David James Brock is a screenwriter, playwright, poet, and opera librettist with national and international production history. He won the 2011 Herman Voaden Canadian National Playwriting Award for his play Wet, which was nominated for three Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards. Brock is the author of two poetry collections, Everyone is CO2 & Ten-Headed Alien, both released by Wolsak & Wynn.
His play-opera hybrid a million billion pieces (Young People’s Theatre) was nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and was released in book form by Playwrights Canada Press.
He has created opera text and song lyrics with Noise Opera, Tapestry New Opera, Young People's Theatre, the Canadian Art Song Project, Write off The Keyboard, FAWN Chamber Creative, Tankcrimes Records, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and the University of Notre Dame. For Scottish Opera, Brock co-created the Royal Philharmonic Society nominated project Breath Cycle, a multimedia operatic song cycle developed with cystic fibrosis patients.
With Mike Haliechuk, Brock co-wrote Year of the Horse, an opera recorded with Canadian hardcore legends and Polaris Award-winning band Fucked Up. Pitchfork Magazine calls the Year of the Horse album "epic...intricate... dramatic..." and XYZ Films has optioned the pair's screenplay for the project.
He also co-wrote the screenplay and songs for Mother of All Shows, which won the award for outstanding narrative feature at the 2023 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and garnered a Canadian Screen Award nomination for himself and co-writer Melissa D’Agostino and composer Rebecca Everett in Achievement in Original Song for Mothers and Daughter (Daughters & Moms) performed by Sarah Slean. Following up, the trio has written the animated feature The Christmas Witch Trial of La Befana. The film stars Anjelica Huston and will premiere in the fall of 2025.
Brock lives in Toronto and is a professor at Humber Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program.
Spotify playlist of available lyrics and libretto by David James Brock