Alexandra Maynard
Alexandra is a graduate of York University with a B.A. in Theatre, majoring in Creative Ensemble and Playwriting. She has also received a certificate in ballet, modern, and folkloric dance from the internationally acclaimed L’École Supérieure de Danse du Québec. Recent credits include Janet in Imperial’s annual The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2016), producer of Anytime, Anywhere’s Heartlines in London, England (2014), and an assistant director in Theatre at York’s Murder in the Cathedral in Toronto (2013).
Play in development: Trench is about a young woman who works through post traumatic issues following the Dawson school shooting. A dark and poetic piece that explores the making of a school shooter, showing how mental health, bullying, and trauma effect decision making in youth.
Andy Buell
Andy is a senior student at Westmount High School currently in the arts stream, a group of 16-year-old aspiring illustrator, writer and voice actor learning to push their creative limits. They’re deeply invested in science fiction, LGBT+ representation and promoting theatre as an outlet for teens.
Play in development: Stargazers is a play about a piece of identity launched into space. It explores how we take parts of ourselves and separate them, and what happens to those pieces we fragment.
Antonio Bavaro
Antonio is an actor, writer and director. He is also a cabaret host and burlesque dancer (Tony Bravo) and a drag artiste (Connie Lingua). Originally from Edmonton, Antonio’s practice walks the line between man and woman, queerness and normalcy, rural and urban, high and low brow, the sacred and the profane. Antonio holds a diploma in Theatre Arts (Musical) from MacEwan University (2007) and a BFA from Concordia University’sTheatre & Development program (2014).
Play in development: Nonna’s Story is a one-person show about Antonio Bavaro’s immigrant Neapolitan-Italian-Canadian matriarch’s life, and that of her blue collar working class family over the course of 100 years. It is told through the lens of the queer, performing artist grandson who feels like the black-sheep of his Roman Catholic family.
Avery Burrow
Avery is a queer playwright from Vancouver. She is studying a BFA in Performance Creation at Concordia University. She has seen the production of two of her plays: Lunar Phases (2015 IGNITE! Theatre Festival) and The Old Haunt (Shop 2015). Avery uses her work to discuss the stigma surrounding mental illness, sexual assault, and queer identity.
Play in development: Linge Sale – An estranged mother and daughter who haven’t spoken in 7 years are forced to reunite to fulfill the father’s dying wish of having his ashes scattered in rural Quebec. When it comes to light that his love for the town is due to his lover Antoine, the mother must come to terms with both her daughter and husband’s queerness. Despite language barriers and political differences, the two women must work hard to mend their relationship before they drift further apart.
Avery Reid
Avery is an actor and playwright in her second year of BFA in Acting at Concordia University. She is inspired by surreal and movement based theatre as well as derived and poetic texts. Avery has acted in many shows from Greek tragedies to modern thrillers and created theatre for both children and adults in Canada and Germany.
Play in development: Avery is co-creating Messy Blueprints to Sexual Freedom with artist Oprah Lemorin. The piece follows two women as they explore sexual expression and what it means to be sexually free. It is a humorous, poetic and nonlinear piece that tackles themes in the realm of sexual freedom, coming of age, connection, and body exploration.
Brandon Lorimer
Brandon is a musician and playwright recently transplanted from Halifax. He creates and performs his music under the name Brandon Voyeur. Brandon’s first produced play was Noun (Halifax Fringe Festival, 2016). He then became part of the Bus Stop Theatre’s inaugural Playwrights Unit, where he began work on his current piece, Crystal City.
Play in development: Crystal City is a comedic drama of a town that sells its soul for a chance of decadence, then crashes down with the world around it. Set in a dystopian alteration of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the piece follows the lives of a handful of residents in a port city turned Orwellian tourist trap. The play uses the end of the world as a way to question ideas about gentrification, mental health issues, institutionalized devaluation, and the perpetuation of regressive attitudes.
Burcu Emeç
Burcu is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker and photographer currently based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Her one-woman show tldr;smh was awarded the Mainline Creativity Award and nominated for Best English Production at the 2017 Montreal Fringe. In 2015, Burcu co-founded Obra anaïs performance ensemble. Her interests are grounded in intersectional feminism – currently in particular on nurturance and care, performed identities, light/shadow, fantasies, tactile sensations, and enjoy working with interdisciplinary mediums in digital art, immersive installation, and object theatre.
