Member of ACTRA, SAG, CAEA & AEA

Dual-Citizen: United States & Canada

Toni Grates has worked as an actor, writer, director, choreographer and producer in theatre, film and television in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Toni was the “Special Investigator” on YTV’s Gemini Award winning show “Ghost Trackers”. She has also had roles on “The Jon Dore Television Show” and in several Movies of the Week. She has appeared in dozens of commercials in both Canada and the United States. Recent commercials include Tim Horton’s, Polysporin, Old El Paso, Ford, Great Wolf Lodge, Cold FX, Dunkin Donuts, OLG’s “Instant Keno” and Air Transat’s “Eiffel Tower”.

Toni has performed on several stages in Chicago and Los Angeles as well as in many regional theatres, including the Tony Award winning Utah Shakespearean Festival. She was also the resident choreographer at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in 2003. In 2004, Toni’s one woman show, “A String of Broken Curling Irons” (which she wrote and starred in) was produced in Hollywood at the Egyptian Arena Theatre.

No stranger to comedy, Grates has done choreography for several shows at The Second City. She choreographed the Off-Broadway and Chicago version of the original “Sister Bernie’s Bingo Bash” and the Dora Nominated and Canadian Comedy Award winning production of “SARSical” at the Factory Theatre in Toronto.

Toni was also the head writer for the television series “Out There with Melissa DiMarco”; a Canadian sitcom produced for CityTV.  

Grates is the Founder and Director of “The Travelling Stage”: a creative arts education company that brought dance and drama to over 20,000 students this past year. She has also been an adjudicator for the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s High School Shakespeare Competition and for CNE’s Rising Star Competition, a guest artist for the Sears Drama Festival and a juror for the Gemini Awards.

As the co-creator and co-producer of the Award Winning As Promised Productions, she created and produced original shows for the Canadian National Exhibition and the Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Lights. In May of 2007, she created and co-produced “Magic of the Mist”, which won CHUM Television’s Greenbelt Prize Competition’s Top Prize.

Most recently, Toni finished writing her first book "Namaste Bitches & Other Wisdom Nuggets".

Toni is the mom of one amazing little boy named Isaac, who was born in March of 2010.  She’s a member of ACTRA, SAG, AEA and CAEA. She’s also a certified yoga instructor, with a special certification in kids’ yoga.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from York University and a diploma in Musical Theatre from the Randolph Academy.

For more on Toni Grates, please visit: www.tonigrates.com