Makers (2018-2025)

Andrew Penner – Sound Designer Andrew is an award-winning performer, musician, composer, sound designer, music director and producer who can be heard on over 50 albums of various styles and has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe. Andrew has worked in theatre for Soulpepper, Crows, Stratford Festival, Canadian Stage, NAC, Obsidian, Musical Stage Company, Native Earth, The Theatre Centre and many others. Andrew has created music for many films including, “One Week”, “Small Town Murder Songs”, “Cooking With Stella”, “This Beautiful City”, “Eadweard” and the television series, “Lost Girl”. He is a founding member of the award-winning, multidisciplinary collective, Kitchenband who create stories inspired by obscure history and geography. Andrew is a Slaight Music Associate at Soulpepper Theatre. Andrew lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and 3 sons. www.andrewpenner.ca

Sophie Tang (she/her) is an award-winning lighting and set designer working in Theatre, Opera and Dance. She has worked with companies including Stratford Festival, Push Festival, Electric Company Theatre, Vancouver Opera, Artsclub Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Citadel Theatre, Canadian Stage, Theatre Replacement and so on. Recent credits: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Vancouver Opera), Undeveloped Sound (Electric Company Theatre), Choir boy (Canadian stage and Artsclub), The Pearl Fishers (Vancouver Opera), Romeo and Juliet (Bard on the Beach), 9 to 5 (Citadel Theatre), S’effondrent Les Videoclubs (Theatre La Seizième), Do You Mind if I Sit Here (Theatre Replacement), Being here (Belfry Theatre), Rez Sisters (Stratford Festival), At the Statue of Venus (City Opera). Portfolio website: sophieyufeitang.com)

Daniel O’Shea (he/him) makes theatre, designs projection, and creates films, using technology and design as a keystone to support narrative and deepen dramaturgy. Daniel employs a low-fi DIY aesthetic, in parallel to the convoluting ideas of existential discourses. Currently his work focuses on states of presence and unbalancing audienceship. Daniel’s artistic research has explored the ephemeral nature of a ‘self’, interruptions of technology on human processes, and the results of cognitive dissonance. Daniel is a founding member of A Wake of Vultures and has been presented by Performance Studies international (PSi), Festival of Recorded Movement, and Shooting Gallery and elsewhere, Daniel’s work has been seen in Canada and internationally.

Chisato Minamimura is a Deaf performance artist, choreographer and BSL art guide. Born in Japan, now based in London, Chisato has created, performed and taught internationally and is currently a Work Place artist at The Place. Chisato trained at Trinity Laban in London and holds a BA in Japanese Painting and MA from Yokohama National University. Chisato approaches choreography and performance making from her unique perspective as a Deaf artist, experimenting with and exploring the visualisation of sound and music. By using dance and technology, Chisato aims to share her experiences of sensory perception and human encounters.

Erin Ball (ze/zir) and Maxime Beauregard (they/them) are white, Queer, Neurodivergent, and Disabled artists who seek to shift barriers in the world of performance art.

Both Erin and Maxime work internationally as performers, coaches, choreographers, producers, accessibility consultants, and workshop facilitators. They are passionate advocates for Disability-led art, accessibility, and striving to create inclusive spaces. They are the creators of a course on Accessibility/Disability in Movement/Circus Practices.

Erin and Maxime are catalysts for change, striving for inclusivity, accessibility, and representation within the arts. They strive to empower Disabled artists, challenge industry norms, and continue to pave the way for a more inclusive and diverse landscape while captivating audiences with their innovative performances.

Image: a headshot of Erin, a white agender human with bright red dyed hair and woods in the background. Erin is auDHD and a double below knee amputee.
Image: a headshot of Maxime, a white non-binary joyful autistic human who experiences chronic pain, smiling. Photo by Shannon Smith of Soulnnection

Peter is an acclaimed theatre director who has worked with Canada’s leading theatre companies including Stratford Festival, Tarragon Theatre, Soulpepper, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and Canadian Stage. Peter directed the world premières of Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company (Theatre Centre), Rosamund Small’s Sisters (Soulpepper), and Rosa Laborde’s Like Wolves (GCTC). Peter’s Dora-nominated productions include The Nether, Killer Joe, Dying City, When the World Was Green and The Jones Boy. As a filmmaker Peter co-wrote one of Poland’s highest grossing feature films: Planeta Singli (Planet Single), and recently directed the pilot of a new Polish comedy TV series. Most recently, Peter directed the 2022 flagship production of Hamlet at the Stratford Festival. His next show is Love’s Labour’s Lost, as part of the 2023 Stratford Festival.

Lisa Auguste is a multi-faceted performer working in Toronto, Ontario. She is a highly sought after professional dancer specializing in ballet to hiphop, latin to breakdance (and everything inbetween). Lisa can be seen on T.V in “Zoey’s extraordinary playlist”’ What we do in the shadows”, “The Boys”, Shadow Hunters”, “The Expanse”, “Disneys -Sneakerella”, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show(Remake)”. She acted in feature films including “Silent Hill 2”, “Jean of the Joneses”, “Shall We Dance” (starring Richard Gere). Lisa was honoured to be a finalist in the first season of “So You Think You Can Dance Canada”, after gracing the Mirvish stage as Cheetah in “The Lion King”. She has shown her prowess dancing in music videos for Katy Perry,Janelle Monae, Jully Black, Kreesha Turner, Shawn Desman and more. She has performed at the PanAm Games Ceremonies in Guadalajara and Toronto. She took to the Four Seasons Stage in “Nixon in China” and “Aida” for the Canadian Opera Company. When she is not performing, Lisa is teaching, working, choreographing and adjudicator across Canada.

Lucy Simic, a writer, dancer, and theatre artist, thrives on interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly with bluemouth inc., where she’s a founding member. Notable works like Something About a River and DANCE MARATHON. Currently, she’s immersed in ELEPHANT, to debut at Harbourfront’s Festival of Cool.

Stephen O’Connell, a core and founding member of bluemouth inc., is known for his diverse work in film, performance, and dance. Collaborating with Radix Theatre and the Wooster Group, he co-founded FREE FALL in Toronto. Stephen co-created and toured DANCE MARATHON and CAFE SARAJEVO.

David Usher is a versatile artist, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. With over 1.4 million albums sold worldwide and #1 singles in multiple languages, his music has captivated audiences globally. Beyond music, he’s a passionate Geek, founding Reimagine AI and co-creating the Climate Clock. David’s book on creativity, Let the Elephants Run, explores innovation and is a must-read for enthusiasts.

A Tkaronto-based actor, Gaitrie is a theatremaker who develops facial expressions and body languages to bring Deaf/hearing actors to work together on the stage in physical theatre styles. Gaitrie continually seeks to challenge herself through new techniques and learning from her mentors who specialize in physical theatre styles.

She is the founder of Phoenix The Fire, a theatre/film hub that supports Deaf artists to discover their talents and to provide ASL theatre/film interpretation service. She has been strongly active in the Tkaronto theatre community for almost 13 years.

Over the years, her solo performances and collaborations have toured nationally and internationally. Gaitrie has been involved in Nickelodeon Jr’s show Blue’s Clues & You (the Deaf librarian Camila) and CBC Kid’s show Silly Paws (Simmi). She is also a news anchor with Sign1 News powered by CNN.

Andrew (he/him) is a limb-different amputee, musician, performer, educator, and emerging writer. He has been a drummer for over 20 years, supporting many different artists and touring around the world. His work explores finding new ways of creating and performing that honour his disability, and placing care and access needs at the centre of the creative process and in every collaboration.

Image description:
Andrew, a white man with long wavy hair looks excitedly at a couple of big, white, home-grown oyster mushrooms which he holds in his limb-different hands.

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?

As they enter a new cycle, Bear Witness and Tim “2oolman” Hill of A Tribe Called Red are reintroducing themselves as The Halluci Nation, to reflect the evolution of their music and mission. “We wanted to pay homage to the Electric Pow Wow and wrap that whole decade of experience up and close the cycle, and in doing so give direct coordinates of where the future was headed. In a nutshell, that’s what this album is about,” says Bear. “We just wanted to make a party record, as well, one that people could dance to while still having the strong message we are known for.”

Tommy Taylor (He/Him) is a community worker, activist and storyteller. For the past several years he has been serving on the frontlines of Toronto’s homelessness crisis in shelters, drop-ins and street & encampment outreach. He’s currently on the steering committees of Health Providers Against Poverty (HPAP) and the Shelter & Housing Justice Network (SHJN). Tommy has worked in the offices of progressive officials at Toronto City Hall and Queen’s Park, and ran as a candidate in the 2015 Federal Election. In 2013 he toured Canada with his award-winning show, “You Should Have Stayed Home: A G20 Romp”, about his arrest at the infamous 2010 Toronto G20 Summit. In addition to being part of numerous COVID emergency response teams, Tommy was part of the team that led the planning and design of SafeTO, Toronto’s Community Safety Well-Being Plan – radically changing the way crisis intervention, violence, policing and trauma are approached.

Laura Levin (she/her) is dramaturg for the VR experience of You Should Have Stayed Home. She is Associate Dean, Research in York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance. Laura is author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In (Ann Saddlemyer Prize), Co-Editor of Performance Studies in Canada, with Marlis Schweitzer (Patrick O’Neill Award), and former Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Theatre Review and Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. Laura has led and collaborated on several artistic projects at the intersection of political performance, site-specificity, archives, and digital media. She is currently Director of the SSHRC partnership project, Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transnational Research-Creation Practices (hemisphericencounters.ca), and most recently served as dramaturg on Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University (Fall 2021).

Jayna Mees (she/her) is an artist-scholar who specializes in performance studies, dramaturgy, and devised theatre. She is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and holds an MA from the Centre for Drama Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research examines intersections between immersive, site-specific, VR, and disability theatre and performance studies. In particular, Jayna is interested in developing place-based dramaturgies of care and access-based modes of research-creation. Some recent credits include: director/performer in Möbius Dreams, (a site-specific piece that was presented as a part of her MA thesis in 2020), co-curator for Moving Publics: An In-Transit Conversation (SummerWorks Exchange Program, 2019) and producer/marketing officer for rochdale at the 2019 SummerWorks Performance Festival).

Justine Katerenchuk specializes in Stage and Production Management of XR performances & events. She is currently based in Toronto where she recently got her degree in Performance Production & Design. Working remotely and managing shows through a variety of social VR platforms. Justine also works designing and worldbuilding for social VR exhibitions and events. She loves to explore and uplift digital art. Some VR works include Stage Manager & Production Coordinator of Finding Pandora X (Double Eye Studios) and Stage Manager of Collider (Single Thread Theatre Company).

Beth is an award-winning lighting, set, projection, and mixed-reality designer whose work has been seen on stages around the world for over 30 years. A leader in new forms of performance, she co-created and directed ‘Bury The Wren’, a Virtual Reality / Live performance, and recently led a VR Performance residency at Canadian Stage, and is currently co-directing Blyth Festival’s Young Company in VR, and cocurating the ‘Multiple Realities’ section of World Stage Design 2022 to be held in Calgary. Founder of Playground Studios, she has presented at the Prague Quadrennial, Laval VR, and many others. Her return to the live carbon-real stage was marked by the March 2022 opening of “Steel Magnolias” at Theatre Calgary. Beth is a proud charter member of ADC IATSE 659, on the board of Tara Beagan & Andy Moro’s Article 11, and on the steering committee of the PXR symposium (Performance and XR).

www.playgroundstudios.ca

David Mesiha (Composer | Media-Designer) is an award-winning music composer and sound/video designer. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. He is intrigued by the relationships between form and medium. His work utilizes multichannel immersive audio, interactive design and Digital Performance. He has worked on shows such as Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, and Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy. He has been nominated and won Jessie Richardson Awards in multiple categories and most recently received a Dora award nomination for his sound design work on Oraltorio by IFT theatre. David’s music has spanned multiple mediums and formats such as video games, film, theatre and interactive media. Currently David is working with Theatre Conspiracy on Victim Impact as well as the development of his project Same Difference that applies immersive media, chamber music and video mapping to examining issues of identity, belonging and immigration.

Seyed M. Tabatabaei is an Iranian multidisciplinary designer/storyteller based in Montréal. Completed his Master of Design at Concordia University, his recent focus of study and practice has been the medium-specificities of Virtual Reality and its narrative affordances. Holding a BSc. in Architecture and MA in Animation, he enjoys interweaving the conventions of filmmaking with the interactivity of game design within the realm of Mixed-Reality which centers on spatial experiences. With more than a decade of professional practice in the field of architectural design, 3D visualization, film editing and animation in Montréal, Tehran and Dubai, he is currently making VR and 3D animation experiments which touch on social/cultural concerns.

Website: https://eyeseyed.com

Andy Aloisio (aka Joker) has built VR worlds since 2018. In 2020 he supported Rec Room’s Orange Bucket Acting Troupe in its production of Back to the Rec Center, a VR theater homage to Universal’s Back to the Future. In 2021 he did programming and technical development for Welcome to Respite, a live VR adaptation of a live immersive theater production by CoAct Productions. Andy is a former law student, and is currently studying Unity development and programming. github.com/jokerispunk
twitter.com/jokerispunk

Flora is an undergraduate student in her final year at Queen’s University. Under the supervision of Nicholas Graham of the School of Computing and Michael Wheeler of the Dan School of Drama & Music, Flora collaborated on a research project titled “Toward Live Theatre Hosted in Virtual Reality”, where a simulation of a prisoner transport bus is programmed to deliver the events associated with Tommy Taylor’s stage play, “You Should Have Stayed Home.” After receiving her Bachelor of Computing (Honours) in Biomedical Computing – Specialization (Computing), Flora aims to apply for a multi-disciplinary Master’s program that integrates the fields of study in Computer Science, Engineering, and Life Sciences.

Michaelah Wales (she/her) worked with a team of undergraduate students to create a VRChat world environment for use in the virtual reality performance of You Should Have Stayed Home. This work was conducted as part of the Queen’s University Computer Science Advanced Undergraduate Project course. Michaelah completed her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at Queen’s University in the spring of 2022, with a minor in Drama. Her interests are virtual reality, theatre design and live performance. She hopes to combine these areas of study by pursuing research on virtual reality theatre performance production.

Zarrin Tasnim (she/her) is a fourth year Computer Science Major at Queen’s University, Kingston who specializes in Artificial Intelligence (AI) stream. This year, she worked alongside two other teammates to design and develop a VRChat world with the intended purpose of replicating a scene from the play “You Should Have Stayed Home”. During this project, she was fascinated to see how computer science and theatre could combine in an interdisciplinary manner. The project was also a culmination of her knowledge and skills that she was able to apply in a practical setting outside of theoretical principles that she learned in her previous compsci courses. She also developed an interest in research involving both AI and game design, and would like to learn how to implement AI non-playable characters (NPCs) for VRChat worlds in the future.

Anthony Lee (he/him) is an emerging writer, director, interdisciplinary artist working in theatre and film on the unceded territories colonially known as Vancouver. His work focuses on challenging existing boundary between cinema and live-performance. As a Hong Konger, his works investigate the impacts of colonialism and totalitarianism and has been presented in film festivals across Canada. Anthony received his BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and is currently an artistic associate at Radix Theatre.

