Makers

Jesse is a Kingston-based theatre artist and musician with a passion for live performance. Jesse has designed and operated lighting for hundreds of musical performances and events in his role as Arts Stage Technician at The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. Jesse is the Technical Director for the Festival Of Live Digital Arts. Past Theatre credits: Projection/Sound Design, Why It’s imPossible (Sweet’nFab Collective), Projection/Sound Design, Sound Design / Musical Composition, Butcher, Armstrong’s War (Theatre Kingston), Sound Design, One Last Night with Mata Hari (Dan School of Drama and Music), Sound Design / Musical Composition, Gruesome
Playground Injuries, Psychosis 4.48, Mary’s Wedding (Common Place Theatre).

Jerall Li is an interdisciplinary theatre artist specializing in lighting, digital media, and raw materials to create immersive, responsive environments. His work explores how changes in brightness, angle, and color can instantly reshape space and emotion. Whether using projection, interactive media, or minimal tech, he focuses on how technology can serve narrative and presence. Trained in scenography and live performance, Li pushes the boundaries of traditional theatre by integrating technology as a core storytelling tool rather than a supporting element.

Kay Kenney is a contemporary dance artist based in Kingston, ON, and the Artistic Director of the Kingston School of Dance. She began her training at KSD in 1994 and later studied in the Professional Contemporary Dance Program at The School of Dance
in Ottawa. Kay has performed and taught across Ontario, Quebec, and Europe, and was a long-time company dancer with Ottawa Dance Directive and Social Growl Dance. In 2016, she founded Movement Market Collective to support and present local dance
artists. She also serves as Director of the Ground UP Dance Festival, which showcases emerging and professional talent. Through her artistic leadership, choreography, and community engagement, Kay is a passionate advocate for the growth of contemporary dance and the arts in Kingston.

Heiden Jacobi (he/him/his) is a visual artist who was born in Toronto, Canada and spent his childhood between Berlin, Germany and Calgary, Alberta. He is currently living in Kingston, Ontario. He specializes in a variety of mediums, including photography, film, graphic design, illustration, sculpture, and visual special effects. He has worked as Co-Special Effects and Projection designer for the Fall 2024 DAN School’s production of The Other Shore; is special effects and props designer/head of department for the Winter 2025 DAN School’s production of Love and Information; photographer, media designer, and co-lighting designer for Robin and Magpie; and is the visual special effects artist for the 2025 Queen’s Black Fashion Association’s runway show.

Anna Sudac is a Kingston-born performing artist and creator. She is one third of vocal trio Foster, Shea & Sudac and is a featured vocalist in Heatwave – A Motown Tribute, You’ve Got A Friend, and Toronto’s Alvin and the Chipmunks Adventure Band. She has appeared in and co-created musicals, plays and staged readings with Thousand Islands Playhouse, Theatre Kingston, Calliope Collective, and more. She toured original musicals coast to coast with SALON Theatre, and was composer/musical director of How to Code A Sandcastle for TIP in 2021. Anna starred in Jay Middaugh’s films LIVE in Kingston, and Still Alive in Kingston, and is a principal narrator of Tourism Kingston’s
Creative Kingston Walking Tours in both English and French.

John is an aspiring drummer and Special Olympics athlete (basketball and baseball) who lives in Kingston. He loves his job at Starbucks Future’s Gate as well as cycling, guitar playing, singing, working out at the Y and travelling. In recent years John has enjoyed watching theatre productions and acting in productions with H’Art and Peerless. He is the subject of a docu-drama film which is being produced currently by filmmaker Amin Pourbarghi. He loves Peerless’ approach to individual self-expression and to working as a team of actors. John looks forward to having more opportunities to express himself and to move audiences through theatre productions and music.

Melissa Mahady Wilton is a Kingston-based dance educator and choreographer, and is a member of UNESCO’s International Dance Council (CID). She is the founder and director of ConCorpsDance Inclusive Dance Programs, an organization devoted to
dance for people of all abilities;, as well as the Executive and Co-Artistic Director of The Conservatory, a fully inclusive dance school. Melissa is a recipient for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Award, for outstanding contributions to community and exemplary attributes of service and dedication through dance.

