 which recently concluded a Pride season tour throughout Atlantic Canada.  He is one half of the live singing, camptastic duo behind Charlottetown's queerest musical comedy drag revue Queerly Canadian and is currently writing his theatrical memoir: Die, Die, Lavinia which will debut at the Island Fringe Festival in Charlottetown in October 2026.