Play in development: Burcu’s piece plays with images and teases the ways text can be controlled and staged without actors. It binds on the emotional – and often invisible – labour of femme and women-identifying folk, and the possibilities that arise when it becomes monetized.
Caitlin Cooke
Caitlin is a Theatre Production and Performance graduate from Ryerson University. Some recent credits include: Resident Stage Manager of HERstory Counts Theatre Company, a feminist theatre company based in Toronto; Co-creator of The Brave Space (2017), a fundraising cabaret celebrating diversity on Canadian Stages; and performer and writer for the New Voices Festival (2017) at Ryerson University regarding queerness and sexual assault.
Play in development: Green Onions is a piece dealing with the complexity and beauty of female friendship, and how queerness and sexuality emerges in different ways as we grow up. The show is a mix of prose, verse and movement surrounding two female characters as they grow into their identities and sexuality.
Claudio Tamburri
Born and raised in Montreal with a BFA in theatre from Concordia, Claudio has always had a passion for the performing arts. Though he has always been told “you can’t do that, it’s impossible”, he always made impossible things possible.
Play in development: I, Christopher is a one-person show that deals with rejection. It also deals with someone who lives in the autism spectrum. The piece is a personal reflection of what someone has lived through by a person that still lives through it.
Curtis Legault
Curtis is a theatre artist, TV and film actor, and a graduate of Concordia University Theatre Performance (BFA, 2016). Since graduating, Curtis has toured Oyster (ARENA Festival, Germany ) and has performed in several Montreal theatre productions. He also teaches weekly drama classes organized by Geordie Productions.
Play in development: Maskulin(e), co-created with Alexandre Lang, is a multidisciplinary performance that explores and deconstructs learned notions of toxic masculinity. Primarily using the style of half-mask and other forms of physical theatre, Curtis and Alexandre combine their related personal experiences and fables to create eleven short scenes about boys and men punished for not conforming, or rewarded for conforming to eleven dimensions of masculine norms.
Ella Kohlmann
Ella is a writer, performer, and theatre-maker currently doing her undergrad at Concordia University in English Literature and Creative Writing, with a minor in Theatre. She’s originally from Markham, Ontario, but moved to Montreal for school and likes it much better here than in the suburbs.
Play in development: In Exits, Rachel ran away from home with nothing but a school bag and the ghost of her eleven year old self. A play about (amongst other things) graffiti, Moby Dick, growing up, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what the hell we’re supposed to be doing.
Emmanuelle Brousseau
Emmanuelle is a graduate of the French Production program at the National Theatre School of Canada. She also studied scenography, literature, music and film. Her piece Icepick-moé l’coeur (co-written) was part of the 2015 Montreal Fringe and Se rincer l’âme au windshield washer won the Frankie Awards of the Best francophone show (2017 Montreal Fringe). Emmanuelle is also the co-artistic director of Le Cabinet d’Ingéniosités.
Play in development: How to survive when no one is believing? When the fire has become crackles? When the energy of a mythical place is lost in resignation, fear and division? In We are the kids of the 95 hangover, a bar threatened with closure becomes the project of a nation when Sue, Julien, Jude and Maxime decide to revive the spirit of Le Wendigo before the remaining «last-call».
Emily Murdoch
A graduate of the Concordia University Theatre Program, Murdoch is a feminist director, dramaturge, theatre creator as well as the Artistic Director of Revolution They Wrote Festival. Recent directing credits include: Vintage Hitchcock A Live Radio Play (PSCC Theatre), The Blood Countess (RTW), Little One (SIPA Festival).
Play in development: The Woods Witch, walled up in her castle, is sentenced to die. Some say she was a victim of history, others paint her as a sadistic lesbian vampire who bathed in the blood of her victims. Only one thing is for sure, no one ever seems to remember her name. Based on the story of a 16th-century noblewoman, the play is a post-modern look at how powerful women are represented and remembered throughout history.
Erin Lindsay
Erin is a writer/creator, performer and feminist who is interested in theatre and art’s potential for social change.
Play in development: Erin is working on a triptych exploring on the theme of hysteria and how it relates to women’s oppression, female sexuality and the cost of having a female body. The Hysteria Triptych is a play that explores love, self-love and the relationship between boundaries and communication.