My name is Natasha Daw, I love to listen to music and sing. I love people and most of all I love to celebrate their birthday. This play has been so much fun because I am with my friends and it is a Reflection of who we all are. We are all super-stars! I want to be a good friend and make people laugh and remember how important they are to me.
Yes, I love cats!!

David has performed across Canada at venues including the Riverboat, the Banff Centre and Hugh’s Room. He has recorded with RCA and produced Avril Lavigne’s first recording. David has shared the stage with Jesse Winchester and the Barenaked Ladies. He has written for and performed on Sesame Street in New York and CBC’s Mr. Dressup. David’s musicals have been produced nationwide, and he is an award- winning musical director.Commissioned by both National and Provincial Parks to compose songs celebrating our natural and cultural heritage, David has performed for more than 50,000 park visitors.
David is a founding member of PeerLess Productions, which continues its involvement with adults with mixed abilities.

Kathryn is a Kingston based director and co-founder of PeerLess Productions. She was a founding member and Associate Artistic Director of the Thousand Islands Playhouse (1982-2012) and the former Artistic Director/General Manager of Theatre Kingston. Favourite directing credits include: Rare, Down syndrome by the Dozen, We’re all in Jeopardy (PeerLess); Sequence (Critic Awards nomination Best Director), The Clockmaker, The Drowning Girls, Trying, The Red Priest, The Drowsy Chaperone (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Hothouse, Perfect Pie, The Shape of a Girl, Butcher (Theatre Kingston). She is very proud to be working with all of the incredible artists involved with Reflections and Refractions.

My name is Nathan Daniel Sikkema, I’m 36 and the youngest out of six children. My number in this performance takes place in Provost Alberta. I was the age of 9 celebrating Christmas. Christmas is my favourite holiday.

I’m Ashaya Garrett, I’m 28. I attend H’art Center. I work at Brynn’s Fresh Market.
I enjoy special Olympics. I do swimming, basketball, floorhockey ,pickleball,
I also play Kingston Thunder baseball. And do powerlifting.
I love to spend time with my family, my boyfriend John, and his family. We have lots of
fun.I love to act and do plays, listen to music and watch tv shows
I am grateful for my life
My dad is our angel

Erin is 36 years old. Since she was 8 years old, figure skating has been her passion. Erin has competed at both provincial and national Special Olympic events. Now that her competitive activities have drawn to a close, she is so happy to share her enthusiasm
for her skating dance, off ice, as a part of her performance in this show. Erin hopes to showcase her dedication to skating while she reflects on her long-time passion.

Hello my name is Jacob Ross Ballantyne,I am a 27 yr old young man living with Down Syndrome experiencing an every day life. What do I think are my greatest talents … Claymation, Narration and becoming a Super Hero as a Dance Machine ! What do others think are my greatest talents? They say I’m funny and witty. That I am a kind and caring gentleman with good taste in music. I am also known as a very creative inventor. I hope those who experience the FOLDA series can feel inspired and entertained. Most of all I hope they come away feeling full of lots of Reflective
Love. Jacob

Hayley is an actor and dancer from Coaldale, Alberta, and a graduate of Rosebud School of the Arts. Notable roles include Ariel in The Tempest at Citadel Theatre and multiple characters in The Little Prince at Theatre Passe Muraille.

Elizabeth is an actor who performed with National Theatre of the Deaf, Quest for Arts, Stratford Festival, Young People’s Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, National Arts Centre, Citadel Theatre, Concrete Theatre and more….

Sam Ferguson (he/him) is an award-winning sound designer/composer from Toronto. After moving to Vancouver to study under acclaimed electroacoustic music composer Berry Truax he returned to Toronto where he became involved with theatre. This experience led him to enroll in the Yale School of Drama where he received an MFA for sound design. Since graduating he has returned to Toronto and has been working in the industry ever since.

Cole Lewis (she/her) is a mom and mad theatre artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and fusing technologies to the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, and the design of moving image works. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole’s practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’ to explore alternative futures. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale and her thoughts on performance have been shared at LMDA, Howlround, FOLDA, Yale CCAM, and Canadian Theatre Review.

Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books, with subjects as diverse as the labour of donkeys to the valuation of art to historical date farming practices in Iraq. He is a polyglot, programmer, animator, musician, and stage director. He is also the co-creator of asses.masses and co-founder of videocan, the national video archive of performance documentation.

Marcel Stewart is a father, artist, educator, and serves as Outreach Director for Suitcase in Point. Artistically, Marcel’s curiosity about history and lineage – within the context of colonialism – is at the basis of his work. Marcel was a member of the Soulpepper Academy and completed the Theatre Enhancement Program (Directing Foreman) through Factory Theatre. Marcel is a multi-time Dora nominated actor and has performed in numerous Dora Award-Winning productions. As a director, Marcel is drawn to stories written by and about Black people. Directing Credits: Toronto Pigeons (Factory Theatre Podcast); Serving Elizabeth (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Meet Chloe (Carousel Players). Currently, Marcel is developing a live digital series inspired by his father’s life in Jamaica. Marcel often returns to the questions: Who am I? How am I? How did I get here? Who have I lost? What is my purpose?

Jason Westerlund is a digital strategist and design leader with over 20 years of experience shaping how people engage with culture, knowledge, and technology. He leads interdisciplinary design teams that blend UX, media production, data strategy, and service design to create inclusive, multichannel experiences for cultural organizations.
Jason’s practice is rooted in collaboration–bringing together artists, technologists, curators, and policymakers to co-create systems that are both technically robust and human-centred. His recent work includes Artsdata, a national knowledge graph initiative aimed at building open, linked cultural infrastructure to support discoverability and interoperability across the arts sector.
Through design, Jason works to foster empathy, inclusion, and barrier-free access to cultural participation. He is passionate about crafting tools and frameworks that reflect the complexity of real-world practice while advancing equity, shared learning, and public impact.

Owais Lightwala is a professor, entrepreneur and optimist. He is an Assistant Professor in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, focusing on entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation in creative industries. He co-founded and leads Sai, a tech startup dedicated to revolutionizing how creatives manage their finances. Lightwala is also the founding Director of The Creative School Chrysalis, a new multidisciplinary performance hub at TMU shaping the future of creative experiences. He has designed and led leadership training programs for the National Arts Centre and the Toronto Arts Council Leaders Lab (2023-2025). He used to be a theatre producer, most notably as the first Managing Director for Why Not Theatre, where he co-led the meteoric growth of the company and transformative projects like RISER and The Mahabharata. He was born in Pakistan, grew up in Dubai, and came to Canada as a teenager, which is why he doesn’t get most pop cultural references from the 90s. His bold strategic voice have been sought out by institutions like National Arts Centre, Canada Council for the Arts, and Canadian Heritage. He has contributed to boards including TO Live, Mass Culture, AMY Project, and Art Ignite. Recognitions include the Business/Arts Arnold Edinborough Award, Stanford’s Impact Program for Arts Leaders, CivicAction DiverseCity Fellowship, and TAC/Banff Leaders Lab Fellowship. He studied theatre at York University, completed Harvard Business School’s CORe program, and earned an MBA from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Find out more on his linkedin

Shabnam Sukhdev is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar with a distinguished background in documentary filmmaking. Currently pursuing SSHRC-funded doctoral research in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at York University, her work critically engages with race, gender, embodiment, and disability through performance and autoethnography. As a racialized artist, Sukhdev employs participatory technologies and autobiographical storytelling to challenge dominant narratives and reshape feminist praxis, transforming communities into co-creators of alternative knowledge. With her Connected Minds scholarship, she explores the intersection of AI, feminist performance, and diasporic family dynamics. Through the creation of immersive, AI-informed therapeutic narratives, she investigates cultural trauma, fractured relationships, and patriarchal structures. Her project aims to foster empathy and empower families with tools for compassionate, non-clinical communication rooted in decolonial and inclusive frameworks.