Andie Lloyd (she/he/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist and community advocate, currently based on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territories. She works as a lighting and video designer, a platform consultant and writer, primarily working with Isadora. Her recent projects include her Surtitle & Projection Design work with Neworld Theatre’s Clean/Espejos, an interactive and real-time operated lighting design for FakeKnot’s whip, and is thrilled to be joined by some of her favourite people for her FOLDA debut!
www.andielloyd.ca

Alyssa Kostello (she/her) is a queer creative working primarily in film. Her first short film Zero (writer, Sustainability Producer) won a Green Seal from the Environmental Media Association and played at festivals globally. It’s now streaming on Sofy.tv and The Green Channel. She has produced a handful of short films, plays and live events, and is a co-producer for the indie feature How to Ruin The Holidays starring Colin Mochrie and Amber Nash. In 2021 she was a Sustainability Coordinator on the Netflix film Mixtape starring Julie Bowen. She is excited to be dipping her toes back into theatre with this team!
Alyssa is grateful to be living, learning, working, and creating on unceded sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxw (Tsawwassen), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Kwantlen, Stz’uminus, šxwməθkwəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxw (Musqueam), səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) territory.

Jamie Sweeney (she/her) is a production manager, a technician, a designer, an artist, a performer, and all the other ways she can find herself deeply involved in the world of theatre. She is currently living, working, and creating on the unceded traditional Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil- Waututh Nations. She holds a BFA in theatre production, design, and performance from Simon Fraser University. Previous credits include: Peace Country (rice & beans, 2022). Migration (Fight with a Stick, 2022), Made in Canada Concert Tour (rice & beans, 2021), Palimpsest (Pacific Theatre, 2021), Emilia (United Players, 2021).

Megan Lane (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Vancouver area with experience in theatre as a technician, a designer, a performer, and as a puppet maker and puppeteer. Megan graduated from the Stagecraft and Event Technology program at Douglas College in 2019, and is now at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts in pursuit of her degree in Theatre Production and Design. Currently, she is exploring subjects such as design led creation in performance, devised theatre, tactility within contemporary performance, the intersection between design and performance, interdisciplinarity, and non hierarchical collaboration. As she moves forward in her artistic journey, Megan is excited to explore all that is to be learned and discovered within the lifelong practice of creativity.
Megan is grateful to be living, learning, working, and creating on unceded sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxw (Tsawwassen), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Kwantlen, Stz’uminus, šxwməθkwəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxw (Musqueam), səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) territory.

June (she/her) is an artist, musician, and theatre production designer passionate in all aspects of sound, set, and video. In 2019, she graduated from the Douglas College Stagecraft and Event Technology program and is currently studying in Simon Fraser University working towards her BFA in Theatre Production and Design. Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, June has been surrounded by the colourful sounds and sights from the cities to the mountains; sparking an interest in exploring the interrelations between sounds and their unique personalities. With over 15 years of practice in classical music and composition, her sound design works include “7 Stories” (Douglas College), “Selfie” (SFU SCA), and “The Tempest” (Carousel Theatre for Young People). Her other works also include: “Peter and the Wolf” (Collaborator), “Our Eyes Will Adjust” (Set Designer & Technical Director Phase 1), and “Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night!” (Projection Designer, Sound Programmer, and Editor for the online workshop by Davey Calderon).

Clayton Lee (he/him) is a Toronto-based performance artist. Previous performances include (◕‿◕✿) at The Performance Arcade in Wellington, New Zealand and Chapter’s EXPERIMENTICA in Cardiff, Wales; \ ( ` 0 ́ ) / at Fringe Arts in Philadelphia; Duets for Beginners (SummerWorks Performance Festival); Chew, Chew, Swallow, Spit (Rhubarb Festival); and Informal Beginnings (Katzman Contemporary’s Duration & Dialogue II). His publication Brandy, the Virgin Slayer – Missed Connections appears as part of the BOOK MACHINE Project at Centre Pompidou in Paris, now part of its permanent Kandinsky Collection. Clayton is currently the Rhubarb Festival Director at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Managing Producer of CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Michael Rubenfeld (he/him) is a performance maker based in both Poland and Canada. He has made several works with Sarah Garton Stanley including The Book of Judith and We Keep Coming Back which has toured through Poland, Canada and to Berlin and London. His newest play, Alte Hajm / Old Home, co-written with director Marcin Wierzchowski, is running in repertory at the Nowy Teatr in Poznań, Poland. Michael is the former Artistic Producer of the SummerWorks and Progress Festivals in Toronto and the founder and Artistic Producer of CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is also the co-founder and co-director of FestivALT, an alternative Jewish arts collective based in Krakow, Poland. He is a graduate of the National School of Canada.
mrubenfeld.com

Frank Donato (he/him) is a multimedia artist specializing in light and projection design. Having first experimented with engineering digital performance with SpiderWebShow in 2017, Frank is thrilled to continue to experiment with using the internet as not just a collaboration tool, but as a collaborator. Recent credits as an assistant or associate designer include: No Change in the Weather, Blindness (Mirvish Productions), The Barber of Seville (Canadian Opera Company), The Neverending Story, Little Shop of Horrors (Stratford Festival), Out the Window (Luminato/The Theatre Centre), Le Wild West Show De Gabriel Dumont (National Arts Centre). As a designer: Orestes (Tarragon Theatre), Daisy (Great Canadian Theatre Company), The Revolutions (SpiderWebShow Performance). Recently, Frank was the Video Production Coordinator at Tarragon Theatre, facilitating the digital presentations of works originally designed for stage.

James Long (he/him) is a director, actor, writer and teacher whose creative practice occurs in a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts, including as a co-founding Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement (2003-2022) and as an independent artist working in live performance, community engaged practice and public art. James’s work has been presented across North America, Europe and Asia and includes Weetube, Footnote Number 12, Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Town Criers, BioBoxes: Artifacting Human Experience, King Arthur’s Knight, How to Disappear Completely, Morko, Winners and Losers and others. Long graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Theatre Program in 2000 and received a Master’s in Urban Studies in 2018. He serves as the president of the organization that stewards Vancouver’s Russian Hall, a multi-purpose performance and gathering space, and is an assistant professor in Theatre and Performance at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Arthi Chandra is a Vancouver based director, writer, and theatre maker. Her practice is rooted in devising text-based new works, and adaptations of contemporary and classical plays. Her work examines ways in which identities of race, gender, class, and queerness intersect with one another, and how people and ideas are shaped by systems and institutions. Recent works include Done/Undone at Bard on the Beach, and Passenger Seat with the Library Performance Collective. She is a graduate of the theatre performance stream at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Nico Dicecco (he/him) is a projection designer, videographer, photographer and all around technical make-the-art-happen person based in Vancouver, BC. His recent work includes technical direction for It Lives in my Bedroom (Playwrights Theatre Centre) and Body Parts (Tara Cheyenne Performance), stage management for Benevolence (Ruby Slippers Theatre), production management for You Touch Me (Arash Khakpour and Emmalena Fredriksson). He also recently helped create the feature length films In Camera (Realwheels Theatre) and Mild Life (Wolf Pelt Productions). Nico holds a PhD in English from Simon Fraser University for his research on adaptations and performance in the context of digital media.

Jordyn Wood (they/she) is a queer theatre artist living and working on the traditional ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, in so-called “Vancouver”. They hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Simon Fraser University’s School of Contemporary Arts in the Theatre Performance stream. Their practice has been intentionally varied, jumping from devising to playwriting to directing to curating and producing. Jordyn is thrilled to be back working with Theatre Replacement as Production Assistant after working on Through My Lens at FOLDA Festival 2022, Best Life, and Do You Mind If I Sit Here?

Dr. Patrick Parra Pennefather is an award-winning com-poser, designer of asynchronous, synchronous, blended and hybrid instruction, teacher, researcher and disruptor. He has mentored multi-disciplinary teams co-constructing scalable digital prototypes with over 50 companies and organizations in games, mobile dev, Mixed Reality, VR, AR, education and the arts. Patrick has facilitated human-centred work-shops in-person and as a virtual cat for EA, Riot, Microsoft Games, and many others in the xR space. He’s published multisyllabic words in the fields of 3D, Sound Design, xR, VR, MR, Bio-Medical Visualization and Agile application development. He’s an Assistant Prof at UBC Theatre and Film, and a founding member of the Master of Digital Media (MDM) Program.

Rebecca Cuddy – Concept, Direction, Performance, Visual Art, Sound Design (she/her)

Métis multi-disciplinary artist and mezzo-soprano Rebecca Cuddy is acknowledged as ‘the next generation who are going to do incredible things’ (Newman, The Whole Note 2019). This season she made her Canadian Opera Company debut in ‘Voices of Mountains’, appeared in Soundstreams’ ‘Garden of Vanished Pleasures’ and ‘Encounters: Indigenous Voices’, and ‘Shatter’ with Toronto Concert Orchestra.

As of 2017, Rebecca has sung in the premieres of several new Indigenous opera works across Turtle Island, including Two Odysseys; Pimootewin and Gállábártnit (Dora Award; Outstanding Ensemble), Shanawdithit (Dora Award; Outstanding New Opera), Flight of the Hummingbird and Li keur; Riel’s Heart of the North.

www.rebeccacuddy.com

Murdoch Schon – Digital Dramaturgy, Technical Direction (they/them)

Murdoch Schon is a nonbinary theatre creator and digital darling. Born and raised in Treaty One Territory (Winnipeg), they have been involved in the Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) English theatre scene for almost a decade. Murdoch is fascinated by provocation, vulnerability, and the role of risk and failure in art-making. In recent years they’ve grown to love experimenting with digital work and new modes of theatrical experiences that bring folks together in the spirit of community, joy and transformation.

Murdoch is a graduate of the National Theatre School Directing Program and has a BFA, Specialization in Theatre and Development, from Concordia University.

Alexander Theofanopoulos- Augmented Reality Developer (he/him)

Alexander is a self-taught software engineer living and working in Montreal, Canada. He specializes in identifying and repairing critical issues and inefficiencies within codebases. He’s been working in Montreal’s tech industry since 2014. He’s worked for companies like Warner Bro’s Games, and Intel.

Yvette Nolan – Dramaturgical Consultant (she/her)

Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, and the short play-for-film Katharsis. She co created, with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight, the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt, about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan. She is the company dramaturg for Sum Theatre. Other recent dramaturgy includes The Election by Natasha Greenblatt and Yolanda Bonnell, Wardo by Jimmy Blais, Chapter 21 by Starr Muranko, bug by Yolanda Bonnell, Many Fires by Charlie Peters. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.

Nicholas Potter is a sound-centric Toronto-based artist. A composer, sound designer, and writer, Nick had spent the past couple of years creating children’s theatre for drunk adults with his vaudevillian drag troupe, The Diet Ghosts. His sound design work has been featured in various festivals such as Paprika, Sunmerworks, and Toronto Fringe, and currently he is composing the music for an upcoming visual album debuting at the 2021 Toronto Fringe Festival.

Jaime Lujan is a Toronto-based actor, costume designer, and performance artist. Also known as his drag alter ego, Lucinda Miu, Jaime has most recently appeared in The Christmas Set-Up (Lifetime) and Queens (CBC Gem). His costuming work can be seen in the first season of Canada’s Drag Race, Private Eyes, and various ad campaigns such as Sodastream, Amazon, and Mattel.

Renée Wong (she/they) is an actor, playwright, and arts administrator based in Toronto. She received her training at Humber College in their Theatre Performance Program and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, specialized in Strategic Management with a minor in Theatre Performance. Renée is interested in creating work that explores marginalized stories, inspired by her personal experience being raised in both Hong Kong and Toronto. Her play, We Are Humans, Aren’t We? tackling the themes of self-identity and bullying,premiered at the Act Fast Theatre Festival 2019 and is in the process of further development. Renée has worked with Crane Creations Theatre Company as an Artistic Producer, and as a Festival Administrator with Paprika Theatre Festival 2018-2019. Currently, Renée is a member of the Design Lab at Paprika Theatre Festival 2020-2021. She is also part of Factory’s Foremen as an Apprentice Sound Designer. You can follow more of her work on Instagram at @reneeewcs.

Diamond E. Srey is a musician and sound designer. He is drawn to creating emotional soundscapes that can be considered avant-pop. With inspiration from the likes of FKA Twigs, all the way to Sigur Rós; Diamond brings a refreshing take on creating compelling narratives using sound and music. Diamond has showcased work at the Paprika Festival, and The Mixed Arts Performance Partnership Program. He often implements themes of mental health, addiction, feminism and queerness. Diamond studied Theatre Production at Humber College, graduating in 2019, and immediately began working backstage at Rebel Nightclub, Budweiser Stage and Casa Loma. Diamond is currently enrolled in a Music production program and is working on an EP for his solo project Childhoods (on Spotify). He also enjoys working on other musical projects with his bandmates.

Stephon Smith A.K.A Spliffon is an actor, rapper, songwriter, producer, director, and sound designer. Born in Toronto, Stephon spent his early childhood years surrounded by the sounds of Hip Hop, RnB, Reggae, and Dancehall music from all eras. After moving to Brampton at the age of 9, Stephon began writing songs of his own. He later took an interest in acting and stand-up comedy and began writing scenes and stories on his spare time. Stephon attended Humber College where he wrote numerous songs for different productions within the Theatre performance program. He also performed in various Humber Theatre shows such as, “High Point Fields”, “U.R.U”, and “The Sycorax Brood”. Following his Theatre training Stephon and his brothers formed an independent music collective called Blacksmith Society. He also released a collaborative project called “The Remedy” featuring Spliffon with his 2 brothers “Shaman Nostra” and “Von Blanco”. Stephon is looking forward to releasing his first solo project in the near future.

Keira Marie Forde is a multi-disciplinary physical performer and creator. Keira is passionate about creating cross-cultural physical work that explores her connection with the Caribbean Canadian community. As an artist existing in community settings, focusing on making connections with youth through developing their personal physical literacy through summer camps, childcare, and teaching/coaching with theatre for young audiences is her biggest joy. Her recent credits include Doomsday vs Dream Day With Theatre Direct; Wellness Wednesday with the Peel District Schoolboard; Relay with Expect Theatres Beats and Intentions; Infinity Machine with Sharron Moore at Humber Theatre; Unleashed with George Brown Dance and The North American Film Awards with Diva Diverse. Keira is a recent graduate of the mentorship program with the Coco Collective window of opportunity program, a graduate of Humber’s Theatre Performance Program, and the George Brown Dance Performance Preparation Program.

Deivan Steele is a South African-Canadian jack of all trades: he acts, directs, writes, educates, plays music, and composes for the theatre. He’s based between Tkaronto and K’jipuktuk (Halifax), and has worked with theatres in both cities and abroad including Driftwood, Shakespeare in Action, Bad Hats, Shakespeare by the Sea, Unwrap Theatre, DaPoPo Theatre, and Prague Shakespeare.

