Adjani Poirier
Adjani is a multidisciplinary theatre artist focused on creating work within a feminist, queer and anti-racist framework. She is a graduate of Dawson College’s Professional Theatre Program and Concordia University’s Theatre and Development and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality. She is the co-creator of On Life and Living: Documentary Theatre and Oral History Project. She currently works facilitating art based sexual health workshops in Montreal high schools.
Play in development: Still Gay When I’m Not in Love is a play that examines the intersection of queerness, identity, love and friendship. Set on the evening of a (gay) wedding turned apocalyptic disaster, three flawed heroes navigate the ethics of relationships, family, community and individuality.
Alex Hine
Alex is a musician and writer from Lachine. He is currently working on his second play.
Play in development: It’s my baby and I’ll murder it ritualistically if I want to (working title) – A priest tries to convince his demonologist lover not to go through with her plan to sacrifice their unborn child to Satan.
Alice Abracen
Alice is a graduate of Harvard University and of the National Theatre School of Canada and a co-founder of Theatre Ouest End. Her play Omission was featured in the Centennial Season of Alumnae Theatre in Toronto; The Covenant won the 2017 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition; and her plays The Tour and What Rough Beast received their US premieres with Underlings Theatre Company.
Play in development: Judith and Holofernes – The Assyrian army is invading, the authorities are helpless, and defeat seems inevitable – but Judith has a perfect plan. Step one: surrender. Step two: seduce. Step 3: slaughter – the enemy general, that is. But when the fearsome warlord turns out to be charming, Judith is caught a bit off guard. When thousands of lives are at stake, what do you do with an empathy that threatens your mission.
Anna Burkholder
Anna is a performer and theatre creator who trained at East 15 Acting School in England. She enjoyed an extended time in England after graduation, working in British theatres, including the National Theatre in London. She believes in the power of storytelling and is thrilled to now be based in Montréal.
Play in development: One week last summer– A Volkswagen van, full of female students, travels across Canada in 1970 to fight for abortion accessibility. Ellen, a young student, discovers she is pregnant and deserts the group to head to Montreal in search of the country’s first abortion clinic. Left alone to navigate an underground world of abortion, she faces the dangers in seeking illegal medical care and trusting strangers with her life.
Anne-Marie St-Louis
Annie is a theatre maker specializing in directing, teaching and stage managing. In 2017, Annie graduated from Concordia’s Theatre and Development program and co-founded Créactifs. This year, she will be directing Racines (Espace Libre) and P B & J (MTL Fringe). With a growing fascination for the ritual, the sacred and the bubble-gum punk aesthetic, one could best describe Annie’s work as highly sensory and satirical.
Play in development: Sacred – A biting and (semi) autobiographical adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy Antigone. Welcome to Creon’s family estate in Westmount. On this glorious day, Polynice’s is to wed while his sister Antigone is faced with her childhood being buried in the dirt. Addressing sibling rivalry and loyalty, the play examines how even the most sacred ties can be fractured.
Antonia Leney-Granger
Antonia is a Montreal-based puppeteer, director and educator specializing in object theatre and visual storytelling. In 2015, she founded Théâtre du Renard, an object theatre company. She holds a B.A. in Western Culture and Civilization from the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University and is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada (Production Program).
Play in development: A Brief History of Time – Inspired by the work of Stephen Hawking, this dazzling one-woman show, uses a hundred or so objects to convey with wit and precision the great ideas that have shaped the history of modern science. Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and Hubble are sung, rapped, recounted and made relevant again. This is your chance to understand (at last!) the theory of relativity, the expansion of the Universe, and the meaning of the famous E=mc2.
Brandon Lorimer
Brandon is a playwright and musician from Halifax and a regular grappler of existential questions and post apocalyptic worlds. Through his music as Brandon Voyeur, he creates work spanning music, theatre, and film.
Play in development: Crystal City is a darkly comedic parable of gentrification and modernization, set in a dystopian Halifax. It follows the lives of several denizens of the titular Crystal City as they try and search for meaning under the thumb of omnipresent decadence. As the lives and world of the play unravel, so to does the structure, bringing the audience face to face with these universal struggles.
Deniz Başar
Deniz’s research on modern theatre of Turkey contributed to two upcoming academic anthologies on theatre (Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations and Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race). In 2014, she won the Mitos-Boyut theatre publishing agency’s annual contest for her play The Itch. In 2016, she won the Derbent Playwriting Contest with her play In the Destructible Flow of a Vast Monolithic Moment (later translated into Persian) and will soon have a staged reading in the 2019 Revolution They Wrote festival.