Zachary McKendrick is a director, actor, researcher, and retired professional wrestler exploring the intersection of Drama, Technology, and HCI. He is one of four 2024 Provost’s Interdisciplinary Scholars at the University of Waterloo where he is continuing his explorations with Professors Daniel Vogel (Exii Lab, Computer Science), Craig S. Kaplan (Computer Graphics Lab, Computer Science), and Andrew Houston (Theatre and Performance, Communication Arts). Zach’s work is supported by a Ph.D. in Computational Media Design (UCalgary, ’24), an MFA in Directing (UCalgary, ’19), and a Specialist BA in Art and Culture (U of T Scarborough, ’16). In 2022 Zach was a Mitacs Globalink Research Award recipient, spending six months working with Professor Jessica Cauchard and the Magic Lab at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. This experience led to research collaborations at the University of Primorska (Slovenia) and the OFFIS Institute (Germany). Artistically, Zach has worked across Canada in theatre, film, and television, including with The Shaw Theatre Festival (Ontario), Tarragon Theatre (Ontario), and Calgary Opera Company (Alberta).

Ronnie Cheng is a queer Hong Konger interdisciplinary artist whose primary mediums are lens-based art, animation, new media art installations, and creative writing. Some common themes are the Hong Konger identity, migration, queerness, and hope. As an emerging artist who recently graduated from the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) from the Bachelor of Media Studies program with a minor in English, Ronnie has completed an artist residency in Calgary, had films screened at festivals globally, and also had gallery work exhibited across Western Canada.

Academically, Ronnie’s research interests lie within the intersections of Hong Kong/East Asian studies, migration/diaspora studies, queer theory, affect theory, media studies, and trauma theory.

A graduate of Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Studies program, Lisa Karen Cox relishes work that combines music, movement and heightened language. Often playing men and other mythical creatures, theatre performance credits include: Flo in Now You See Her (Quote/Unquote Collective/WhyNotTheatre/Nightwood); The Penelopiad (Royal Shakespeare Co/NAC); Friar Laurence in Romeo & (her) Juliet and Manfred Karge’s Man to Man (Headstrong Collective); Horatio in Hamlet (Beyond the Cubical Productions); Brutus in Julius Caesar (Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare), Katherine in Das Ding (CanadianStage/Theatre SMASH), and 2 seasons at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Lisa was also the choreographer for Nightwood Theatre’s Bear with Me and Comedy of Errors, the Assistant Director for We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia…(Theatre Centre), and Salt-Water Moon (Factory Theatre), and the Associate Director for Why Not Theatre’s Like Mother, Like Daughter. Directing credits include Intimate Apparel (Thousand Island Playhouse), 1851: Spirit and Voice (Soulpepper/Myseum), Beyere (CBC Gem/Obsidian Theatre), Anna Karenina for UTM/Sheridan, and Untamed (TMU).

A deep believer in the power of the future, Lisa works extensively with students and educators, with emerging playwrights and artists through classes, dramaturgy, playwriting units and festivals.
Lisa Karen Cox is an Associate Professor of Acting at Toronto Metropolitan. She completed a Master of Science in Education (M.S.Ed.) and spent over a decade working in the performing arts with the Toronto District School Board.
Photos by Dalia Katz

Laura Levin is Associate Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies. She is Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review (former Editor-in-Chief) and Co-Editor of Performance Studies in Canada (with Marlis Schweitzer)—winner of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s (CATR) 2018 Patrick O’Neill Award for Best Edited Collection. She is Editor of Theatre and Performance in Toronto and Conversations Across Borders, a collection of dialogues on performance, politics, and border culture with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Laura has also edited special issues of journals on a wide range of topics: performance art, performing politicians, performance and space, digital performance, performing publics, choreographies of public assembly, and more.

She is author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In, winner of the CATR’s 2015 Ann Saddlemyer Award for best book in English or French, and currently writing a book on performance and political culture in Canada. Laura is a co-curator, with Marlis Schweitzer, of the Performance Studies (Canada) Speaker Series, which emerged out of the SSHRC-funded Performance Studies (Canada) Project, an ongoing collaborative study that seeks to explore how cultural conditions have produced alternative articulations of “performance” in Canadian contexts.