Lorna Kidjo
Lorna is a graduate of HELB in Brussels, Belgium (2012) with a B.A. in Technique de l’image, majoring in film production and direction. She also received a certificate in screenwriting from the McGill Writing Center. She previously worked as a visual effects coordinator but has now switched her focus to acting and writing for both screen and stage. She last performed in McGill’s First Black All Female Production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. You can also find her at the Goldrush Entertainment Office, where she works as an Executive Assistant.
Play in development: Lorna is exploring a play titled Equivocation. The piece paints the picture of a strongly bound unbalanced relationship turning into an obsessive and destructive habit.
Gabe Maharjan
Gabe is a recent graduate of the Dome. He was the lead writer of a collective creation produced at the Dome in their graduating year. Recent shows they have performed in include Antigone (Raise the Stakes Theatre), The Last Wife (IMAGO Theatre), and Memento Mori by Kaleidoscope Theatre (Montreal Fringe, 2017). They also recently directed and co-produced Gruesome Playground Injuries with their company, Playground Productions.
Play in development: Eva in Rio tells the story of Eva, a trans girl living a dream and being her best self on a trip in Rio. The strange and surreal events that occur along her journey take us deeper into her mind and deals with the uncomfortable concepts of identity and acceptance.
Gabriel Schultz
Gabriel is a performer and writer based in Montreal. He has collaborated with various professional and independent theatre companies in the city. He has performed his own writing in shows such Invasive Species in 2017 (winner of the Frankie Awards) and The Dairy Farmer’s Lament (Archipelago).
Play in development: The Camp is about a collective of artists living on a mountain, after the collapse of civilization. When an ominous presence threatens their commune, they are left to their own devices to deal with the conflict. How do you face trust in a time of terror? The crops must be harvested, the cats must be skinned, and you must run from the dogs.
Gleb Vinokurov
Gleb was born in Russia, in a city called Ulyanovsk. He attended St. Petersburg State University, majoring in literature. He then worked in the US as a teaching assistant at Reed College and spent last year in Portland, Oregon. He is currently taking his master’s in Russian studies at McGill.
Play in development: Gleb’s play is about a man trying to make sense of his life in dialogue with himself and the audience. But right when all his attempts to understand his own life and his place in the lives of others have failed, he received a box of his favourite childhood toys from home. Each time he takes them out turns into a little puppet show, through which he tries to relive some moments from his past, and then challenge or change the narrative of his own life.
Katherine Turnbull
Katherine is an actor, writer, mover, and creator. A graduate from the BFA Acting Program at the University of Windsor, she is now based in Montréal, Quebec. She explores the dirt that’s swept under the rug, the skeletons that are kept in the closet.
Play in development: In The Mercy of Wild Beasts, a midsummer night’s dream turns midwinter nightmare when four friends are snowed in at a cabin in the woods. All four competing lovers bare their souls, then their teeth, until they unleash the beasts within. May the best love sick creature win.
Kenny Streule
Kenny’s acting career launched with his performance in 14 Diaries of the Great War right after graduating from Dawson College in 2010. He has collaborated with many Montreal Talents such as Catherine Bérubé, Amy Blackmore and Len Richman. Kenny’s passion for creating has led him to establish his own theatre company Plaid Thursday Productions. Recently, Kenny was in Chocolate Moose Theatre Company’s production of Conspiracy. He is a host of the crowd-pleasing improvisation show, Wild Fucking Improvisers in Action and has written a play, City Boy (public reading at ShortStanding Festival, 2018).
Play in development: Mal Understood is based on Kenny’s own challenges of being bilingual in a monolingual world. Three versions of the same man; Kindergarten, Elementary, and High School – all dealing with an evolving insecurity from living between two languages.
Kyle Crouch
Kyle is a writer and pastry chef. Originally from Vancouver, he graduated from Simon Fraser University in the Humanities and English programs. He is also a member of Infinitheatre’s Unit, adapting his radio play City³ for the stage.
Play in development: The Death of Marta is an interactive, non-linear, multi-media show exploring how we understand and tell stories of abuse – both to ourselves and in society – through the partial lens of the French Revolution.
Laurent McCuaig-Pitre
Graduate of Dawson College’s Professional Theatre program and Concordia University’s Playwriting program, Laurent is a bilingual actor, playwright, teacher and artist. His latest play, A Perfect Picture was nominated for Best Solo at the 2016 Montreal Fringe and received critical acclaim at the Centaur Theatre’s 2017 Wildside Festival. This year, Laurent is creating and performing in two new works: Amuse Me and Little Charming.
