“FANTASTICALLY TALENTED”
– YANIK COMEAU, THÉÂTRALITÉS
“PERFORMANCE AGILITY OF THE HIGHEST DEGREE”
– Georgia Stone, Binge Fringe
“MAHARJAN EST INOUBLIABLE”
– JAcqueline van de geer, arts et cultur
“AN EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE”
– Alan Cranston, Three Weeks Edinburgh
Lior Maharjan is an interdisciplinary artist working across Canada and internationally. They started telling stories as a child and grew up participateing in creative workshops like YouthWorks at Black Theatre Workshop and various courses at the Montreal School of Performing Arts. More recently, Lior has participated in the Spindle Films Mentorship in Banff and Nadia Chaney’s Workplace Anti-Oppression Workshop. They create both for the screen and stage, taking on a variety of disciplines like directing, translating and script editing, to name a few.
Lior appears in J Stevens’ debut feature, Really Happy Someday, premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. They co-star in the first instalment of George Mihalka’s new anthology horror series, Ominous. Lior’s solo-performance of Wajdi Mouawad’s Alphonse at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival received rave reviews. Other stage credits include Landscape Grindr at La Chapelle, Centaur Theatre’s reopening comedy All I Want for Christmas, Sermo Scomber’s award-winning bouffon clown show Don’t Read the Comments, and Cabal’s site-specific immersive experience La Somnambule (META nominated – Outstanding Lead Performance).
Lior is co-founder and leader of bigT, a performance collective centering trans/GNC narratives. bigT was in residence at Buddies in Bad Times as part of the 2020 Emerging Creators Unit, co-produced with b current performing arts, where the collective created E-TRANSFERS. bigT has been developing an XR project focused on gender euphoria while in residence at Theatre Passe-Muraille.
Lior’s theatrical adaptation of Kai Cheng Thom’s From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, commissioned and produced by Geordie Theatre, received eight Montreal English Theatre Award nominations including Outstanding New Text and Production. Other written works include Eva in Rio, shortlisted for the 2020 PGC Emerging Playwright Award, and Our Tree, a playlet in Boca del Lupo and Centaur’s Plays2Perform@Home series, and an essay recently published by Playwrights Canada Press in This is Beyond: A Time Capsule of Queer Experience.
Lior is interested in the intersection of community advocacy and artistic practice. They currently serve as past-president of the Quebec Drama Federation’s board of directors. Inspired by many brilliant mentors, Lior in turn is inspired by the emerging artists they’ve mentored in programs like Artista and Playbright.