Patrick Blenkarn is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and democracy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. Recent collaborations include asses.masses, culturecapital, and 2021. Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. patrickblenkarn.com/

Jared Mezzocchi (director) is a two-time Obie Award-winning theater artist, working as a director, multimedia designer, playwright, and actor. Based out of New York, Mezzocchi’s work has appeared at notable theaters nationwide, including Geffen Playhouse, Vineyard Theater, The Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons, TheatreWorks Hartford, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth (company member), and many more. In 2016, he received the Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Award for his work in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at the Manhattan Theatre club. In 2020, the New York Times spotlighted his multimedia innovations alongside the pandemic work of four other theater artists, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Paula Vogel. His work on Sarah Gancher’s digital production of Russian Troll Farm was also celebrated as a New York Times critic pick, and praised for being one of the first digitally native successes for virtual theater. In 2023, this digital production of Russian Troll Farm won Mezzocchi his second Obie.

Most recently, Mezzocchi directed The Wind and The Rain: a Story about Sunny’s Bar at En Garde Arts and Vineyard Theater which was performed on a barge in NYC and called “Highbrow Brilliant” by New York Magazine. In Spring 2024, Mezzocchi directed Sandra at TheaterWorks Hartford. As a playwright/performer, he was recently accepted into the 2024 Colorado New Play Festival for his work 73 Seconds directed by Aya Ogawa and commissioned by En Garde Arts.

Mezzocchi is a two-time MacDowell Artist Fellow, a 2012 Princess Grace Award winner, and recently celebrated his retirement at The University of Maryland, where he taught in the MFA Design program for the projection and multimedia track, a curriculum he created in 2012 that graduated 17 MFA students in Multimedia Design.

Over the pandemic, Mezzocchi founded Virtual Design Collective (VIDCO), which has aided in the development of over 50 new digital works over the 18 months of quarantine. This year, he is finishing his book, A Multimedia Designer’s Method to Theatrical Storytelling, which will be published through Routledge. Mezzocchi has a BA in theater and film from Fairfield University, and an MFA in performance and interactive media arts from Brooklyn College.

Iman Datoo (b. 1995) is a multidisciplinary artist based in South Devon, UK. Her practice brings together botany and cartography within the spatial environments of stories to consider forces of agency, liveness, and animacy between plants, soils, and people. Imagination and embodiment are central to her approach, guiding investigations into more-than-human agency and relationships beyond extractivism. Recent works include Movement is Natural (2024), a film on the dynamics of human and nonhuman agency within Cornwall’s mining soils; Soil-Brain, Gut-Brain (2023), an audio-tactile installation exploring soil erosion through the lens of eating, digestion, and nourishment; Kinnomic Botany (2020–22), a film tracing the migratory epistemologies of the potato; and Making a Name (2022), a participatory performance renaming the vegetal world through touch, imagination, and play.

Her work has been exhibited at Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Kingston; Travellers Gallery, Edinburgh; Grays Wharf Gallery, Penryn; Southcombe Barn, Dartmoor; KARST, Plymouth; The Plumb, Toronto; and Drugo More Gallery, Rijeka. She has led workshops and performances at Newlyn Art Gallery, the Natural History Museum, Cambridge University, and Tate Britain.

Datoo was Artist-in-Residence at the Eden Project and University of Exeter (2023), and is the 2025 Stonecroft Artist-in-Residence at Queen’s University Biological Field Station, Canada.

Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker and researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice combines filmmaking with the creation of video installations, performances, and publications. More specifically, her work critically analyzes new modes of subjectivation produced by computational capitalism. She examines the imaginaries circulating in virtual communities, the desires and futures conveyed by disruptive technologies, and new reactionary techno-utopias as shared fictions that populate our collective unconscious. Her works are based on research, combining materialist analysis with poetry, intimacy, and dreams with the aim of dissecting fantasies of unlimited techno-scientific control over reality. Her work has been presented at international festivals and institutions such as Cannes, Berlinale, DOK Leipzig, SEMINCI, Raindance, IndieLisboa, Gijón Film Festival, Cinéma du Réel, Palais de Tokyo, Punto de Vista, Tabakalera, Documenta Madrid, transmediale, International Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, FRAC Île-de-France, iMAL, York Art Gallery, and the Salon de Montrouge, among others. Her film La Mécanique des fluides won the César for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024, among a dozen other awards. In 2025, her third short film, +10k, was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. She was a PhD candidate and taught at Paris 8 University, where she developed a research-creation project on screen capture. She has also been an Associate Professor (ATER) at Gustave Eiffel University, a visiting researcher – DAAD fellow at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany), and a professor at BAU (Barcelona, Spain). In 2023-2024, she was artist-in-residence at the French Academy in Spain – Casa de Velázquez and at the Palais de Tokyo. In 2024, she was awarded a Leonardo grant from the BBVA Foundation, a production grant from the La Caixa Foundation, and the VISIO production grant from the Fondazione in Between Art Film. She is currently artist-in-residence at the Connected Minds program at York University in Toronto. She co-directs the collective After Social Networks (www.after-social-networks.com). She regularly gives workshops, performative lectures, and talks at venues such as Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Escola Massana, The Photographers Gallery, the Locarno Film Festival, Harvard University, Goldsmiths University of London, University of British Columbia, and University of Michigan. www.galahernandez.com