Alten Wilmot (he/them) is a multidisciplinary artist. He is the founder of Unwrap Theatre and in his teenage years, he founded Voices Over Time – a troupe that provided free concerts for long-term care facilities. He has worked with companies from coast to coast, performing in two Dora Award winning productions, receiving a Denny Award from the KW Arts Awards and the Queer Emerging Artist Award from Buddies in Bad Times. Looking forward, he continues to explore how contemporary dance can be more authentically utilized as a narrative device, and remains curious about the interracial experience, intimate love in friendships, and his fear of parenting…

2Skins Entertainment is a multimedia production company rooted in the principles of liberation through expression. The company was started by Olivia Viggiani and Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah, both with a background in theatre performance and a proclivity for the digital medium. Our focus is to explore what it means to be othered in society by empowering all human experiences, without question of the moral compass. With a dedication to finding nuance within historically biased storytelling, we are passionate about challenging colonial perceptions of creativity and exceptionality. Making way for fresh new voices as agents of change. 2Skins is thankful to Theatre Direct for inviting us to participate in this year’s SpiderWebShow Thought Residency and grateful for the platform to create during these times.

Kristen Leboeuf is an emerging theatre creator and administrator currently based in Kingston, Ontario. Coming from a technical background, she finished her undergraduate honours degree in Stage and Screen at Queen’s University and immediately travelled to the Banff Centre to train in Technical Direction (2016). She then spent a few years working as a technician and lighting designer before deciding it wasn’t what she wanted to spend her life doing. Kristen recently graduated from the Master of Arts, Arts Leadership program at Queen’s University (2020) and she is now working towards a career in producing and artistic management of theatre. She currently wears a variety of hats working as the Head of Marketing for Single Thread, Associate Artistic Producer of the Kingston Theatre Alliance, and Producer for Festival Players.

Justine Katerenchuk is a Toronto based theatre practitioner and a graduating student of the Performance: Production & Design BFA program at Ryerson University. She has focused her studies mainly on Production Management and Technical Direction. She has recently been exploring different avenues of XR performance especially through her capstone work at Ryerson. She is interested in continuing to explore different types of performance that can be discovered through new technologies and is excited to be working on more XR projects this Spring, especially Collider. Some digital performances she’s worked on include rabbit hole (2021) & Love and Information (2020).

Stephanie Fung (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and arts worker who falls somewhere between her family’s first and second generations on this land, and flat on the understanding that this land was not meant for her. Upon graduating from Queen’s University (BAH in Drama and Indigenous Studies), Stephanie joined the Kingston Theatre Alliance as an Assistant Theatre Critic. Select performance credits include: The Intangible Queer (YIKES a Theatre Company); Y2Kaper (6am Productions); Talk to Me (Alisha Grech MA Thesis); Christina, the Girl King (5th Company Lane); Between a Wok and a Hot Pot (Theatre Count); In This World (Theatre Count); paper SERIES (5th Company Lane); and Concord Floral (Theatre Kingston).

Jake Runeckles is a theatre maker, musician, coding enthusiast, and advocate for positive change. A studious kid, Jake began training in classical piano when he was 4 years old, and as a teenager, outside of his devotion to maths, sciences, and programming, he developed a love for musicals. He trained as an actor at George Brown Theatre School, and the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre. In addition to acting, he has worked as a playwright, as a producer, and as a musician for companies such as Cahoots Theatre, Clay and Paper Theatre, and Theatre by the Bay. Selected acting credits include The Neverending Story, Henry VIII (Stratford Festival); I and You (Outlook Theatre); The Secret Garden (Young People’s Theatre). Jake has been excited to revisit the digital programming realm of late, as the web developer for the SpringWorks Festival, and now as a producer for Collider with Single Thread.

Howard Dai is a Taiwanese-Canadian actor, performer, and theatre artist living on qiqéyt territories, works on the unceded territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Nations. He holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. He has worked as a performer, collaborator, and producer with Carousel Theatre, Single Thread Theatre, Fight With A Stick Performance, Re:Current Theatre, rice & beans theatre, Rumble Theatre, Radix Theatre, HIVE Performance Collective, and Playwrights Theatre Centre. His work the Rex Project received support and residencies from 149 Arts Society, National Theatre School’s Art Apart program, and Impulse Festival’s Peek Fest Digital Residency, He is currently the Associate Artistic Producer with rice & beans theatre, supported by Canada Council for the Arts’ Professional Development for Artists grant. He has also done digital programming, sound design, and musical composition for theatre and dance. Visit www.howarddai.com.

Sydney is an actress, director, voice over artist and a co-founder of a Jessie Award nominated immersive experience company called Third Wheel Productions. She specializes in movement-based performance and immersive experiences using experimental methods and technology. Sydney has trained with SITI Company in both Viewpoints and Suzuki, with Frantic Assembly on ensemble devising and worked extensively in movement-based techniques at Capilano University. Her mission is to push the boundaries of storytelling and blur the lines between what defines an audience member and a performer.

Nita Bowerman is a multi-disciplinary performance-based artist, mixing the mediums of dance, acting and digital art. She is an experimenter of form and designer of content. Nita is a curious and creative wanderer who finds delight in abstraction. Art is the medium through which she processes existing. A graduate of SFU School for Contemporary Arts, Nita is grateful to be living and working on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh) First Nations.

Joshua Doerksen is a digital creative, multi-disciplinary artist and owner of the media-marketing company Sprout Wise. Over the past decade he’s had a distinguished career as a music producer, sound designer and composer; working on dozens of professional theatre productions, radio jingles, film scores and more. Joshua graduated from the University of Guelph with an honours degree in classical music composition and vocal performance. He recently completed an artist residency at the Banff Centre of the Arts for emerging technology as well as collaborated with the National Arts Centre for their Grand Acts of Theatre. Joshua is currently the lead singer of a rock band called The Mystics and is excited about exploring new horizons in sound design and music composition for virtual reality.

Kaelyn is a full-time coder, practicing martial artist, and lover of all animals (except for insects). She loves VR, when it doesn’t make her sick, and enjoys creating interactive things.

Charles Douglas is thrilled to be collaborating with Single Thread for the first time. He works internationally as an actor, movement and fight director, and teacher. Credits include: A Christmas Carol, Anne and Gilbert (NAC English Theatre); Beauty and the Beast, Shrek: The Musical, The Addams Family, Into the Woods, Mary Poppins (Neptune Theatre); The Tempest, Turn of the Screw (Two Planks); Unconscious at the Sistine Chapel (2b theatre company, world premiere); Anne of Green Gables and Ted Dykstra’s Evangeline (Charlottetown Festival, world premiere). Charles has also lent his voice and movement to Dream Adoption Society’s XR work. He teaches at the Vancouver Film School, is a guest lecturer on the MA Character Animation programme at Central Saint Martins (UK), and collaborates with Sheridan College’s SIRT Centre on their innovative research. Charles is a proud Chevening Alumnus, a Fellow of the RSA, and a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Upcoming: The Hatchling (Trigger, UK). My thanks to the entire Single Thread team and ensemble. Love to my family and my wife, Sierra.
Visit: www.charlesdouglas.ca. Charles Douglas is participating with permission from CAEA.

Chloe Payne is a physical theatre performer, creator and arts educator based in Vancouver. As a graduate of the prestigious physical theatre school École Philippe Gaulier, she uses physical theatre, improvisation, devising along with text-based creation styles to produce theatre that is funny, relevant and poignant. Creation and devising credits include: The Five Points (Theatre by the Bay), Configurations of a Divine Bitch (Goat Howl) and Waiting for Batteries (Slippery People). As a performer, she specializes in physical comedy and classical text. Noteworthy credits include: Northern Lights (Theatre by the Bay), The Stranger (DLT Teatro), Antigone (Soup Can Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Single Thread Theatre Company). She teaches physical theatre for various institutions, including: Rumble Theatre, The University of Toronto, Havergal College, The Storefront Theatre, The County of Simcoe and Sweet Action Theatre Company. Follow Chloe: @payne.chloe

Nicole Eun-Ju Bell is a Toronto based mixed-race multidisciplinary artist with a passion for performance and technology. She is fascinated with cyborgs and Loïe Fuller. Among other things, she is an actor, projection designer, writer, and musician. More recently, she has branched out into producing podcasts and delving into the live-stream medium. She’s worked on shows at Theatre Passe Muraille, CanadianStage, Hart House Theatre, Toronto Fringe, Next Stage, and Summerworks. This is her first foray into Virtual Reality performance and she’s thrilled to be working with a wonderful team, exploring this new intersection of performance and technology.

Alex Dault is a VR game designer and producer currently pursuing the development of virtual reality applications at the Centre for Entertainment Arts in Vancouver, BC. He was the executive director of PXR2020, a conference that brought together artists and technologists from across Canada into VR in October 2020. Before that, he was Artistic Director of Theatre by the Bay in Barrie, Ontario from 2014-2018. His works as a director, playwright and puppeteer have included Caribou Cave (2019), Northern Lights (2018) The Five Points (2017), Turkey Shoot (2016), Firebrand (2014) Alex studied at George Brown Theatre School, Queen’s University and at École Philippe Gaulier.

Liam Karry is the founding and current Artistic Director of Single Thread. He is also the Artistic Producer of the Kick & Push Festival, which he co-founded in 2015, as well as the Artistic Producer of the Kingston Theatre Alliance. He works primarily as a director, producer, and dramaturge. He has trained at Queen’s University, Director’s Lab North, Tarragon Theatre and with Punchdrunk Enrichment in the UK. Recent directing credits include The Flick by Annie Baker, as well as Ambrose and Unless, two original immersive theatrical experiences staged in Bangkok, Thailand.

Shelby Bushell is a theatre director and stage manager based in Vancouver pursuing a Masters of Digital Media from Ryerson University where she is researching interactive storytelling and future technologies as they apply to Canadian theatre. She is captivated by the potential that exists at the intersection of theatre and digital media and is thrilled to be working with Single Thread Theatre as XR Producer. Recent directing credits include: IRIS (Wunderdog Theatre), The Trophy Hunt (November Theatre), Born Yesterday (Ensemble Theatre Company), Dear Elizabeth (Wunderdog Theatre), and The Shape of a Girl (Stonesthrow Productions).

professional experience. Throughout her career, Sylvia has participated in the growth of some of Atlantic Canada’s most dynamic theatre companies and has toured internationally. Sylvia has proudly dedicated her career to the promotion of new voices and has assisted in the development of more than 20 world premieres. At present, Sylvia serves as the Managing Director for Heist, a Nova Scotia based live art production company and studio.

An interdisciplinary artist situated in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Legere is the Co-Artistic Director of queer performance company The
Accidental Mechanics Group, and Associate-Artistic Director of Zuppa Theatre Co. His solo performance, “Let’s Not Beat
Each Other To Death” (created in collaboration with the National Arts Centre), was presented at the Stages
Festival (Halifax), OUTstages (Victoria), SummerWorks (Toronto), PuSh (Vancouver), FTA (Montreal), IMPACT (Kitchener), Chapter
Arts Centre (Cardiff, Wales) and MAYFEST (Bristol, UK). He has released two solo albums: Quiet The Station and To the Bone:
Songs from Splinters. He composes music and sound for theatre and film, and is currently an artist-in-residence at The Theatre
Centre in Toronto. An avid and passionate collaborator, his work is fascinated with sexuality, vulnerability, intimacy, the destruction
of persona, and the celebration of performance.

Richie Wilcox is an educator, a fiercely queer artist, and a creative collaborator. He is the founding artistic director of the live art company Heist based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. In four short years, Wilcox has helped create The Princess Show, Princess Rules, Nature Vs. Nation, New Waterford Boy, FACE and Frequencies. With Heist, Wilcox has also produced and curated the
Creative Nova Scotia Awards for the past two years. Wilcox has worked with numerous companies across the Maritimes including Neptune, Festival Antigonish, 2B Theatre, Kazan Co-Op, Opera Nova Scotia and more. Wilcox served as Artistic Associate of Theatre Outre in Lethbridge, Alberta for three years where he helped create numerous original works including the hit play Unsex’d. Wilcox is also currently the artistic director of the 36 year old Ship’s Company Theatre in Awokun/Parrsboro. Wilcox is a recipient of the Mayor’s Award for Emerging Theatre Artist and a Merritt for outstanding performance in a supporting role.

Ann-Marie is an award-winning theatre director, actor and teacher. Select directing: Concord Floral (Fountain School of Performing Arts Halifax); Secret Life of A Mother (Theatre Centre, Crow’s Theatre Toronto); One Discordant Violin (2b theatre company, Halifax, 59E59 St Theatre NYC); Bed and Breakfast (Soulpepper Theatre Company, Toronto); A Christmas Carol (Theatre New Brunswick); Daughter (Theatre Centre; Summerworks, Toronto, Battersea Arts Centre London; Intl tour); Snake in the Grass (Neptune Theatre); I, Claudia (Globe Theatre Regina, Neptune Theatre); Stranger to Hard Work (Cathy Jones
Eastern Front Theatre, Ntl tour); The Circle (Alberta Theatre Projects, Calgary); The Debacle (Zuppa Theatre Company, Halifax); Invisible Atom (2b theatre company Halifax, intl tour). A graduate of Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq and York University and is the former Artistic Associate of Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

Christine is a theatre artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Christine received the 2017 Siminovitch Protege Prize for Playwriting from Marcus Youssef, and was the Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist Resident at Tarragon Theatre. Creation/performing highlights include Never The Last (co-created with Molly MacKinnon), produced by Delinquent Theatre, recipient of 5 Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nominations including Outstanding Production and Outstanding New Script and winner of Significant Artistic Achievement; Selfie (commissioned by Théâtre la Seizième in French, and Young People’s Theatre in English, winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding TYA Play, the Sydney Risk Prize for Outstanding Script by an Emerging Playwright, and the Tom Hendry award for TYA); Christine is a proud co-founding member of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition. She holds a BFA in Acting from the University of British Columbia.

Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Her short documentary Black + Belonging screened at the Halifax Black Film Festival, Festival International du Film Black de Montréal, and Toronto Black Film Festival. You may find some of her writing in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize and her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020) was longlisted for the Giller Prize.

Molly MacKinnon is a violinist and collaborative artist based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people. Fortunate to grow up in the thriving arts community of Nelson BC, Molly studied with former Vancouver Opera Orchestra and CBC Radio Orchestra violinist Wendy Herbison before moving to the coast in 2008 for the Bachelor of Music Performance program at the University of British Columbia, where she studied with Jasper Wood and Dale Barltrop.

Since completing her degree in 2012, Molly has developed a strong passion for theatre and interdisciplinary work. She has been featured in a number of productions including The Idiot (Neworld Theatre/VMT), STATIONARY: A Recession-Era Musical (Delinquent Theatre), The Tempest (Bard on the Beach), The Night’s Mare (Caravan Farm Theatre), Les Filles Du Roi (Urban Ink), Double Happiness (Music on Main), and most recently, a digital run of Good Things To Do (Rumble Theatre).

Along with playwright Christine Quintana, Molly is the creator of Never The Last, a genre-bending theatre/concert piece based around the life and work of 20th century Canadian composer and violinist Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté. The show recently received 5 Jessie Richardson Theatre award nominations, and won in the Special Achievement Award category for outstanding interdisciplinary collaboration.