Play in development: Icarus Is Alive is a contemporary re-examination of the Icarus myth where the tragic hero struggles with fate, memory and legacy. Who are the gods of our modern world? Why do the cycles of violence and tragedy continue even though we are aware of the cautionary tales and stories? How does memory change the past, the present and the future?
Sarah Foulkes
Sarah is an actor, writer and director working in theatre and film. Having recently graduated with a degree in Cultural Studies, Sarah is very interested in uniting theory and practice, activism and art making. In 2017, she was a part of Docile Bodies and Punish, which ran at La Chapelle as well as at the Montreal Fringe. Sarah has written and directed a number of short films. She is also a pop culture critic who’s work has appeared in Film School Rejects, Film Matters and Huffington Post.
Lisa Saban
Lisa is a graduate of the McGill Drama and Theatre Program. In 2017, she co-directed a devised, collaborative multidisciplinary piece, Docile Bodies, that played at the Montreal Fringe. She is currently working on three different theatre projects: directing a play in InspiraTO’s 10 minute play festival in Toronto and acting in The Easy Lovin’ Blues (Night Cafe Theatre). During her time in the Young Creators Unit, Lisa has been writing a play entitled Drain City with her friend Sarah Foulkes.
Play in development: Drain City explores the relationship between two women who move into the same building in the gentrified neighbourhood of Villeray in Montreal. They begin to form a friendship that is tested by their different perspectives, experiences and ultimately different levels of community engagement.
Madie Jolliffe
Madie is a feminist director, writer, choreographer, and performer. She is studying Performance Creation at Concordia. Some recent projects include creating and performing in site specific performance Hauntings; directing The Runaway Game (Island Fringe); choreographing Shrek the Musical (WISTA); and co-creating Like Jane (2017 Revolution They Wrote Festival). She won the Colin Krivy award for Playwriting at the McGill Drama Festival 2017 for her play The Ever Present Witness.
Play in development: Sugar is about normalizing sugaring (sex work involving an older, rich person in relationship with a younger person.) It is about young women finding empowerment through their sexuality; it is about how sex work is work; it’s about power dynamics; and it’s about the context in which people find themselves to engage in these relationships and dive into the sugar bowl.
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel hails from Vancouver. He first came to Montreal for his undergrad, and is now a second year actor at the National Theatre School of Canada. Writing a show is something he’s always wanted to try.
Play in development: Flam-Boy-Ance – Some parents give their child a teddy bear. Addison’s parents gave him a taxidermy white flamingo. Its name is Francesco, and it has some things to say. At first Addison would like nothing more than for this bizarre being to vanish. But as fear molts into friendship, this undead bird who gives questionable advice might be the only one who sees the little boy for what he really is.
Patrick Forrest Jeffrey
Patrick is a writer and actor. Recent credits include Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare-in-the-Park), Pip/Theo in Three Days of Rain (Sweetline), Dentist/ Drowned Man in The Good Doctor (St. John’s Players), Antonio in The Tempest (Shakespeare by the Sea), and George Étienne Cartier in the Confederation Centre Confederation Players program. In 2013, he staged his own show Oh, Prometheus! (Island Fringe) and his most recent play Brûlé was performed in the St. John’s Shorts festival. He currently studies Acting at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Play in development: When a teen’s body is found perfectly preserved in the cellar of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse, it causes panic and hysteria amongst the community residents. This one man show explores the cultural and racial tensions that still underlie many rural areas in 21st century Canada.
Roxane Loumède
Roxane holds a Bachelors degree in fine arts with specialization in Theatre Performance at Concordia University (2015). She performs and act in film and theatre. In 2015, Roxane founded a bilingual theatre company Troisième espace théâtre/Third Space Theatre. The mandate is not only to write plays that use both French and English but also to create a safe space where both communities can work together.
Play in development: Ensaf Attend – Ensaf Haïdar moves to Sherbrooke Québec from Saudi-Arabia. After her husband Raïf Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a 1000 whiplash for his blog that promotes freedom of speech, Haïdar with the help of a support group fights to free him.