Naomi Campbell has over 35 years of producing, directing, programming and consulting experience. She was Artistic Director of Luminato Festival from 2018 -23 following 6 years as Director of Artistic Development and Producer. She’s developed dozens of theatre, dance and music projects, helped build numerous performing arts companies, including Nightswimming and Mammalian Diving Reflex, and worked at festivals throughout her career, including three years as Industry Producer for Magnetic North Theatre Festival. She is involved in multiple projects across the country and teaches at the National Theatre School, University of Toronto Scarborough and Queen’s University; so far in 2025 Nomi directed Kelly Clipperton’s one-man-lady-cabaret show Let’s Assume I Know Nothing And Move Forward From There, joined the producing team of Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata, and the Board of Vancouver’s PuSh Festival.

Clayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK. He was previously the Director of the Rhubarb Festival – Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance – at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from 2019 to 2023. He worked as Creative Producer on Jess Dobkin’s projects, including You’re Divine as part of Fierce’s Healing Gardens of Bab programme and For What It’s Worth, her large-scale commission at the Wellcome Collection.

Clayton was also the Curatorial Associate at the Luminato Festival and the Managing Producer of CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the United States, the UK, and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Artists-in-Residence in 2023.

Ariane Michaud is a producer and consultant working at the intersection of performance, technology, and creative strategy. With roots in dance, she has held roles with DANCE NOW NYC, JUNTOS Collective, and served as North American Tour Manager for Wang Ramirez. Ariane supports artists and nonprofits through strategic planning, production, and project management, with a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration. Since 2019, she has been the Executive Producer of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI), and in 2024, she founded Consciously Produced, a company dedicated to building thoughtful, community-driven creative productions. Most recently, she has been thrilled to produce Girl Undrunk, a Toronto-based podcast exploring sobriety with humor, honesty, and heart. She continues to dance professionally on a freelance basis, with recent performances in Las Cruces, Boston, and Providence. You can often find her living part-time as a digital nomad—this summer, she’s traveling through Ontario in a camper van with her techy husband and their dog, Rocky.
Photo credit Pedro Jorge

Moe Angelos is a theater maker and playwright who has collaborated with The Builders Association as a performer and writer since 2000. Moe wrote and performed the critically acclaimed Sontag: Reborn at New York Theatre Workshop in 2013, and the production continues to tour. Moe is also one of the Five Lesbian Brothers, and has been a member of the WOW Café since 1981. Moe works in United Scenic Artists 829, assisting with Hollywood magic when she is not treading the boards.

[To hear more of what she has to say about show business, visit http://madehereproject.org/ and browse the artists. http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/prod_sontag.html]

Lucy Simic is a founding member of bluemouth inc., motivated by a desire to break traditional boundaries and explore unconventional performance spaces. Over the past 25 years, Lucy has created works that invite audiences into alternative spaces, challenging prevailing theatre norms. Her work as a dancer, writer, and core bluemouth inc. member, has led to some of the collective’s most iconic and innovative works, including Dance Marathon, a joyful, duration-based, immersive performance; Something About a River, where audience members were taken by bus to four locations along Garrison Creek, It Comes in Waves which had the audience canoe to Toronto Island for a surprise party; and Café Sarajevo which took audience members on a tour of Sarajevo using 360 video binoculars. She continues to push the limits of performance practice with bluemouth inc.’s latest works, ELEPHANT and Lucy AI.
Photo credit goes to Sabrina Reeves,

