In 1972 Shirley co-founded the Wakefield Tricycle Company in London, England with Ken Chubb. In 1978 she wrote “The Adventures of Super Granny and the Kid” for young audiences and had been on the playwrighting adventure ever since. In 1980 the Wakefield Tricycle Company opened the Tricycle Theatre, a 220 seat theatre that continues to produce plays on the Kilburn High Road in London. In 2006 the theatre received a Special Award for its pioneering political work at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
In 1985, Ken and Shirley returned to Canada.
In Toronto in 1989, after working on a Popular Theatre project inspired by the stories of immigrant women who work in the garment industry, Shirley joined with long time friend and collaborator, Lib Spry, and musician, Arlene Mantle to found Straight Stitching Productions which produced a series of plays until 2003.
In 2015 Shirley received two honours. She was nominated as Best Toronto Playwright in NOW Magazine’s Best of Toronto Reader’s Choice Awards, and on October 25th, she was extremely honoured to be presented with the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Lifetime Membership Award at the annual Tom Hendry Awards.
Since 1998 Shirley had worked with renowned story editor, Ken Chubb, on the development of film and television projects. She was Senior Story Editor on Jozi-H, a 13 part hospital drama co-produced by Inner City Films (Canada) and Morula Pictures (South Africa) which was shown on CBC TV in 2006/07 and SABC3 in 2007.
Shirley was President of the Playwrights Guild of Canada from 2009 – 2011.
She was the Executive Director of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour from 1988-2005, and was an Honorary member of the CSPWC and La Sociedad Mexicana de Acuarelistas as recognition of that work. From mid 2007 – March 2012 she was the editor of Watercolour News.