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Molly has worked as a performer, music director, producer and creator for The Little Chamber Music Series That Could, an innovative music series with a focus on multi-arts pollination, community engagement and local history. She is the co-creator of Sounding the Sophia, a concert centred around the sinking of the 1918 SS Princess Sophia. The show featured 3 world premiers by local Vancouver composers Kathleen Allan, Mishelle Cuttler, and Nancy Tam, was developed at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

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Molly’s extensive orchestral experience includes playing with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Island Symphony, the Plastic Acid Orchestra, the Vancouver Film Orchestra, and the Allegra Chamber Orchestra, an all-female ensemble dedicated to celebrating women composers and performers.

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Molly is a member of the Black Dog String Quartet, who in 2018 were ensemble in residence for Vancouver New Music’s international quartet festival, Quartetti. The group was honoured to perform in the company of renowned groups such the JACK, Penderecki, and Mivos quartets, and to play two works by Navajo/US composer Raven Chacon.

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Molly is the co-founder of Concerts on Tap, a music series that brings together classical music performance and local craft breweries and distilleries.

Beau is a self-taught, multi award-winning Actor, Composer, Playwright, Music Director and Sound Designer. Selected theatre credits: Ghost Quartet, Road To Paradise (Crow’s Theatre); Marjorie Prime,The Father (Coalmine Theatre); The Colour Purple (Neptune Theatre); Hamlet, Harlem Duet, Next To Normal (Tarragon Theatre); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 27 Club, Secret Chord (Soulpepper Theatre); Motherf@#! er With The Hat (Alberta Theatre Projects); As You Like It/ Titus Andronicus (Canstage/ Shakespeare In High Park); The Real McCoy (4th Line Theatre). Selected writing credits: Bloom: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fable (4th Line Theatre) Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story (Lunchbox Theatre/ Festival Playhouse/ Thousand Islands), From Here To Africville, Once A Flame (Factory Theatre), Other People’s Heaven. Nominations and awards: Beau has received two Toronto Critic’s Awards, a Calgary Critic’s Award, a Betty Mitchell nomination, four Dora Mavor Moore nominations, and awarded two for his solo show, ‘Beneath Springhill’ (Best New Play, Best Individual Performance). Beau was inducted into Peterborough’s Pathway of Fame for his leadership in the arts. He is also a KM Hunter Award Finalist. He has three recorded solo albums under his name.www.beaudixon.com

Choreographer, educator, movement coach and PhD candidate in Dance Studies at York U. Linda is the artistic director of the Helix Dance Project, whose works include The Waiting Room, Rain, Unearth, and Integration. Theatre credits include five seasons with The Shaw Festival, as well as productions for Mirvish, Canadian Stage, Charlottetown Festival, Citadel Theatre, National Theatre Centre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, and Sheridan Theatre. Other credits include choreography for Stars on Ice, skating exhibition programs, and music videos. Linda continues to enjoy freelance choreography, teaching both at home and abroad, and discovering new facets of this wonderfully moving craft.

Esmeralda Conde Ruiz is an interdisciplinary composer of contemporary music. Her work revolves around real human voices and experiences, particularly the themes of memory and time, and how these can be presented through music. She specialises in choral and vocal pieces, especially innovative large scale choirs. Her compositions often evolve from a visual starting point and develop into sound landscapes and rhythmical patterns. She composes for concert halls, theatres, sound installations and film and her music has been broadcast on radio and TV internationally. econderuiz.com

Sound Design and Composition for ‘Good Things to Do’.

Digital Design for ‘Good Things to Do’.

With performances described as “fire without smoke” (Strad) and “breathtaking” (Onstage), violinist and interdisciplinary artist Leslie Ting has been creating immersive, music-driven performances since 2013 with her definitive work, Speculation. Recently nominated for the 2021 Pauline McGibbon Award for Emerging Theatre Director, Leslie’s work combines her specialized background as a classical musician and former practicing optometrist.

Nominated for the Waterloo Arts Award and Orford String Quartet Award for Speculation in 2014 at Kitchener-Waterloo’s Open Ears Festival, it has travelled to Open Senses (London, UK), Ottawa Chamberfest, The Music Gallery (Toronto), and the Stratford Summer Music Festival. Leslie’s newest creation, What Brings You In, is currently in development.

Leslie is driven to make work with the intent and belief that live art can engage the imagination, empathy and compassion to spark advocacy and social change.

Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, and the libretto Shawnadithit. She co-created, with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight, the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt, about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. She is an Artistic Associate with Signal Theatre. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.

Hazel Venzon is a long time theatre collaborator with The Chop and is delighted to work with them again at FoLDA. She’s a theatre artist, writer, director and producer with an artistic background rooted in sculpture and performance art (University of Manitoba, School of Fine Art) with formal acting training from Studio 58. Hazel has been a national theatre artist for over 20 years. She has produced for festivals such as PuSh, Luminato and Magnetic North Theatre Festival. She is the Co-Artistic Director for U N I Together (UNIT) Productions, Central Operative for Mammalian Diving Reflex and Associate Producer for Rainbow Stage. Hazel continues to explore the definition of theatre and performance through social engagement, crossing through multiple disciplines; focused on the investigation of Canadian identity.

Martin Kinch’s practice embraces film, theatre, television, opera, and radio. Throughout his four-decade career, he has been at the vanguard of modern Canadian theatrical expression. As artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille and founder and artistic director of Toronto Free Theatre, he helped to spearhead the creation of alternative theatres dedicated to creating original Canadian work. As a playwright, he is a two-time finalist for the prestigious Chalmers Award. He was a drama producer at CBC Television Drama (1980-86) and artistic director of Theatre Calgary (1986-93). Throughout the 90s, he worked as writer and story editor on a number of radio and television series. During his 10-year tenure (2002-12) at Vancouver’s Playwright’s Theatre Centre, Martin worked with a variety of playwrights to develop their work and was responsible for creating several outstanding playwright-centred programs. Since 2000, Martin has taught in UBC’s prestigious Creative Writing progra

(he/him) Toronto based graphic designer, often looking for a good run, good food, and good laughs. https://www.instagram.com/dekelchui

(she/her) Returning for the second year to FOLDA with a digital run project now in BETA development, Stacey likes to spend most of her spare time producing theatre and running. This project is a perfect hybrid of her two passions. Most recently Stacey produced the world premiere of BOX 4901 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Beta Development work from FoLDA 2019) and completed the Chicago Marathon. In her other life, she is a Risk Management Professional in Toronto.

(she/her) Melissa is a not particularly athletic Toronto-based runner, teacher, mum, maker. She came to running as a way to have space for thinking that wasn’t getting done anywhere else. She is excited to be part of a project that merges two of the things she loves most: going out for a run and the creative process.

(she/her) Meet Kim and Michelle, twin sisters from northwestern Ontario passionate about building an online running community through digital connection. Former NCAA athletes, the twins believe that everybody can “Enjoy the run” as part of a daily routine for mental health and wellness. Even during these unprecedented times, grab a pair of running shoes, connect virtually on the FoldA Strava Club, and be apart of creating digital art. Kim and Michelle are excited to be back to the FoldA festival for a second year for the run project. We can’t wait to connect virtually with you!

(she/her) Enna Kim [@fongkikid] is an interdisciplinary artist and avid runner based in Toronto, Canada. Enna explores the dimensions between her hyphenated Korean-Canadian identity through animation, illustration and long distance running. Expecting to be running “across the country,” her running journey started from joining the elementary school cross country team to running for Ryerson University’s varsity cross country team. Her practice is an ongoing process of reconceptualizing the term diaspora and using art and athletics as a way to decrypt it, sharing personal stories of her immigrant family as a way of healing and retracing their cultural identities. She is a member of Pace and Mind, a Toronto Run Club and hopes to inspire women of colour to share their love of sport. Website Link: https://fongkikid.format.com

An inveterate baseball fan as well as a musician and composer, Paolo has spent much of his life trying to explain the intricacies of the arcane to the uninitiated. (Translation: he’s a big nerd.) After one year of undergrad science, Paolo gave up on marine biology dreams in favour of that most secure of career paths: music. Shockingly, this strategy somehow worked when a taiko drumming gig led to a career in radio. Paolo is a Peabody-Award-winning audio documentary producer, sound designer and writer/broadcaster. He is also a two-time winner of the Prix Italia, for The Signature Series on CBC Music, and previously for the audio documentary series The Wire: the Impact of Electricity on Music. Paolo uses ambient and environmental sounds to compose music for podcasts and audio documentaries. Since 2012, Paolo has hosted In Concert, a weekly classical music program on CBC Music.

A genre-defying interdisciplinary artist, Yawen is known as “a dancer at the keyboard” (Georgia Straight) and has created a body of work in the realms of music composition, gallery installation, performance & movement art, music theatre, music for dance, radio play/PodPlay, and interactive media. She was nominated for a Future Generations Millennium Award (Canada Council for the Arts), an Outstanding Original Musical Award (Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards) and has been the recipient of numerous creation and performance grants. Yawen is the founder of Ballegro Dance Music Technology Inc., creator of the Ballegro ballet music app that is available worldwide (BallegroPlayer.com).

Quelemia is an Indigenous actor, writer and director from the Musqueam Nation.
Some of Quelemia’s theatre performance credits include: ‘Lysistrata’/Bard on the Beach, ‘The Bakkhai’/Stratford Festival, ‘The Pipeline Project’/Itsazoo and Savage Society, ‘Our Town’/Osimous Theatre *Jessie award outstanding production, ‘The Penelopiad’, ‘August: Osage County’/Arts Club Theatre. Various Film and T.V: Tribal, Clouds of Autumn, Blackstone, Unnatural and Accidental, Da Vinci’s City Hall and Da Vinci’s Inquest *Leo award best guest appearance. Writing credits include: A podplay for Neworld Theatre/Raven Spirit Dance called ‘Ashes on the Water’, ‘Salmon Girl’/Raven Spirit Dance, Co-writer, ‘The Pipeline Project’ /Itsazoo and Savage Society, Indigenous consultant and Indigenous content writer for ‘Lysistrata’/Bard on the Beach, ‘Skyborn: A Land Reclamation Odyssey’/Savage Society, ‘Women of Papiyek’/Full Circle/Animikiig Native Earth. She was an Associate with Playwrights Theatre Centre from 2014-2016 and she completed the Stratford writing retreat in 2017.

Peter is a poet, playwright and performer living in Vancouver. His recent credits include roles in his plays The Coyotes and Law of the Land for the Caravan Farm Theatre, the title roles in both Titus Bouffonius and Butcher at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre and Straight White Men for ITSAZOO Theatre. Other favorite credits include The Overcoat and The Number 14. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Dell’Arte School of Physical theatre, Peter’s the recipient of eight Jessie awards. His plays are available online at the Canadian Play outlet.

A graduate of Simon Fraser’s School for the Contemporary Arts, Patrick has been working as an actor in Vancouver TV Film and Theatre scene for the past twenty years. Some of the companies he has worked with include the Firehall, Neworld Theatre, Rumble, Mortal Coil, PI Theatre, Touchstone, Headlines, I.T.P., Urban Crawl, and Main Street Theatre, where he is proud to be an associate artist. He has been recognized with two Jessie Richardson Award Nominations. Inside/Out is Patrick’s first venture into playwriting.

Noah Drew is a theatre maker and voice/ performance/communication teacher based in Montreal. His work has been seen and/or heard on five continents. Noah has received six Jessie Richardson awards (19 nominations total), a nomination for the Siminovitch Prize, and a Concordia Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching award. Noah has worked extensively in interdisciplinary collaboration, including projects involving theatre, music, dance, film, interactive games, clown, storytelling, poetry, performance art, installation, podcasts/podplays, and radio. Noah holds an MFA in Acting from Temple University, and Bachelor’s degrees in both Theatre and Music from Simon Fraser University. He’s a Certified Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and a Co-Artistic Director of the theatre company Jump Current Performance. A full-time tenured faculty member in Concordia University’s Theatre Department, Noah’s research focuses on how performers and public speakers can increase their stress resilience at a nervous system level, and how immersive sensory environments can catalyze heightened states of presence.
www.noahdrew.com
 / www.jumpcurrent.com / 
www.concordia.ca/finearts/theatre.html
 / www.fitzmauriceinstitute.org

Cree-Saulteaux Metis performing artist, Margo Kane is the Founder and Artistic Managing Director of Full Circle: First Nations Performance. For over 40 years she has been active as an actor, performing artist and community cultural worker. Her desire to share artistic performance that has meaning for her people is the catalyst for her extensive work, travels and consultation within Indigenous communities across Canada and abroad. Moonlodge, her acclaimed one-woman show, an Indigenous Canadian classic, toured for over 10 years nationally and internationally. The Sydney Press (AU) during The Festival of the Dreaming praised it as being ‘in the top echelon of solo performance.’ She developed and runs the annual Talking Stick Festival and numerous programs including Moccasin Trek: Arts on the Move!, Indian Acts and an Indigenous Ensemble Performing Arts Program in Vancouver. She has received numerous awards and honors including an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, the Order of Canada from the Governor-General and most recently an Inaugural honor from the new National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre Department.

Since obtaining his BFA from SFU in 1997 and his teaching degree in 1998, Marco has performed on stage, on screen and in the classroom. He has had the great fortune to create exciting new work and to play many of his dream roles. Marco has worked with multitudes of marvelous people on some of the most beautiful stages locally, nationally and internationally. Some favourite theatre credits include Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast (WCT), Theatre Replacement’s critically acclaimed Bio Boxes, Prior in Angels in America, Judas in Corpus Christi (both Hoarse Raven), Tony in Shear Madness (Art’s Club), the Emcee in Cabaret (DSR) and his work with Boca del Lupo in their summer roving shows. More details about Marco’s work in film, tv and voiceover can be found at www.marcosoriano.com.
Pronouns: he him

Karin has received numerous Jessie Richardson awards and nominations for her work in theatre, performing lead roles in a wide range of musicals and contemporary dramas. Her extensive screen credits include “Maurice” the orangutan in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, supporting roles in many other features and guest star/recurring roles on numerous tv series. She currently plays recurring characters on three television series: Snowpiercer, The Good Doctor, and The Babysitter’s Club. As an artist/writer, Karin creates series of paintings that tell a story and has had many solo gallery exhibitions of her work, most recently My House Is, an exhibit in painting, story and photographs at the Firehall Arts Centre in 2020. Karin is an avid student of orangutans and for the past ten years actively involved in efforts for their conservation.

Joel DeStefano has worked in numerous capacities in arts and culture throughout his career. An active composer, performer and interdisciplinary artist, he has collaborated on a wide range of projects in film, dance, radio and theatre. He’s a graduate of SFU’s MFA program in contemporary art and was a founding member and co-artistic director of Proximity Arts, an interdisciplinary arts collective. His community work includes developing and leading workshops in music and performance art practice, acting as a consultant for community arts organizations and supporting the work of emerging artists as the theatre & literary arts programmer at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and as a board member of the Vancouver Improvised Arts Society.

