Nicolas Billon was born in
Ottawa,
Ontario and grew up in
Montreal,
Quebec. He is the son of Johanne Archambault and writer
Pierre Billon.
The Elephant Song, his first play, premiered at the
Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2004. His second play,
The Measure of Love, was produced there in 2005. A member of the inaugural
Soulpepper Academy, Nicolas's version of
Anton Chekhov's
Three Sisters was produced at Soulpepper in 2007, directed by
László Marton. He also co-created
BLiNK with the other members of the Academy for the
Luminato Festival. In 2009, Billon joined the
Tarragon Playwrights Unit. That June, his adaptation of
Molière's
The Sicilian was one of the hits of the
Toronto Fringe Festival. A few months later, his play
Greenland opened at the 2009
SummerWorks Theatre Festival. It was a critical and audience success, and won both the
Now Magazine Audience Choice Award and the SummerWorks Outstanding Production Award. Later that year, Billon was voted one of the Top 10 Theatre Artists of 2009 by Toronto's
Now Magazine. Billon was a finalist for and won the 2013
Governor General's Award for Drama for
Fault Lines. His play
The Elephant Song was adapted into the 2014 film
Elephant Song, directed by
Charles Binamé and starring
Bruce Greenwood,
Xavier Dolan, and
Catherine Keener. His screenplay garnered both the
2015 Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the
2015 WGC Screenwriting Award for Features & Mini-Series. Billon's play,
Butcher, premiered at
Alberta Theatre Projects in October 2014. The play deals with the theme of justice and features several characters who speak
Lavinian, an
invented language created by two linguists,
Christina Kramer and Dragana Obradović, specifically for the play. ==Film==