Theresa Tova

Theresa Tova is a Canadian actress, singer, and playwright born in 1955 in Paris, France, to Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. She was raised in Calgary, Alberta, and pursued formal training in acting at the University of Alberta.

Tova built her career primarily in stage and musical theatre, with productions including They're Playing Our Song, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Diary of Anne Frank among her stage credits. In 1998, she appeared on Broadway in Ragtime. Her television work includes the role of Marge Atherton on the series E.N.G. in the early 1990s, a performance that earned her a Gemini Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at the 8th Gemini Awards in 1993.

As a playwright, Tova is particularly recognized for Still the Night, a musical play that drew on Jewish musical traditions, including vaudeville and klezmer, to tell the story of two young girls surviving the Holocaust in the forests of Poland. Theatre Passe Muraille staged the work in 1996, and it went on to win four Dora Mavor Moore Awards in the Mid-Sized Theatre division in 1997, taking honors for outstanding new play or musical, outstanding production, outstanding music for John Alcorn, and outstanding female performance in a musical for Liza Balkan. The play was also shortlisted as a finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 1999 Governor General's Awards.

Tova remained active in screen work in subsequent decades, receiving a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Lead Performance in a Web Program or Series at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022 for the web series For the Record. In 2017, she was elected president of the Toronto chapter of ACTRA.