Sarah Segal-Lazar
Sarah is an actor, playwright and singer-songwriter. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Dome Theatre, her experimental musical Talk, Mackerel was nominated for 4 Montreal Fringe awards and selected for Centaur Theatre’s 2014 Wildside Festival. In 2015, she released her debut album Two if by Sea. In 2016, she composed the music for Persephone Productions’ Jerome of Sandy Cove and starred in the Montreal premiere of Bad Jews. She recently starred in its 2017 remount at the Segal Centre.
Play in development: Baggage – Bags come to life to reveal their intimate insides. Stories about women in relation to relationships, about breakups and new beginnings, and about revealing your inner baggage.
Shanti Ikwe Gonzales
Shanti is an Indian-Mexican-American theatremaker. A graduate of McGill University’s Drama/Theatre program, her bachelor’s thesis, Love Painted Brown was performed at McGill’s Bodies in Difference Conference (2017) and the Montreal Fringe (2017). Shanti is a Director in BTW’s Artist Mentorship Program, Artistic Associate at Repercussion Theatre, and an early childhood music teacher with Monkey Rock Music.
Play in development: molt(en) is the story of two brown women: an Indian immigrant mother and her second-generation mixed-race daughter, told over the course of 25 years. The mother has always been severely depressed, but for the majority of her life has been extremely high functioning. By the daughter’s 25th year, the mother is bedridden, in a catatonic depression.
Simon Pelletier
Simon is a bilingual actor and emerging playwright. He recently graduated from Concordia University’s Acting program. He is currently writing his first play.
Play in development: A pebble in the tide is based on his grandmother’s time living in Denmark during the German occupation.
Sophie El Assaad
Sophie is a theatre artist working mostly as a costume designer with interests in both directing and writing. She grew up in Bahrain and moved to Montreal to pursue painting and sculpting and fell for theatre along the way. At the moment, her personal work focuses on themes relating to her Middle-Eastern heritage and Womanhood.
Play in development: Black Balloon is a story about self-discovery. It follows a young girl who runs away from her war ravaged home to find hope and something more beautiful than what she has known. It is when she finds herself completely lost in the desert that she is able to embrace new encounters and see through alternate perspectives. This cerebral and poetic piece seeks to enter the mind of a young female martyr and how she is moved towards such an end, or as she sees it, a beginning.
Stephen Patrick Booth
Stephen is a graduate of the Concordia BFA Theatre program. He has a great interest in performing solo shows.
Play in development: You are a drifter is an interdenominational solo about fantasies and potentials. One man explores all of time and everything outside of it, asking audiences to understand his unique point if view
Victoria Hall
Originally from Labrador City, Victoria is a graduate of Dawson College’s Theatre program. Recent acting credits include Tanya in Punk Rock (Beautiful City Theatre) and #4 in Mavericks and the Monokini: Play Ball! (Third Space Theatre). Recent writing credits include a notebook full of short stories and depressing poems tucked away in her sock drawer.
Play in development: Desert Bloom – Canada’s foremost succulent plant expert on television, Emory Egan, has died, found impaled upon a rare and particularly spiky cactus in his home. It was one of many plants that took over his house and his life. His niece has inherited these plants, and his burden along with it – she can’t stop acquiring new plants herself. She soon discovers that the ‘roots’ of this problem run deeper than she thought, as she learns more about her extended family’s troubles with plants.
Trevor Barrette
Trevor Barrette is a Montreal based actor, director, writer/composer and proud graduate of John Abbott College’s Professional Theatre Program, where he received the 2008 Carla Napier Scholarship and 2011 Pamela Montgomery Award. Upon graduating, he founded the award-winning Kaleidoscope Theatre Montreal (2015 Frankie for Most Promising Local Company) and has directed their nine productions including four of his own musical creations. As an actor, he has worked for the National Arts Centre, Centaur Theatre, Geordie Productions, Repercussion Theatre, among others. Trevor currently serves on the Quebec Drama Federations’ Board of Directors and the Montreal English Theatre Awards Committee.
Play in development: And Oblivion
Willow Cioppa
Willow is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. Earning their BFA at Concordia University. Her writing and visual work is held together inseparably by themes of sex, intimacy, race, queerness, and their fundamental love of rap music. Cioppa lives and practices witchcraft out of their small, Rosemont apartment, with their black cat.
Play in development: Dark Red is a fluid monologue following a young woman as she writes a letter to all the men she’s fucked. Her fears, desires, qualms, and trauma. It will be performed in the 2018 Revolution She Wrote Festival in Montreal, QC.