Heidi Taylor (she/her) is a dramaturg, director and performer, and Artistic & Executive Director at PTC, based on the traditional unceded, occupied territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She makes sited, devised, and interdisciplinary work, developing performances from first idea through production. She recently dramaturged the world premieres of Carmen Aguirre’s Anywhere But Here, Tetsuro Shigetmatsu’s Kuroko, Chicken Girl by Derek Chan, and Public and Private by Ziyian Kwan. She is currently dramaturg for Zahida Rahemtulla’s The Wrong Bashir, and Mermaid Spring, created by Barbara Adler and Kyla Gardiner, for which she is learning to crochet. Heidi served as Board Treasurer of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and was the founding president of LMDA Canada. She was a co-founder and co-artistic director of Proximity Lab/Arts from 2003-2016.

Currently locked down and writing short stories to remain creatively active. Gina has been working professionally on stage and film/tv since 1985. Now 75 years old she just has longer rests between jobs. She was last seen on stage as Momo Blake in the Arts Club staging of The Humans at The Stanley Theatre, directed by Amiel Gladstone.

Elizabeth is a Vancouver actor & coach specializing in Voice, Speech, Accents/ Dialects and Classical Text. She works in the Film, Television and Voice work industries and teaches at the Vancouver Film School and On The Mic Studios as well as coaching privately. Liz’s recent credits include: The Good Doctor, Little Fish, Altered Carbon, Charmed, Legends of Tomorrow, Noelle, Love at First Flight and Ruby Herring Mysteries.

Born, raised and based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh, C.E. Gatchalian (he/his/him) is a queer Filipinx-Canadian author. The author of six books and co-editor of two anthologies, he is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and the recipient of two Jessie Richardson Awards for his work as a theatre artist and producer. In 2013 he received the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 2013, awarded annually by The Writers’ Trust of Canada to an outstanding emerging LGBTQI+ writer. He has been Playwright-in-Residence at the Firehall Arts Centre and the Vancouver Playhouse, Artist-in-Residence at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education, and Writer-in-Residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House (Vancouver) and Berton House (Dawson City, YT). Formerly Artistic Producer of the frank theatre company, his plays have been produced locally, nationally and internationally. His memoir, Double Melancholy: Art, Beauty and the Making of a Brown Queer Man, was recently published by Arsenal Pulp Press.

christine stoddard is one of the original founders of Proximity Arts (Lab) and a graduate of SFU’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. Her practice is rooted in the affective experience of words, movement, and image from a queer-feminist perspective. Since folding Proximity Arts almost a decade ago, christine has pursued and completed PhD in Art History & Visual Studies at the University of Manchester, taught various university and public courses in contemporary art, and established herself as a certified yoga teacher. She currently works as the Executive Business Partner for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a national think tank focused on catalyzing Canadian-Asian relations.

Bob Frazer is a highly acclaimed and nationally recognized actor based in Vancouver. Since graduating from Studio 58 in 1994, he has worked consistently in theatre, film and TV becoming one of Vancouver’s most sought after and popular actors. His work has been honoured with 10 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards for performance. His lead performance in the feature film The Cannon (Prime Video, Itunes, Flix Premiere) was awarded the prestigious UBCP/ACTRA Award in 2018. He has participated in many aspects of the entertainment industry including directing, script development, acrobatics, dance, and writing but has spent most of his time in the performing field. He is a regular contributor at Bard on the Beach and has played most of Shakespeare’s leading roles including Hamlet, Richard III, Petruchio, Iago, and Macbeth. He teaches acting to young actors at three of Canada’s top acting schools; Studio 58, Vancouver Film School and Capilano University.

EMELIA SYMINGTON FEDY is a creator, producer and theatre-maker based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish People. She is the founding co- artistic director The Chop, a creation-based theatre company that tours nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Emelia has been lead writer and performer on over thirty new theatre productions across Canada, collaborating on projects with select companies such as Caravan Farm Theatre, Neworld, Leaky Heaven Circus and Radix Theatre to name a few favourites.
Emelia is also a veteran writer and host with CBC radio and has an ongoing column with the Sunday Edition where she won honourable mention at the New York Doc Festival for her documentary ‘The Tracks’ about girlhood and sexual assault in her hometown of Armstrong BC. ‘The Tracks’ is now being supported by BC Arts Council and the Hawthorne Foundation to be adapted into her first novel/memoir.
Emelia is a guest lecturer at UBC new media program, a consultant for UBC theatre and education department is a graduate of Studio 58 and The SFU Writers Studio Graduate Program.

iskwē | ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ is, among many other things, an artist – a creator and communicator of music and of movement, of pictures, poetry and prose. And through it all, she’s a teller of stories that have impacted our past and will inform our future. acākosīk | ᐊᒐᑯᓯᐠ is the culmination of her creation and collaboration to this point. It’s a collection of seven sonic explorations that not only blur lines between sources and styles, but also between the actual and the ideal, the real and imagined.

Building on the foundation of potent, cross-cultural electro-pop established on her self-titled 2013 debut and the Juno-nominated, Polaris Music Prize Long-Listed 2017 follow-up The Fight Within, acākosīk incorporates more intense and urgent tinges of alternative, post-rock, and even industrial. The cohesive-yet-combustible result tips a cap to modern innovators like Florence + The Machine and FKA twigs while simultaneously borrowing sounds accumulated over centuries by iskwē’s cree and Métis ancestors.

Angelica Schwartz is a director and collective creator born on Treat 1 Territory (Winnipeg, MB), where they founded the performing arts company Happy/Accidents. A recent graduate of The Directing Program at The National Theatre School, Schwartz is now based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal, QC). Drawing on their background in technical production and their passion for storytelling, Schwartz is devoted to creating an authentic connection between performer and spectator. Whether across distances through online platforms or in the intimacy of live, theatrical experiences, Schwartz is determined to create a sense of community in our highly digitalized era. Schwartz aims to trouble the public imagination in terms of identity, queerness, and bodies. In their work, society norms and pressures take a backseat to the complexity of the human condition. Schwartz is invested in highlighting the perspective of the Other, giving an alternative lens on how stories can be told.

Schwartz has had the pleasure to work with Jonathon Young, Jackie Maxwell, Marcus Youssef, Anita Rochon, and Chelsea Haberlin, among others. Schwartz is a Technical Production graduate of Studio 58 in Vancouver, BC

Murdoch Schon is a theatre maker, director and puppeteer. Winnipeg-born, they have been involved in the Montreal English theatre scene for almost a decade. Murdoch is fascinated by provocation, vulnerability, and the role of risk and failure in art making. They insist on the wondrous nature of theatre as a transformative space where rulers can fail, heroes can rise and monsters seem more familiar than angels. 

Selected directing credits: it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now  by Lucy Kirkwood, The Dumb Waiter  by Harold Pinter, Celestial Serendipity  by Russell Wiitala, The Woods Witch  by Murdoch Schon, and  Little One  by Hannah Moscovitch.

Camilleri (she/her) has been working with performance, image, and text for over 25 years. Her inquiries span social practice, multi-voiced narrative, and the public imaginary. Anna is founding artistic co-director of Red Dress Productions (RDP) with Tristan R. Whiston. Anna is engaged as a visual artist and designer with tactile and sculptural works, expressed primarily through more than 20+ socially engaged, site-specific public artworks across Ontario. Anna was 2018 artist-in-residence in the Department of Arts, Media, and Culture, University of Toronto, artist alumni of the juried 2019 Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, and is a 2020/21 Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Lab fellow. Camilleri’s book publications have been recognized with distinctions from the LAMBDA Literary Foundation, Association of Independent Publishers, and the American Library of Congress.

Yealland (she/her) has worked as an electrician and camera operator in commercial film production since 1997, however she is primarily a grip (film technician). Katie has worked with Red Dress Productions since 2010 as a (still and moving) photographer, technician, and technical director.

Whiston (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in Toronto for 27+ years as a director, dramaturge, writer, performer, and community artist. With RDP, Tristan co-led 25+ community-engaged arts projects including Drift Seeds, (a site-specific performance with a cast of 150+) and co-created numerous interdisciplinary arts projects including May I Take Your Arm, Where There is Smoke and trace (with Moynan King) that toured Canada in 2015. Tristan’s work as an audio artist has gained him international acclaim and attention; most notably, his work, Middle C, won the 2007 Premios Ondas Award for International Radio. Tristan was artist-in-residence at Central Toronto Youth Services, directing Gender Play (2004-2010) working with LGBTQ youth to explore issues and experiences of gender, and, most recently, Transcend, a group exploring gender through art and activism (2012-2017).

Sean Meldrum (playwright and actor) is a Canadian theatre artist, filmmaker, and musician. Credits as a writer include Gnaw (Theatre Mies, Toronto Fringe, 2016) and From the Thunder (True Perspective, 2019). Selected credits as an actor include Delusion (Out There Creative, 2020) and Judith Thompson’s HotHouse (Original Cast, Theatre Kingston, 2015). Over the past year, Sean’s short film From the Thunder screened at festivals across the world, winning Best Short Film at the Florence Film Awards, and his experimental piece I Am Like The Moon premiered at the Squat Betty Avant Garde Film Night in London, England. He is a playwright-in-residence with The Cellar Door Project and the in-house screenwriter for Toronto film production house, True Perspective. His play, The Diagnosis, was shortlisted for the Newmarket International Playwriting Competition. For his performance in Cakewalk, he was the recipient of the Focus Film Festival’s 2016 Award for Best Actor. In 2019, he was the recipient of the George Brown Opportunity Award for his work in Sound Design. Voices is his seventh collaboration with The Cellar Door Project.

Wallis Caldoza (dramaturg and performance lead) is a dramaturg and artist-researcher pursuing her PhD in the Social Justice Education department at OISE at the University of Toronto. Her research works at determining how to prevent Othering in tertiary academic institutions using quotidian dramaturgy. Selected credits include: research as a graduate assistant for Dr Kathleen Gallagher’s SSHRC-funded project Audacious Citizenship (University of Toronto, 2019-2020), playwriting for Beyond the Bard (Driftwood Theatre, 2020), playwriting for Trafalgar 24 (Driftwood Theatre, 2019), postgraduate induction workshop facilitator (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD), 2018), collaborative writer and scenographer for Armen Avanessian & Enemies #33 Corresponding with ghosts – A staged reading with music on the legacy of debt (RCSSD and the Volksbühne Berlin, 2017 – 2018), founder and facilitator of A Space: 48 Hours at Queen’s University (2017), dramaturgy intern at CAHOOTS Theatre (CAHOOTS Theatre, 2016 – 2017), and stage manager of the Young Company’s touring production of Violet’s the Pilot (The Thousand Islands Playhouse, 2016). Wallis also holds an MA, with distinction, from RCSSD for Theatre Criticism and Dramaturgy and a BAH from Queen’s University.

Mariah Horner (actor and producing lead) is an artist based in Kingston, Ontario. Selected credits include: assistant directing Unholy (GCTC, upcoming), directing Hana Hashimoto: Sixth Violin (Thousand Islands Playhouse, 2019), assistant directing Behaviour (GCTC/SpiderWebShow, 2019). She has worked as Digital Content Producer with SpiderWebShow and foldA for the past three years. She is the Festival Director of CFRC’s Shortwave Theatre Festival and helmed Kingston’s Storefront Fringe Festival from 2016-2018. Co-founding the Cellar Door Project with Devon Jackson in 2013, Mariah has produced 15 original site-specific works. Mariah played Kate Unger in George F. Walker’s HBO Canada Series Living in Your Car and graduated with MA in Theatre Theory & Dramaturgy from uOttawa in 2017. She has been published by SpiderWebShow, Visit Kingston, Canadian Theatre Review, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario. She is currently co-writing a book about Participatory Performance with Dr. Jenn Stephenson.

Laura Chaignon is a French writer based in Kingston. She is the Artistic Coordinator at the Centre culturel Frontenac, where she runs francophone programming out of the Octave Theatre. She recently graduated with a Master’s degree from the Sorbonne University where she studied machines who write. Her poetry, simple and playful, takes its ground on the fluid linguistic boundaries of English and French. In her practice as an arts administrator and programmer, she focuses on fostering a vital and dynamic francophone local arts milieu.

Chisato Minamimura is a Deaf performance artist, choreographer and BSL art guide. Born in Japan, now based in London, Chisato has created, performed and taught internationally and is currently a Work Place artist at The Place. Chisato trained at Trinity Laban in London and holds a BA in Japanese Painting and MA from Yokohama National University. Chisato approaches choreography and performance making from her unique perspective as a Deaf artist, experimenting with and exploring the visualisation of sound and music. By using dance and technology, Chisato aims to share her experiences of sensory perception and human encounters.

Hi, I am a graduate student currently pursuing my research at the Ingenuity lab, Queen’s University. With a strong passion for Artificial Intelligence and its various applications, my primary focus lies in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). My previous research focuses on intent detection in financial domain. Right now I am fascinated by the immense capabilities of ChatGPT and how it can revolutionize the way we interact with technology. Through my work, I’m working on identifying both the potential and limitations of ChatGPT, hoping to make contributions to this exciting field and effective NLP applications.

(Generated by ChatGPT using my CV)

I am a fourth year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at Queen’s University. I study human biomechanics, investigating the different strategies that humans use to maintain stability when walking. In my research we utilize the same motion capture technology that is used by artist, animators, and film creators; however, we use it to collect human motion to study walking.

artificial-intelligence-in-live-performance/

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.

Vijay Mathew is Co-Founder and Cultural Strategist of HowlRound Theatre Commons which is based at Emerson College in Boston, US. In the past decade, Vijay has helped to build the organizational capacity for several hundred nonprofit organizations worldwide to livestream their conferences, panel discussions, and performances — with a special emphasis on prioritizing accessibility, inclusion, and resource efficiency. When using internet technologies, he is passionate about the intersections of climate justice, social change, and a post-carbon future. All of his work in these areas has been informed by a “commons” philosophy and social-justice values. Vijay has a MFA from New School University, New York, a BA from University of Chicago, and an artistic background as an ensemble-based filmmaker and theatremaker. He is a board member of Double Edge Theatre located in rural Ashfield, Massachusetts, USA.

Anthony Lee (he/him) is an emerging writer, director, interdisciplinary artist working in theatre and film on the unceded territories colonially known as Vancouver. His work focuses on challenging existing boundary between cinema and live-performance. As a Hong Konger, his works investigate the impacts of colonialism and totalitarianism and has been presented in film festivals across Canada. Anthony received his BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and is currently an artistic associate at Radix Theatre.

Andie Lloyd (she/he/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist and community advocate, currently based on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territories. She works as a lighting and video designer, a platform consultant and writer, primarily working with Isadora. Her recent projects include her Surtitle & Projection Design work with Neworld Theatre’s Clean/Espejos, an interactive and real-time operated lighting design for FakeKnot’s whip, and is thrilled to be joined by some of her favourite people for her FOLDA debut!
www.andielloyd.ca

Alyssa Kostello (she/her) is a queer creative working primarily in film. Her first short film Zero (writer, Sustainability Producer) won a Green Seal from the Environmental Media Association and played at festivals globally. It’s now streaming on Sofy.tv and The Green Channel. She has produced a handful of short films, plays and live events, and is a co-producer for the indie feature How to Ruin The Holidays starring Colin Mochrie and Amber Nash. In 2021 she was a Sustainability Coordinator on the Netflix film Mixtape starring Julie Bowen. She is excited to be dipping her toes back into theatre with this team!
Alyssa is grateful to be living, learning, working, and creating on unceded sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxw (Tsawwassen), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Kwantlen, Stz’uminus, šxwməθkwəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxw (Musqueam), səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) territory.

