Corey Payette

Corey Payette is an interdisciplinary storyteller, writer, composer, singer, hand drummer, and director in music, theatre, and film. He is a member of the Mattagami First Nations, with French Canadian and Irish ancestry. Known for his deeply moving, large-scale original musical creations, Payette’s work challenges the public’s notion of what musicals can be, inserting Indigenous perspectives and narratives into mainstream spaces, igniting conversations that inspire social change. Payette’s work explores themes of colonization, Indigenous language revitalization, cultural healing, reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and the complexity of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences across music, theatre, and film. His musicals Children of God, Les Filles du Roi, Sedna, and Starwalker have won multiple awards and have toured extensively across Canada and those musical albums are available to stream and purchase online. He’s also performed his music in concerts around the world and made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City in 2023. He has won numerous awards for his writing, direction, and music compositions and received the inaugural BC Reconciliation Award, created to honour those who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, integrity, respect, and commitment to furthering reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in the province of British Columbia. Corey has a long connection to the NAC, having attended the Canterbury School for the Arts in Ottawa and performed on the Fourth stage when he was 16 years old, was an artist-in-residence with English Theatre at the NAC directing Moonlodge (2016) and Children of God (2017), and associate artist in supporting the Indigenous Cycle which led to the creation of NAC’s Indigenous Theatre.