Christine is a writer, actor, and theatre-maker living on the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Watuth nations. Born in LA to a Mexican-American father and Dutch-British-Canadian mother, Christine now calls East Vancouver home. Christine’s work as a playwright and actor have taken her to theatres across Canada such as Tarragon Theatre, the Arts Club Theatre Company, the Belfry Theatre, Bard on the Beach, and Theatre Replacement, and internationally at places like GRIPS Theatre (Berlin) and South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa). Her plays As Above, Someone Like You, and El Terremoto are slated for publication by Playwrights Canada Press in 2025 and 2026. She is he winner of a LA Drama Critic’s Circle Award, Dora Mavor Moore Award, Jessie Richardson Theatre Award, Tom Hendry Award, a Governor General’s Award nomination, and the Siminovitch Protégée Prize for Playwriting. Christine is a graduate of UBC’s BFA Acting Program.

Sarah/SGS is a director, dramaturg and cultural leader. She co-stewards the Historic
Birchdale, and holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University. Her focus was the
1951 Massey Report and how it impacts the work we make today. She is the former VP
Programming at Arts Commons. Prior to this she was the Artistic Producer for the National
Creation Fund (NAC) and co-founder of both SWS, FOLDA and The Baby Grand Theatre. She
co-stewards the Historic Birchdale, and holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Queen’s
University. She was the 1st female Artistic Director at Buddies in Bad Times and the inaugural
Artistic Associate for The Magnetic North Theatre Festival and created The Collaborations and
The Cycle during her time as Associate Artistic Director of English Theatre at the NAC. SGS co-
authored Manifesto for Now and Create Canada. SGS is on the board of The Canadian Theatre
Museum, Theatre Alberta, and the National Advisory for the National Creation Fund.

Since graduating from George Brown in 2001, Brett has worked with a variety of companies including: Canadian Stage, Stratford Festival, Buddies in Bad Times, Theatre by the Bay, Segal Centre, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Western Canada Theatre, Magnus Theatre, Sunshine Festival, Actors Repertory, and Convergence Theatre. He received the Masques and Mecca Awards for his performance of I Am My Own Wife at Montreal’s Segal Centre. He is the Artistic Producer of Theatre Kingston, sits on the Kingston Arts’ Advocacy Committee, and is the Chair of the City of Kingston’s Arts Advisory Committee.

Sarah Kitz (she/they) is the Artistic Director of GCTC and the Vice President of PACT. She is a theatre creator, performer, mentor, arts leader and award winning director. Much of their time in theatre has been dedicated to new creation, re-envisioning classical works for contemporary interpretation, and helping to bring underrepresented voices to the stage.
Sarah has participated in the Michael Langham Workshop in Directing at Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival’s Neil Munro Intern Directors Project, and is a member of Directors Lab North in participation with Lincoln Centre. They have worked at GCTC, NAC, Luminato Festival, Shakespeare in the Ruins, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Crow’s Theatre, Canadian Stage, Buddies in Bad Times, Nightwood Theatre, Next Stage Festival, SummerWorks, Pandemic Theatre, The Canadian Music Theatre Project, Studio 180, and more. Sarah has taught and directed at Sheridan College, University of Windsor, Toronto Metropolitan University and University of Ottawa, mentored with Paprika Festival, and was extensively involved with The A.M.Y. Project, which supports the creative trajectories of young female and non-binary youth in Toronto through arts mentorship.
Hailing from Tkaronto, Sarah now resides with her family on unceded Algonquin Territory and is grateful to be a guest on this beautiful land.

Michael Wheeler has served as the director of You Should Have Stayed Home in carbon and digital space. His most recent pre-pandemic directing credit was Behaviour at The Great Canadian Theatre Company. He is an Assistant Professor in The DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University and Director of Artistic Research at SpiderWebShow Performance, Canada’s first live digital performance company. Michael was previously Executive Director and Transformation Designer of Generator, a mentoring, teaching, and innovation incubator in Toronto that empowers independent artists, producers and leaders. He has been a curator of live performance experiments with digital technology with FOLDA, The Theatre Centre, Harbourfront Centre, and Praxis Theatre.