Jamie Sweeney (she/her) is a production manager, a technician, a designer, an artist, a performer, and all the other ways she can find herself deeply involved in the world of theatre. She is currently living, working, and creating on the unceded traditional Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil- Waututh Nations. She holds a BFA in theatre production, design, and performance from Simon Fraser University. Previous credits include: Peace Country (rice & beans, 2022). Migration (Fight with a Stick, 2022), Made in Canada Concert Tour (rice & beans, 2021), Palimpsest (Pacific Theatre, 2021), Emilia (United Players, 2021).

I love opening the minds of those I connect with to the possibilities of Extended Reality (XR). Through seeing the industry grow over the past 6 years I understand how XR technology will soon impact every aspect of the world we interact with. From how we experience entertainment and news to how we learn and communicate.

At XpertVR my job is to bring this vision to our partners so that together we can build today what will be revolutionary tomorrow. With this, I and XpertVR are working to change the way people experience education today and into the future. So that one day soon, anyone, no matter their background or geographical location, will be able to pick up a headset and learn the skills needed to propel success in what they’re passionate about.

Ian is desperately trying to follow in the footsteps of his great-uncle, Hollywood film producer Fred Waller, who invented one of the earliest forms of immersive media called Cinerama in 1952.
For the past twenty-eight years Ian has been driven by a passion to find new ways to mix creativity, technology and business. Currently he is co-founder of the award-winning augmented reality studio Impossible Things which, in 2017, created the ReBlink art experience at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
ReBlink transformed the experience of art appreciation by “remixing” a series of classic works giving visitors the opportunity to see them come alive through a modern-day lens. ReBlink had a significant effect on visitor engagement, while at the same time captured the public’s imagination. ReBlink generated over 300 media stories and 2 million video views, traveled as a pop-up exhibition to over two dozen locations around the world, and received a special visit from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Nikki Shaffeeullah (she/her) is a director, writer, facilitator, perfrormer and producer who creates theatre, film, and poetry. Past roles include artistic director of The AMY Project, and editor-in-chief of alt.theatre magazine. As a facilitator, Nikki supports grassroots groups to navigate collective processes and to uphold equity and accountability in all aspects of their work. An award-winning theatre and film artist, Nikki collaborates with companies and artists from across Canada. She is currently a curator with the National Arts Centre – English Theatre and a resident artist at Why Not Theatre. She has an MFA from the University of Alberta and is a fellow in the Salzburg Global Forum for Cultural Innovators. Nikki believes art should disrupt the status quo, centre the margins, engage with the ancient, dream of the future, and be for everyone.

Rachel Penny (she/her) is a creative producer working in dance, theatre and community-engaged arts. Rachel supports new work creation and centres relationships in her work. Rachel has worked with a diverse range of organizations including Harbourfront Centre, The Luminato Festival, Young People’s Theatre, Volcano Theatre, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The AMY Project and The Theatre Centre Rachel has been mentored in producing through Theatre Ontario’s Professional Theatre Training Program (with Aislinn Rose) and the Metcalf Foundation Performing Arts Internship Program (with Meredith Potter). Currently, Rachel works as the Artistic Producer for adelheid dance projects, as associate producer with Kim Senklip Harvey, and on a variety of very cool independent projects

Janice Jo Lee (she/they) aka Sing Hey, is a contemporary folk artist of Korean ancestry. She is a folk-soul singer-songwriter, spoken word poet, actor and playwright from Kitchener, on Haldimand Tract treaty territory. On stage she creates looping landscapes with her voice, guitar, trumpet and Korean jangu drum. Lee is a hard femme, queer, radical, comedian, truth-teller and satirist. She is interested in using art to build flourishing communities based in justice and joy. Lee’s work explores gender justice, antiracism, friendship, community, ancestry and the Earth.
Lee is trained in spoken word, clown and physical theatre, whose specialty is creating a warm energy and glow with audiences. Lee has facilitated anti-oppression workshops at University of Waterloo, Laurier Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work, Vancouver Poetry House and Folk Alliance International. She has directed theatre creation programs for racialized youth with MT Space, Le Project N’we Jinan, and Randolph Kids. Janice has released two music albums Sing Hey (2016), Drown the Earth (2013) and is working on her upcoming album Ancestor Song.

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.

Tanya Marquardt is a writer and performer in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn. Their book Stray: Memoir of a Runaway was named a Best Queer & History Bio by The Advocate; a punk-musical version toured nationally; Nocturne (an incomplete and inaccurate account of the love affair between George Sand and Frederic Chopin) was produced at Dixon Place; Transmission, based on Sophocles’ Orestia, was published in the Canadian Theatre Review, and Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, Tanya’s play about being a sleep talker, inspired an NPR Invisibila. Their essays appear in Medium, huffpost, Plentitude and OffAssignment; their performances at PuSh, VIDF, Dancing on the Edge, The Tank, Brooklyn Museum, BAX, and The Collapsable Hole. They have worked with JoAnne Akalaitis, Jerome Bel, Ballez, Jess Barbagallo, Mallory Catlett, Theatre Conspiracy, frank theatre, Emily Johnson, Mabou Mines, and the Leaky Heaven Circus. Currently they are learning Magyar legényes folk dance, working with nonbinary drag artist Rose Butch and writing Creature (a memoir of selves).

Christine is a theatre artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Christine received the 2017 Siminovitch Protege Prize for Playwriting from Marcus Youssef, and is a Governor General’s Award nominee and winner of a Dora Mavor Moore, Jessie Richardson, Tom Hendry and Sydney Risk Award. Creation/performing highlights include Clean/Espejos (with translation and adaptation by Paula Zelaya Cervantes, world premieres at Neworld Theatre in Vancouver and South Coast Repertory in California), co-creation of Good Things To Do (digital tour with Rumble Theatre); Never The Last (co-created with Molly MacKinnon), produced by Delinquent Theatre; Selfie (commissioned by Théâtre la Seizième in French, and Young People’s Theatre in English); Christine is a proud co-founding member of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition. She holds a BFA in Acting from the University of British Columbia.

Régine has been the Managing Director at Theatre Passe Muraille (TPM) for the past 7 years. She came to TPM after twelve years with MAI (Montréal, Arts Interculturels), a multidisciplinary presenter and incubator for the development of intercultural and culturally specific work, where she held the position of Artistic and Executive Director for seven years. Régine has been an integral member of the arts community in Montréal and in Toronto. She is currently the Chair of the TAPA (Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts) board of directors. Régine holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Certificate in Professional Accounting and has a background in dance. She is the cofounder of EKSPRESYON a Montreal based dance company focusing on Haitian dance.

MARJORIE CHAN  陳以珏

Marjorie is currently the Artistic Director of Theatre Passe Muraille, where she places access, community, innovation and collaboration at the forefront of the company’s approach. As a theatre and opera artist, she works variously as writer, director and dramaturge as well as in the intersection of these forms and roles. Her work has been seen and performed in the United States, Scotland, Hong Kong, Russia and across Canada. Marjorie has been nominated for 9 Dora Awards and is the recipient of four (3 for writing, 1 for performance). She has also received the K.M. Hunter Artist’s Award in Theatre, the Entertainment World Award for Best New Work, a Harold Award, as well as the George Luscombe Award for Mentorship. She has been artist-in-residence with Factory Theatre, Banff Playwrights’ Lab, Tapestry Opera, Cahoots Theatre, Theatre Centre (with 6th Man Collective), Theatre Direct Canada, SUNY (Geneseo, New York) and Theatre du Pif (Hong Kong). Marjorie was born in Toronto to Hong Kong immigrants and lives in the East End of Toronto.

Aaron Collier was born in Prince Edward Island in 1981 and is an award-winning musician/composer, sound and video designer, performer and theatre creator. His composition, sound, and video design work has toured throughout Canada, Ireland, the UK, and India and he has 14 years of touring and performance experience throughout the world with his previous bands The Jimmy Swift Band and Scientists of Sound. As a theatre creator his work is often multi-disciplinary and technology enabled and explores themes of queerness, depression, self love, natural law and technology. He is the co-founder and technical director of Halifax-based live art company HEIST and is the co-creator of their lauded productions The Princess Show, New Waterford Boy, Nature Vs Nation, FACE, Princess Rules, and Frequencies.

Thaddeus Phillips is a theatre director, stage designer and Film/TV actor from Denver, and now based in South America. He directs internationally and is known for the stage productions of ¨Antropoceno¨, ¨The Arrival¨, ¨A Billion Nights on Earth¨, ¨Inflatable Space¨, ‘Red-eye to Havre De Grace’, ’17 Border Crossings’, ‘¡El Conquistador!’, ‘Flamingo/Winnebago’ & ‘Lost Soles’. On Film and TV he has appeared in: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’, ‘Alias El Mexicano’ and ‘El Capo 3’. His stage work has been seen at New York Theatre Workshop, Barrow Street Theatre, PS 122, HERE Arts Center and La MaMa ETC, as well as in Spain, England, Ireland, Holland, Serbia, Mexico, Slovenia, Colombia, Costa Rica & Italy.

Alex is a game designer and producer currently working as a technical designer with the Wenazii Kegoke team in Northwest Territories. He was Artistic Director of Theatre by the Bay in Barrie, Ontario from 2014-2018. His works as a director, playwright and puppeteer have included Caribou Cave (2019), Northern Lights (2018) The Five Points (2017), Turkey Shoot (2016), Firebrand (2014) Alex studied at George Brown Theatre School, Queen’s University and at École Philippe Gaulier. Learn more about Alex at www.alexdault.com or find him on Twitter at @alexdault.

Pragna is a Dora-nominated actor, director, musician, theatre creator, and artist-educator. Pragna has performed with RMTC, YPT, CanStage, Pleiades Theatre, Eastern Front Theatre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Theatre Smith-Glimour, and the Stratford Festival, where she was awarded the Jean A. Chalmers Award for dedication to Canadian theatre. She has guest-starred in numerous tv series and films with Warner Bros., Paramount Studios, and the CBC, working with renowned directors John Wells, Deepa Mehta and Phil Alden Robinson. She was Artistic Director of Théâtre Buissonnier, a company that created original theatre with children, directly involving them in new play development. She was Artistic Director of Crescendo Music, a children’s music and theatre company in North Africa, with whom she designed three musical puppet shows, La Chenille, La Princesse et Le Crapaud, and The Musical Pinacosaurus, and launched the Crescendo Band. Pragna works extensively as an artist-educator, and was honoured to have been a guest professor at the Academie Royale duMaroc, where she taught His Royal Highness Moulay Hassan, Crown Prince of Morocco. Pragna holds a BA in Music from Wilfrid Laurier University, is a graduate of George BrownTheatre School, and alumna of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Closest to her heart, Pragna is the proud mom of a rascally little boy.

Madeleine Brown is an award-winning Toronto-based playwright and actor who grew up between Peterborough, Ontario and Edinburgh, Scotland. Her last three comedies debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival including a sold-out run of Patron’s Pick winner, Everyone Wants A T-Shirt!. She has previously received NOW Magazine Awards for Outstanding Ensemble and Individual Performance, is an alumna of the Loran Award, Canada’s top undergraduate scholarship, and was an inaugural Nightwood Theatre Young Innovator. In January 2020, she was named one of two recipients of The Ellen Ross Stuart “Opening Doors” Award. Madeleine volunteers with L’Arche Toronto’s Sol Express, a performance troupe for adults with intellectual disabilities, and plays euphonium in the Swansea Community Concert Band. Training: University of Toronto Mississauga, Sheridan College, Theatre Gargantua (Artistic Mentorship Program), Mermaid Theatre (Animotion Program) and The Second City Training Centre (Conservatory and Writing Programs).

Corey Payette is proud of his Oji-Cree heritage from Northern Ontario and has worked as a playwright, actor, composer, and director across Canada. He is the Artistic Director of Urban Ink, past Artist-in-Residence with National Arts Centre [NAC] English Theatre, and is the founder of Raven Theatre. His original musical (book/music/lyrics & direction) Children of God has had 3 national tours (Urban Ink, NAC English Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Western Canada Theatre, Segal Centre), and he was director, composer and co-book/lyricist for Les Filles du Roi (Fugue/Raven/Urban Ink/Cultch), Moonlodge (Urban Ink), and Sedna(Urban Ink/Caravan Farm Theatre). His next new musicals have been commissioned by Musical Stage Company (Toronto), Bard on the Beach (Vancouver), and Stratford Festival. He has been awarded the John Hirsch Prize from the Canada Council, Jessie Awards for Composition and Direction, and Ovation Awards for Best New Musical and Outstanding Direction. www.coreypayette.com

José Rivera (aka Proxemia) is an architecturally-trained artist, designer, and educator investigating the intersections of sensual and spatial aspects of experience. Working towards the many ways we can cultivate presence, his interests range from radio and transmission art to liberation ecologies, UFO and diaspora studies, psychonautics, and the exploration of Puerto Rican identity. His practice is often expressed through electroacoustic music and experimental placed-based sound works, multi­channel installations and performances, sound design for film, cartography, and graphic design. His works have been exhibited internationally, as well as at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Goethe-Institut Boston, ICA Boston, The Studios at MASS MoCA, and more. Along with numerous collaborations, José’s fluid body of work also includes the design and construction of an open­-air performance space for a youth dance and drumming group in rural Ghana.

Dr. Tarah Wright is Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Dalhousie University. Her research focuses primariliy in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) and she has published numerous papers covering a wide range of issues related to sustainability in higher education (SHE). More recently Tarah has begun to pursue a research program that investigates the various roles that The Arts can play in influencing cultural norms, encouraging pro-environmental behavior, and providing drivers for the creation of a sustainable future. Tarah and her family make their home in the city of Halifax, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People, in the Acadian Forest Bioregion, at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

Aidan Tomkinson and is a youth climate activist and justice seeker. She is the organizer of the school climate strike, Fridays For Future in Kingston, Ontario and has been striking for over a year. Through this, she has become involved in many other climate activist groups such as 350 and extinction rebellion along with participating in many grassroots conferences and symposiums. Aidan is passionate about educating the people around her about important issues in our world and is always enthusiastic to start initiatives to get community members involved.

Matt Rogalsky’s work in sonic arts includes live electronic music performance, sound/intermedia installation, and study/recreations of late 20th century live electronic music by David Tudor and other composers. His revisioning (with John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein) of the installation work Rainforest by Tudor and his group Composers Inside Electronics was acquired in 2017 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, for its permanent collection and is currently on exhibition in the newly redesigned MoMA. Other current work includes development of a collaborative dance piece with Vancouver-based choreographer Ahalya Satkunaratnam, and collaborative research with geographer Laura J Cameron focusing on soundscape, listening practices, and the life and work of early Canadian field recordist William WH Gunn. The Gunn project has resulted in several works of research-creation: the outdoor sound installations Octet (2016) and Into the Middle of Things (2017, with LJ Cameron), and the concert work Revisitation G (2018) make use of Gunn’s historical field recordings in exploration of his practice. Rogalsky’s ambisonic surround-sound remastering of Gunn’s classic monophonic environmental sound LP A Day In Algonquin Park was recently presented at the Park’s Wildlife Research Station, where Gunn was once Director, on the occasion of its 75th anniversary.
Rogalsky teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario where he leads the Sonic Arts Studio in the Dan School of Drama and Music. Photo by Tim Forbes.

