About Isabella
At a young age, Isabella Shibuta was a lucky winner of an Ottawa school milk contest. Where others’ had regular or chocolate in their carton, she had an audio device that moo’d - entitling her to a prize of free music downloads. The one caveat - she had to answer a skill-testing math question. Raised in a genius immigrant family - her dad being a Polish math-whiz and her mom a Japanese-Brazilian computer scientist - this should have been no trouble. She was incorrect. Her father forgot to apply the rules of BEDMAS that day, and her prize could not be redeemed. A loving daughter, Isabella panicked at school the next day, and claimed she won a cell phone to her friends and classmates. Thus ensued a life of lies and excuses as to why she never carried the cellphone: “My parents said I’m too young”, “It’s in their closet”, “I have to charge it”. Isabella couldn’t keep up the act, and eventually felt compelled to change schools for a fresh start.
From that day forward, all she wanted in life was to explore honesty, openness, and generosity, leading her towards acting and writing. She pursued drama at Canterbury High School, and formed a background in improv and musical theatre. She enjoyed expressing freely, and approaching performance from the personal and specific. Isabella came to Toronto, where she is now based, to study Theatre Performance at George Brown College, where she penned her first works “The Letters of Jane Austen” and her solo piece “Conversation”. She went on to form a career onscreen, with roles on projects like The Handmaid's Tale (MGM-Hulu), Designing Christmas (Discovery+), and The Best (Official TIFF Selection 2024) with each role helping her to dive deeper and deeper into exploring sharing from an honest place. Her career brought her to the CBC Actors’ Conservatory at the Canadian Film Centre, where she starred in the film “Melanie” - that her mentors empowered her to write, from a personal experience.
For the first time, Isabella truly saw herself as both an actor and writer, and expanded through sketch writing programs at Bad Dog Theatre and Comedy Bar Pro. She developed the original series “Alice is Asian” - which she is set to star in - inspired by her own experience as a white-passing mixed race perfectionist. With this series, Isabella became the inaugural winner of the CMF and TOWebfest Next Up! Pitch competition, and a delegate of the Netflix-Banff Diversity of Media initiative. Continuously honing her voice, and seeking deeper honesty and clarity in her work, Isabella has returned to the Canadian Film Centre for the Bell and Blink49 Comedy Series Lab. Believing that life is about exploring truth, and shedding expectations placed on us by others, Isabella is inspired to write coming of age stories that aren’t exclusively about young people.
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