McFarlane grew up in Toronto and attended St. Lawrence University in upstate NY majoring in theater and writing. She attended the MFA program in directing at Tulane Graduate School in Theater. She spent two summers at Williamstown Theater Festival as a directing assistant. On returning to Toronto, she started her own theater company and produced, wrote and directed 7 plays including I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I WISH YOU WERE DEAD, THE EDUCATION OF JOHNNY, SHUT UP!, GOOD IN BED and others. She was described in Canada’s Globe and Mail as “...one of the brightest young writer/directors around these days” and has been the recipient of several national and provincial grants in Canada. She attended three programs in scriptwriting at the Canadian Film Center in Toronto and was a Banff Television Festival Fellow. She moved to Los Angeles and wrote spec scripts and entered contests, finalizing in several including the Chesterfield, the Nicholl and Sundance. She won the best teleplay at Austin Film Festival. She also wrote a script for the animated series BITCHY BITCH.
As a director, McFarlane specializes in working with new plays as a dramaturg & director including in Toronto on GROWL SWEETLY, THE VAMPIRE PLAY, and the collaborative work QUESTION I ASKED MY MOTHER based on work by Canadian rebel Mennonite poet, Di Brandt. McFarlane continued her work with playwrights in Los Angeles where she directed and was dramaturg on South African play THE PIG AND I by Evelyn Tollman which was described by the LA Weekly as a “sprightly fable of insecurity and acceptance [which] benefits greatly from director Brenda McFarlane’s blithe and trim staging…”
In San Diego she served as Artistic Director for the film, theater and dance festival, Resilience of the Human Spirit. She now lives in Silver City New Mexico where she runs a handmade body product and deodorant business that sells all over the world.
Brenda was brought up to become a writer. Her father is Brian McFarlane, a hockey commentator and historian who has written over 100 books, is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and worked on Hockey Night in Canada for 25 years. Her grandfather was Leslie McFarlane, ghostwriter of the first Hardy Boy books and a journalist, novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker. Her Aunt, Norah Perez, is a novelist.