Ian Garrett is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; director of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; and Producer for the mixed reality production company Toasterlab. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography and He is currently working with Rulan Tangen on Groundworks, looking at native lands in Northern California through the collaborations with artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; and with Swim Pony Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Story Trails focusing on the trails in watershed areas of Philadelphia through geolocated immersive audio. Other projects include the mixed-reality geolocated project Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York), the set and energy systems for Zata Omm’s Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada.

Sonali McDermid is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU. Her research focuses on understanding how agricultural land-use has transformed our regional environments and climate. She uses a variety of methods, including global earth system models, crop models, and observational datasets. She has also undertaken large-scale assessments of the impact of climate change on food security and livelihoods in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and served as the Climate Co-Lead for the international Agricultural Intercomparison and Improvement Project. Her work strives to identify and contextualize the role of environmental preservation in food and nutrition security as she seeks an answer to the question: What really constitutes responsible, sustainable agriculture and how might we lessen our environmental impact while providing nutritious food for everyone?

McDermid holds a Ph.D. (2012) from the Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, specializing in Atmospheric Science and Climatology. She holds a B.A. in Physics from NYU (2006). Prior to NYU, she was awarded a NASA Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in NYC. In addition to her academic work, McDermid is also a passionate advocate for equity and representation in the sciences, and for evidenced-based policy and decision-making.

Anthony Simpson-Pike is a director and dramaturg. He previously worked at The Gate Theatre as Associate Director. Recent directorial work includes The Ridiculous Darkness by Wolfram Lotz at The Gate and Staff Directing on Master Harold and the Boys at the National Theatre. As a dramaturg he has developed two seasons of work at The Gate Theatre and was selected as a dramaturg for The Royal Court’s International Residency as well leading the Royal Court’s International Project in the English Speaking Caribbean. Working on a range of freelance work encompassing dance and theatre, in 2018 he dramaturged the LTC’s Artist Climate Lab and co-curated the 2019 lab. He was also invited to be the visiting guest artist at the Banff International Playwrighting Residency in Canada in 2019. Anthony will also be a visiting tutor on the new MA Dramaturgy at Birkbeck University. He has been a finalist for the 20th JMK award and 2019 RTST award and was selected by the British Council to attend DirectorsLab North in Toronto. Working across mediums, Anthony has also directed multiple audio dramas for Tamasha Theatre Company. As a facilitator, with a passion for theatre centring young people and communities, he has worked at The Gate, The Royal Court, The Young Vic, National Theatre and The Globe.
His credits as assistant director include Parallel Macbeth directed by Caroline Byrne (Young Vic), Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 and 3 directed by Jo Bonney (Royal Court), Much Ado About Nothing directed by Matthew Dunster (Shakespeare’s Globe) and Ear for Eye directed by debbie tucker green (Royal Court).

Anthony trained at National Youth Theatre, and through the Young Vic Director’s Program and was a finalist for the JMK award in 2017. He is the Associate Director at the Gate Theatre.

Clayton Thomas-Müller is a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation also known as Pukatawagan located in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Clayton is the ‘Stop it at the Source’ campaigner with 350.org.

Clayton is involved in many initiatives to support the building of an inclusive global movement for energy and climate justice. He serves on the board of the Bioneers, Navajo Nation based – Black Mesa Water Coalition, Indigenous Climate Action and the Wildfire Project.

He has been recognized by Utne Magazine as one of the top 30 under 30 activists in the United States, by Yes Magazine as a Climate Hero and is featured as one of ten international human rights defenders in the National Canadian Museum for Human Rights. He has campaigned across Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states organizing in hundreds of First Nations, Alaska Native and Native American communities in support of Indigenous Peoples to defend their territories against the encroachment of the fossil fuel industry with a special focus on the Canadian tar sands and its associated pipelines.

Clayton is a media producer, organizer, facilitator, public speaker and writer on Indigenous rights and environmental & economic justice.

Sophie Traub is a performing artist, scholar and arts organizer for The School of Making Thinking. For the last two years, she has had the privilege of being a Research and Production Assistant for Climate Change Theatre Action, Groundworks Performance Project with DancingEarth, The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, and Swim Pony’s Storytrails project. Her performance work and research focuses on group dynamics and conflict studies, anti-oppression, equity and sustainable practices in the arts, and embodiment. As a performance artist, Sophie has performed at DUMBO Arts Festival, Dixon Place, White Rabbit Festival, the Norman Felix Gallery, Artscape Gibralter Point, the Microscope Gallery, Medicine Show Theater, and The Last Weekend Arts Festival. Film and TV credits include Madeline’s Madeline (Decker), Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (Decker), Easy (Netflix, Swanberg), Fugue (Torres-Torres), Mother’s Day (Netflix, Adina Smith), Bite Radius (Parsons) Tenderness (Polson), and The Interpreter (Pollack). Theatre acting, devising, and directing credits include This Is How I Don’t Know How To Dance (SITI Company/Barrow Street Theatre), Won’t Be a Ghost (Prelude 2014, Dixon Place 2015, The Brick 2016), The Beach Eagle (Dixon Place 2013), and Asterion (Schafer 2013). Sophie has studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse, HB Studio, Studio 303, Stonestreet Studios, SITI Company Conservatory, NYU, and in December 2018 she completed her Masters in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University, in Toronto.

Deborah Pearson is based in London, UK. Her performance work sits at the intersection of several contexts, spanning playwrighting, directing, live art and visual art. Her work has been staged in over twenty countries on five continents and translated into over six languages. She holds a PhD on narrative preoccupations in contemporary performance from Royal Holloway where she was a Reid Scholar. She is founder and a co-director of UK-based curation collective Forest Fringe.

A stalwart and consistent presence in the Canadian sound world, Debashis Sinha has realized projects in in radiophonic art, sound art, theatre, dance, and music across Canada and internationally. A winner of 2 Dora Awards for Best Original Sound Design, his credits include work at: The Stratford Festival, Soulpepper Theatre, The Shaw Festival, Why Not Theatre, The Barbican Centre, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Theatre Centre, Nightwood Theatre, YPT, Theatre Passe Muraille, Project Humanity, Volcano Theatre and Necessary Angel, among others. His live sound practice on the concert stage has led to appearances at sound art and electronic music festivals around the world.

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard aka Belladonna the Blest is an emcee, playwright and agitator. Her main body of work, the 54ology, includes Cake, Sound of the Beast, A Man A Fish, Salome’s Clothes, Gas Girls, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses and The First Stone. DM is currently the emcee in residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, associate artist at lemonTree Creations and coordinator of the AD HOC Assembly.

Kendra Fanconi is the Artistic Director of The Only Animal, a 15-year-old company that is uniquely dedicated to theatre that springs from a deep engagement with place, and towards solutionary outcomes for this climate moment. She is known for her love of the impossible. Selected Credits for directing/writing: World premiere of Slime, written by Bryony Lavery, tinkers, based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Paul Harding, Nothing But Sky, a living comic book (Jessie for Significant Artistic Achievement), NiX, theatre of snow and ice, at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and Enbridge Festival, Alberta Theatre Projects 2009, (Winner of Betty Mitchell Award and Vancouver’s Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation). Current projects include 1000 Year Theatre and Museum of Rain. With David Suzuki Foundation, Kendra leads the Artist Brigade, bringing arts and artists to the front lines of the climate movement. Kendra lives on Shíshálh land on the far left coast of Canada, and is a farmer, a forager, partner to a philosopher, and mother to two kids who are real characters.

Kevin Matthew Wong (he/him) is a theatre creator, projection designer, performer and producer. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Broadleaf Theatre, which merges environmentalism and live performance. His co-creation The Chemical Valley Project is a multimedia solo-performance, created in collaboration with Aamjiwnaang First Nation Water Protectors Vanessa Gray and Beze Gray, and co-creator Julia Howman. Over the past three years, The Chemical Valley Project has toured across Canada and internationally and has recently been adapted as a museum installation. Kevin has been lucky to work with Cahoots Theatre, the Koffler Centre, Music Picnic, Theatre Passe Muraille, Paprika Festival, The Gardarev Center, and others. Kevin is a Producer at Why Not Theatre, working on projects such as Mahabharata, Prince Hamlet, and What You Won’t Do For Love. He’s also an organizer with Artists for Climate & Migrant Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty. kevinmatthewwong.com

Toronto-based stage director Ravi Jain is a multi-award-winning artist known for making politically bold and accessible theatrical experiences in both small indie productions and large theatres. As the founding artistic director of Why Not Theatre, Ravi has established himself as an artistic leader for his inventive productions, international producing/collaborations and innovative producing models which are aimed to better support emerging artists to make money from their art.

Ravi was twice shortlisted for the 2016 and 2019 Siminovitch Prize and won the 2012 Pauline McGibbon Award for Emerging Director and the 2016 Canada Council John Hirsch Prize for direction. He is a graduate of the two-year program at École Jacques Lecoq. He was selected to be on the roster of clowns for Cirque du Soliel. Currently Sea Sick which he co-directed will be on at the National Theatre in London, his adaptation of The Indian epic Mahabarata will premier at the Shaw Festival in August 2020 and What You Won’t Do For Love, starring David Suzuki will premier at the PuSh Festival in Vancouver.
“Be truthful, gentle and fearless” -M.K Gandhi

Ken Schwartz is the Artistic Director of Two Planks and a Passion Theatre in Kings County, Nova Scotia. He is the winner of 6 Merritt Awards, the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medal(s) and the Established Artist Award from the Province of Nova Scotia. A two-time graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, Ken completed the Michael Langham Program at the Stratford Festival in 2013 and currently sits on the board of Arts Nova Scotia.

Jordan Tannahill is a playwright and director. He has been described by The Toronto Star as being “widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists”; by the CBC as “one of Canada’s most extraordinary artists”; and by The Walrus as “the enfant terrible of Canadian theatre.” His plays have been translated into ten languages. Jordan has won several Dora Awards, the John Hirsch Prize for directing, as well two Governor Generals Awards for Drama; in 2014 for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays, and in 2018 for Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom. His performance texts and productions have been presented at venues including at The Young Vic, Sadler’s Wells, Festival d’Avignon, The Lincoln Centre, the Volkstheater, the Deutsches Theatre, The Edinburgh International Festival, and on London’s West End. His films have screened at TIFF, Tribeca, Venice, and other major international festivals.

Tom Green focuses on climate issues at the David Suzuki Foundation, working to advance climate policies to reduce Canada’s emissions and accelerate the shift to a clean economy. He loves spending time in nature and has found an antidote to despair in the era of climate breakdown in clowning. He’s had a lifelong interest in understanding the economic drivers of environmental change. He has a PhD in ecological economics from UBC and has taught at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia; SFU, Royal Roads University, Quest University Canada and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He was a founding member of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics and worked for a coalition of environmental groups that helped preserve 3.1 million hectares of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest.

Dr. Jennifer Atkinson is a Senior Lecturer in environmental humanities at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her seminar on “Climate Grief and Eco Anxiety” was one of the first college courses of its kind in the U.S., and has been featured in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, The Seattle Times, Grist, and dozens of other outlets. She is creator and host of Facing It, a podcast that explores climate despair and how to stay engaged in environmental solutions without becoming overwhelmed. Dr. Atkinson is also the author of Gardenland: Nature, Fantasy & Everyday Practice, a book that explores the hidden history of gardening in hard times. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago, and has taught at the University of Washington for the past 11 years.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a Dënesųłiné member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (Treaty 8) and mother of two. Deranger is the Executive Director and co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) – an Indigenous-led climate justice organization empowering communities and inspiring Indigenous-led climate solutions. ICA develops educational multi-media and contemporary climate change resources for Indigenous communities, amplifies stories and supports Indigenous rights to sovereignty and self-determination. In addition to her role at ICA, Deranger is an active member of the UN Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change participating in UNFCCC COP and preparatory meetings; was also a founding member of the Global UN Indigenous Youth Caucus; and she sits on the boards of Bioneers, It Takes Roots Leadership Council, Climate Justice Resiliency Fund Council of Advisors, the UK Tar Sands Network and WWF Canada. Deranger has written for the Guardian, Yellowhead Institute, The National Observer, Red Pepper Magazine; and is regularly interviewed for national and international media outlets including Democracy Now!, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), and CBC.

Angelica Schwartz is a director and collective creator born on Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg, MB), where they founded the performing arts company happy/accidents. A recent graduate of The National Theatre School’s Directing Program, Schwartz is now based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal, QC). Drawing on their background in technical production and their passion for storytelling, Schwartz is devoted to creating an authentic connection between performer and spectator. Whether across distances through online platforms or in the intimacy of live theatrical experiences, Schwartz is determined to create a sense of community in our highly digitalized era. Check out HAVEN part of foldA

Charles is honoured to be part of The Green Rooms and this important conversation. He is a Canadian actor, movement and fight director, and educator. Charles is currently studying on the MA Movement: Directing and Teaching programme at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, UK). He is a Chevening Scholar. Charles has trained and worked internationally, including productions for the National Arts Centre of Canada’s English Theatre company, The Charlottetown Festival, Neptune Theatre, 2b theatre, 360 Screenings, and Two Planks. Passions include: performance capture, Michael Chekhov technique, and walking outdoors with his wife. Visit: www.charlesdouglas.ca.

Derek Chan grew up in colonial Hong Kong, studied in Norway, and currently lives in Vancouver. Derek received his BFA in theatre performance from Simon Fraser University. A playwright, director, performer, translator, and producer, Derek has been co-artistic director of rice & beans theatre since 2010. He has also worked with Playwrights Theatre Centre (artistic director apprentice), Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (associate artistic producer), and the rEvolver Festival (guest curator). Derek was part of the 2020 Banff Playwrights Lab, and is a National Arts Centre English Theatre Artist in Residence (19/20) with yellow objects, a piece about the ongoing 2019-20 anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong.

Frank Donato is a lighting and video designer born, raised and currently based in Ottawa, ON. His practice is continually evolving as he continues to explore the intersection of digital media and live performance. Past design credits include: Daisy (GCTC, Ottawa) Notes of Hope (ICOT, Toronto), The Revolutions (SpiderWebShow, Kingston), Plucked (Summerworks, Toronto). When not designing his own work, Frank is proud to assist his mentors and colleagues working for organizations such as the Stratford Festival, Canadian Opera Company, and the Luminato Festival. Frank is a graduate of the Production program at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Molly Braverman is the Director of the Broadway Green Alliance. She previously served as the Managing Director of Theatre Horizon, a non-profit professional theatre company in Norristown, PA. She has worked as a Stage Manager on Broadway, Touring Broadway, and regionally, having spent three years on the road with the National Tour of Wicked and continuing to serve as a substitute Stage Manager on Wicked and Hamilton. She founded the Philadelphia Green Theatre Alliance, a regional chapter of the Broadway Green Alliance, and is a graduate of Columbia University.

