Catherine Frid

Catherine Frid is lyricist and book writer of Spend Your Kids’ Inheritance, with composer Frank Horvat.

Spend Your Kids’ Inheritance is a reverse coming-of-age musical comedy-drama about four seniors who plot to regain control of their finances and escape the Alpine Retirement Home.

A newcomer at the Home upsets the status quo, unleashing repressed desires and igniting conflict between staff and residents and their adult children. These struggles, and their dreams for their futures, create a bond between four of the Home’s residents – Claire, Alice, Hal and Nelly. They embark on a journey that forces them to wrestle with the power of choice and its consequences, and that challenges stereotypes about age, love, family, friendship … and freedom.

Spend Your Kids’ Inheritance premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2019, with six sold-out shows and a Patron’s Pick award.

Catherine Frid’s other produced plays include What I Gave I Have (Guelph Museums), AfterWhys (Suicide Awareness Council of Wellington-Dufferin, tours), Half Full (Mixed Company Theatre, school tours), Burying Toni (Alumnae), The Bold Canadian (Arts and Letters Club), Homegrown (SummerWorks and others), GuineaPigging (Alumnae), Dead Cat Bounce (Toronto Fringe and others), and many short works in Canada and the United States.

Catherine also co-creates community-engaged works, including Our Roots, Our Future (a Canada 150 production), Out of the Illusion (Six Nations Reserve), and Our Voices: Senior Selfies (Our Voices).

Publications include Our Voices: Senior Selfies (Art Age Publications); This Isn’t Toronto in Long Story Short, a Playwrights Canada Press 10-minute play anthology; Community with Strangers in Scenes from a Diverse World (ICWP Press); and Us and Them in Thirtysomethings: Mother-Daughter Monologues (ICWP Press).

Catherine is Artistic Director of Watercourse Theatre, and has been Playwright in Residence at Mixed Company Theatre and Artist in Residence at Osgoode Hall Law School.

She lives in Guelph, Ontario.

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