Keith Barker is a Métis artist from Northwestern Ontario and the Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program at the Stratford Festival. He is the former Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts and the 2023 recipient of the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize.

An award-winning playwright, Keith received the 2020 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and the Carol Bolt Award from the Playwrights Guild of Canada. His play This Is How We Got Here was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in 2018. His earlier work, The Hours That Remain, earned the SAT Award for Achievement in Playwriting and the Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change.

As an actor, Keith returned to the stage in 2023 to play Louis Riel in Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade at the Stratford Festival. Other selected credits include Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps (Bruce County Playhouse), Cornwall in King Lear (National Arts Centre), Brutus in Native Earth’s Death of a Chief, Roger Hughes in Seeds, and Bernard Smoke in Fury (Blyth Festival).

Keith is currently directing Yvette Nolan’s The Art of War for the Stratford Festival’s 2025 season.