Murdoch Schon is a theatre maker, director and puppeteer. Winnipeg-born, they have been involved in the Montreal English theatre scene for almost a decade, where they founded the Feminist Short Works Performance Festival, Revolution They Wrote. Murdoch is fascinated by provocation, vulnerability, and the role of risk and failure in art-making.
Murdoch is a graduate of the National Theatre School’s Directing Program and has a BFA, Specialization in Theatre and Development, from Concordia University.

Tracey Guptill is a movement-based actor, collaborative creator, and teaching artist who recently studied with Philippe Gaulier in France. Kingston co-creations include Our House, Ambrose, Anybody Can be Pussy Riot, the film LIVE in Kingston, and When I Get There – a Performance as Research master’s thesis about agency, activism and environmental justice. Tracey is a co-founder of anARC Theatre, its co-LAB-oratory method and the Kingston Stilters. She lives on a working farm in the Thousand Islands. Tracey is thrilled to be back at foldA, having met so many wonderful folks as the Artist Liaison last year.

Laura is a co-artistic director of Keep Good Theatre Company. Her recent directing credits include, Love and Information (The Fountain School of Performing Arts), The Children ( Keep Good Theatre Company) Miss N Me (Eastern Front Theatre) Interactions with Art (Halifax Theatre for Young People) Time of Trouble (Opera Nova Scotia) Constellations (Keep Good Theatre Company). She recently completed a year at the Stratford Festival working as an Assistant director under Nigel Shawn Williams and as a member of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. In 2015 she graduated from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow with a masters in direction.

A director, Artistic Director, Festival Director, playwright, teacher and actor who has worked across the country, Vingoe is celebrated for co-founding four major companies in Canada. She is the founding Artistic Director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival at Canada’s National Arts Centre in Ottawa, co-founder and past Artistic Director of Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre, co-founder and past co-Artistic Director of Ship’s Co. Theatre in Parrsboro, NS and co-founder and past Artistic Director of The Eastern Front Theatre in Halifax.

Vingoe has directed and taught at theatres and universities across the country including Canada’s National Arts Centre, Tarragon Theatre, The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, The National Theatre School and Neptune Theatre. She is also a noted Canadian playwright. Her 2013 play Refuge published by Scirocco Press, was a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award and was short listed for the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Drama. Her new play Some Blow Flutes was nominated for Best New Play at the Merritt Awards in 2019. Some Blow Flutes is published by Scirocco Press.

Mary Vingoe is the recipient of many awards most notably Nova Scotia’s Portia White Award for artistic excellence. In 2011 Vingoe was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to Canadian theatre.

Georgina Riel/Waabishki Mukwa Kwe is a member of the Batchewana First Nations of the Ojibways, in Sault Ste. Marie (Bawating/People of the Rapids) located along Lake Superior.
She is the founder and CEO of RIEL Cultural Consulting. She an educational consultant, artist, Elder, traditional hand drummer, singer and dancer. Georgina currently lives with her husband and two sons in Kingston (Katarokwi/The Gathering Place) which is situated next to Lake Ontario Canada. Georgina is passionate about the arts in all of its beauty. She is the founding member of the Kingston National Indigenous People’s Day Festival which showcases a multitude of Indigenous artists, performers, musicians from First Nation, Métis and Inuit Nations across North America/Turtle Island, with emphasis on modern and traditional works from various genres.

Rosina Kazi and Nicholas Murray are LAL. The Toronto-based, Bengali-Bajanduo have been holding down Canada’s underground DIY music scene for decades. Having started performing separately in hip hop and spoken word, they came together as music and life partners, bonding over the shared ideal of making electronic music that puts community first.

Drawing on the transcendent and transgressive roots of house/electronic music, LAL use each successive album as a chance to explore further and further into the future. With so many futures awaiting us, we’re fortunate to have their music as a guide. The fragile melodies and throbbing bass sound out, like a rope and plank bridge across a dangerous chasm. We could choose to plunge into the gaping maw and take what comes our way; we may instead make unsteady, swaying steps towards safety on that far side. Not the dead happiness of certainty and security but rather the comfort of a future built by vulnerability, magical thinking, generosity and the tenderest of rage.

Impatient for paradise, LAL works tirelessly to make that future a reality in the here and now. They launched the community centre and performance venue Unit 2 ten years ago as a space for marginalized artists and communities to build themselves up and create connections across social boundaries. LAL’srecent theatre work in Noor and Out The Window take their world building one step closer towards a critical gesamtkunstwerk. Murray and Kazi are regularly sought after for public speaking engagements, to share their insights on music, arts and social justice. LAL is the answer to a question we’re finally ready to ask.

Syrus is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture, and he’s shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto, a part of the Performance Disability Art Collective, and a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. His on-going curatorial work includes That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019) and BlacknessYes!/Blockorama.

Erin Ball is a circus artist, the owner of Kingston Circus Arts and the co-founder of LEGacy Circus (a performance company based in Kingston and Halifax). Erin’s performances and coaching focus on including as many people as possible in audiences, as collaborators, as well as students in her classes. She strives for representation and highlights accessibility and inclusion in the arts.

ALT text for headshot:
[A photo of Erin in her car, from the chest up. She smiles and has bright red lipstick and two Barbie leg earrings. Her mid-length red hair is down]

Credits for Erin Ball’s Act:
Joel Baker – Creation and Director
Jessica Watkin – Artistic Disability Dramaturge
James Buffon – Original Music
Michele Frances – Rope Coach and Choreography
Angi Geer – Costume Designer
Kathleen Ruck – Support

Ariel Martz-Oberlander is a theatre artist, writer, producer and teacher on occupied Coast Salish Territories with a background in community theatre. She is the Youth Program Manager at the Cultch, supporting and facilitating artistic mentorships for artists 13-26 and producing the IGNITE! Youth Arts Festival. She has also spent years as a grassroots climate justice organizer in Vancouver and in frontline camps around BC working to stop extractive industry and support Indigenous sovereignty. Her own practice often explores her complex relationship to the land and identity as the granddaughter of Jewish refugees. Recent work includes Safe: The Jewish Vault at HIVE, part of Magnetic North Festival; Assistant Director for The Full Light of Day with Electric Company Theatre; Shelter, a show for one audience member at a time about climate grief; Time Machine, with Radix Theatre, a show on a yacht about our post-climate apocalypse future together; and Hysteria, a multi award winning original comedy about consent and technology. Ariel is the recipient of the 2017 Mayor’s Arts Award for emerging community artist.

“I’ve been lucky to work on projects ranging in size from fringe to a TYA tour (which involved performing barefoot) to A-House theatres. I have experienced gruelling shows where I’ve had to take the laundry home on the side of my bike at 1:00am, and magical shows that you never want to end. Throughout all of those experiences, every time I thought this work couldn’t get stranger or harder, I have never stopped growing from, learning from, or loving this work. I’m so grateful to be part of the current landscape that is the wild west of theatre as we try and pivot to keep creation a part of everyone’s lives- even if that means doing the work from my couch.” Meghan’s first love is stage management and selected credits include shows at The Shaw Festival, The Thousand Islands Playhouse, Canadian Stage, and Centaur Theatre. Meghan is a graduate of the National Theatre School & Queen’s University.

A dramaturg, director, and producer of new performance work; from world premiere productions to games played on bicycles, change listening parties, new plays, virtual gatherings, multisensory experiences, and secret backyard shows. Laurel was Festival Producer for One Yellow Rabbit’s 33rd & 34th High Performance Rodeo, Calgary’s International Festival of the Arts. She is a former Co-Editor for SpiderWebShow’s CdnTimes.

JD (she/her) is a performer, playwright, theatre maker, comedian, director, inclusive educator and innovator. JD’s work involves solo shows, community and artist collaboration, traditional writing, experimental storytelling, video, event creation, co-design and stand-up comedy. Select plays include Certified, Stood, A Modern Woman’s Guide to Female Impersonation, Bearded Circus Ladies, Gloom, All In, Joke You, Funny in the Head, Me on the Map with Adrienne Wong, Dog of my Understanding, Auditions for an Embarrassed Woman, Turkey in the Woods, Ingenious Speculations with Rita Bozi and Kim Selody, The Opposite of Everything is True, and Under the Big Top. Her plays have been produced by The Caravan Farm Theatre (Armstrong) Belfry Theatre (Victoria), Buddies in Bad Times (Toronto), and Vancouver companies Touchstone Theatre, The Frank Theatre, Neworld Theatre, and Solo Collective. Festival presentations include High Performance Rodeo (Calgary), The Progress Festival (Toronto), FoldA (Kingston), Uno (Victoria), PuSh (Vancouver), Summerworks (Toronto), People’s Comedy Festival (Toronto), International Gay Theatre Festival (Dublin) and Vancouver International Children’s Festival. In 2017, JD participated in the Banff Centre Playwright’s Lab and the Playwright’s Unit at Alberta Theatre Projects with co-creator Adrienne Wong. Her fictitious memoir, Mercy Gene: the man made making of a mad woman, currently awaits publication.

Joel is a multimedia integrator based in Montreal, QC, currently working at Moment Factory.
With a passion for technology integration in production, Joel has worked as a projection designer, software developer, digital media artist and teacher. In collaboration with SpiderWebShow, he recently relaunched CdnStudio, an online virtual performance space.

Miwa Matreyek is a Los Angeles based animator, designer, and performer, currently living and working in the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, known as Vancouver BC. She has toured internationally as an independent artist for over a decade. Coming from a background in animation, Matreyek creates live, staged performances where she interacts with her kaleidoscopic moving images as a shadow silhouette, in a dreamlike visual space that makes invisible worlds visible, often weaving surreal and poetic narratives of conflict between humanity and nature. She performs her interdisciplinary shadow performances all around the world, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, art museums, science museums, universities, and tech conferences. A few past presentations include TED, MOMA, SFMOMA, New Sundance Film Festival, and more. She is also a co-founder and core-collaborator of the multi-media theater company, Cloud Eye Control. She received her MFA for Experimental Animation and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2007.

Bulmer (she/her) has worked internationally in theatre, film, radio and performance art for over 25 years. She has worked with organizations including the CBC, National Theatre of England, The National Arts Centre of Canada, Graeae Theatre Company, and the London 2012 Olympics. She is writer of the AMI award-winning BBC radio 4 adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, writer of SMUDGE, which earned two Best New Play nominations in Canada and was Time Out’s Critics’ Choice during its U.K. premiere, and co-writer of the BAFTA-nominated U.K. television series Cast Offs. Alex is co-founder of Invisible Flash UK , Artistic Director of Cripping The Stage in association with The British Council, and co-Artistic Director of Common Boots Theatre. Currently Alex is lead curator for Brave 2021 Festival: CoMotion, an International Disability Arts Festival produced by Harbourfront Centre.

Whiston (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in Toronto for 27+ years as a director, dramaturge, writer, performer, and community artist. With RDP, Tristan co-led 25+ community-engaged arts projects including Drift Seeds, (a site-specific performance with a cast of 150+) and co-created numerous interdisciplinary arts projects including May I Take Your Arm, Where There is Smoke and trace (with Moynan King) that toured Canada in 2015. Tristan’s work as an audio artist has gained him international acclaim and attention; most notably, his work, Middle C, won the 2007 Premios Ondas Award for International Radio. Tristan was artist-in-residence at Central Toronto Youth Services, directing Gender Play (2004-2010) working with LGBTQ youth to explore issues and experiences of gender, and, most recently, Transcend, a group exploring gender through art and activism (2012-2017).

Yealland (she/her) has worked as an electrician and camera operator in commercial film production since 1997, however she is primarily a grip (film technician). Katie has worked with Red Dress Productions since 2010 as a (still and moving) photographer, technician, and technical director.

Anna Camilleri has been working with performance, image, and text for over 25 years. An interdisciplinary theatre artist and designer, her tactile and sculptural works are primarily expressed through 20+ public artworks. Her book works have been recognized with distinctions from the LAMBDA Literary Foundation, the Association of Independent Publishers, and the American Library of Congress. Anna is Artistic Co-Director of ReDefine Arts.

OMAR ZUBAIR (he/him/his) Utilizing the skills developed and continually honed through art practice, scientific experimentation, and trans-ethnographic participation, Omar Zubair has been focusing on expanding the scope of reality by creating a process of bringing back artifacts from the dream place, catalysing the growth of new sensory organs via confocal synaesthetics, and building placetimes & languages from which multi-species groups can come together into temporary superorganisms. He has created sound for the Wooster Group, Lady Gaga, French perfume commercials, movie trailers, spiritual gatherings and has been traveling the country for a number of years developing a new national anthem.

FAY NASS (she/her/hers) is a Vancouver based theatre director, curator, dramaturg, producer and multi-disciplinary artist. She is the Artistic Director of the frank theatre company and the founder/AD of Aphotic Theatre. Her work often examines questions of race, sex, and culture, and the challenges these pose to notions of identity. In her work she shines light on liminal spaces in order to shift meanings and create space for cultural exchanges. Fay’s work has been showcased nationally and internationally. Her most recent credits include: co-directing Trans Script Part I: The Women (The Frank Theatre and Zee Theatre at Firehall Arts Centre) directing She Mami Wata & the Pussy WitcHunt (the Frank Theatre at PuSh Festival 2020), co-directing Straight White Men (ITSAZOO productions at Gateway Theatre) dramaturgy of Camera Obscura (Hungry Ghosts) (The Frank Theatre &QAF), directing and devising Diaspora: Queer immigrant and refugee stories (The Frank Theatre at QAF), cultural consultation and curation of residency programs with North Van Art and Culture office, curation and producing of Another Window Cabaret (Aphotic theatre and Neworld Theatre). Fay holds a MFA from Simon Fraser University.

Connor Price-Kelleher has worked all over Ontario and once in Winnipeg as a stage manager, technical director, and theatre creator. He most recently created a clown show with Robin Breiche called Cincip which premiered at the Ottawa Fresh Meat Festival in 2019. Some other past productions include; A (Musical) Mid Summer Night’s Dream – Driftwood Theatre Group 2019, The Omnibus Bill – Tactics Theatre Collective Series 2019, Burnt – Undercurrents 2019, Le Crip Bleu – Fresh Meat Cabaret 2019, Cardinal – Aplombusrhombus 2018, Burnt– Winnipeg FemFest 2018, What’s Cooking – Kingston Fringe 2018. When not at the theatre Connor can be found locking people in rooms for a living as the Technical Director of Improbable Escapes in Kingston.

Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founder of The Arctic Cycle and in her capacity as artistic director, has spearheaded local and global artistic initiatives for over a decade. She has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as diverse audiences in the US and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival that coincides with the United Nations COP meetings. As a playwright, Chantal is working on a series of eight plays that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states.

Anita Rochon is a Vancouver-based performance director primarily focused on the creation of new work. Rochon freelance directs in a range of styles from classical texts to documentary work to relational installations to contemporary dance. She and Emelia Symington Fedy run The Chop, a company that tours work nationally and internationally. Anita has directed for The Shaw Festival, Electric Company Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Theatre Replacement, Belfry Theatre, Théâtre la Seizième, Globe Theatre and Vancouver Opera.