‏Leslie McCurdy‏

Named Outstanding Performing Artist of Windsor Ontario, Canada, Leslie McCurdy, has been performing for many years in Southwestern Ontario and the Mid-Western United States, a privilege her dual US/Canadian citizenship affords her. Also a teacher, with an honors B.F.A. in dance from the University of MIchigan, Leslie was slated to go to New York to apprentice with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre when she literally tripped, fractured her hip, and fell into acting. While she has many theatre credits, Leslie is best known for the two one-woman plays that she wrote and has toured with internationally for 15 years. The Spirit of Harriet Tubman was a finalist for a Canadian Chalmers Award for Best New Play for Young Audiences, though it is a play for all ages, and her second play Things My Fore-Sisters Saw, about four Black women who impacted Canadian History, was featured on the Canadian Bravo Network. A two-person adaptation of the latter play entitled Voice of the Fore-Sisters was commissioned by Black Theatre Workshop in Montreal Quebec for one of its more successful school tours. Leslie has also written a version of Harriet Tubman's story for the kindergarten through grade two age range called Harriet is My Hero. Her credits include; Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill; Risa in Two Trains Running; Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Bobbie-Michelle in Last of the Red Hot Lovers; Dorothy in The Wiz; Laura McClellan Williams in Checkmates; The Acid Queen" in Tommy; Fraulein Kost in Cabaret; The Coochie Snoocher" in The Vagina Monologues, and appearances in ABC's Detroit 1-8-7, and several movies. including Ides of March and Beyond the Mask. Leslie has recently returned to her dance roots and is a member of Dance Nonce, a modern dance company based in Grosse Point Michigan.