Play in development: Wine and Halva – The story is centered around an unconventional friendship between a Canadian gay man and an immigrant woman in their twenties, who do not foresee how committed they will get to each other as they pass the obstacles of their lives together.
Erin Brahm
Erin has performed and devised various forms of theatre in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2016, Erin completed her Masters degree in Ensemble Theatre: Performance and Devising, in London, UK; specializing in clowning. Performance and devising highlights include: Citizens of Nowhere: London’s International Clown Company, Bread and Puppet Theater, Shakespeare in the Ruelles, Festival TransAmériques, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and clowning on The Last Leg (Open Mike Productions, Channel 4, London UK).
Play in development: Poetic Nonsense playfully explores and exposes human attributes and truths in all their absurdities, with glimpses into private lives and public persona’s. Physical theatre meets clown and sketch comedy with hints of melodramatic musical – profound nonsense will ensue.
Hannah Morrow
Hannah is a director, actor/performer, professionally trained wrestler, and playwright. As a synthesis of everything she has learned in the Tio’tia: ke (Montreal) queer performance underground, she is co-creating the EarthBound Sci-Fi Wrestling performance series. Hannah is working to bring the EarthBound multi-verse onto the screen, as a web series. She graduated, once upon a time, from Concordia’s Theatre and Development program.
Play in development: Lilac & Ula Vs. Shades of Infinity is an action-packed story of two Spirit Sisters from Venus, wrestling to save Earth from threats both metaphysical and scientific. This immersive & interactive midsummer spectacle will invite audiences to take quantum leaps with the characters through an epic, earthbound adventure.
Jessica Beauplat
Jessica has created two web series: Les yeux de la ville and L’Ascension, which interviews comedians whose career is in full swing! She also contributes to various publications such as Huffington Post Québec. Jessica will be presenting her first play: Ne touche pas pas à mes cheveux (et autres principes de base) at the 2019 Montreal FRINGE Festival!
Play in development: Ne touche pas à mes cheveux (et autres principes de base) / Don’t touch my hair (and other basic principles) is a solo performance about a girl who decided to start a Black Hair 101 class. A tricky subject she is ready to tackle even though she knows that by addressing it with her class, she will be walking on eggshells.
Josh Johnston
Josh is a punk actor, musician and playwright born in Toronto. His work has taken him to the Stratford Festival, the beach, a tent in the backlot of a bodega in Brooklyn, and many other stages. He is the co-founder of art collective Other Families and strives to create performances only your stomach can make sense of.
Play in development: Eyes – From the safety and confinement of an underground facility, three people are hired by the secret rulers of the world to monitor global social media activity, make conclusions about the zeitgeist and determine more effective measures of control.
Kate Hammer
Kate is a performer, writer, and comedian in Montreal. She produces the monthly show INFEMOUS, which has performed in sold-out Off-JFL and POP Montreal shows. Kate recently won the McGill Drama Festival’s Playwright Award, and had been a part of Montreal Sketchfest, Ladyfest, Big City Festival, Big Pond Improv Festival, and more. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the comedy journal, Hindwing Press.
Play in development: The Anniversary Speech – The least favourite son in this absurd and wealthy family is finally asked to give a speech in front of everyone. Seen as an opportunity to gain the respect they’ve always deserved, one bald, sweaty man takes control… one way or another.
Karuna Vellino
Karuna is a disabled Jewish non binary lesbian with a passion for writing, acting and theatre creation. During their time studying acting at Studio58, they fell in love with playwriting, and they are ecstatic to be working on their first play at the YCU.
Play in development: Love Is The Last Thing illuminates LGBTQ experiences. The piece deals with complex intersectional issues and explores what it is like to live as a human in the margins.
Lauren Holfeuer
Lauren is new to Montreal, originally from Saskatoon. She is an actor, musician, playwright, director, and founder of Thigh High Theatre, an indie theatre company that creates new works and organizes
advocacy events with the aim of supporting female voices and female artists.
Play in development: Barbara is Drowning – A psychological examination of the wife of a high powered executive accused of sexual misconduct. Barbara weighs her options as she confronts the stories of the women her husband has harmed. Barbara must decide if she will stand by blindly or risk everything for the truth. A story about guilt, sacrifice, and the impossible decisions women are forced to make.
Miriam Cummings
Miriam is an actor, instructor, producer and emerging playwright. In 2012, she co-founded Hopegrown Productions with Samantha Megarry – her ongoing creative partner – and with Hopegrown, has workshopped and performed three new plays by local Montreal playwrights, which have toured within Canada and internationally. As an actor, Miriam has performed with Repercussion Theatre, In Your Face Entertainment and Passionfool Theatre, among others.
Play in development: The One – A woman in her early (late) twenties searches for love in real life (online) while developing the world’s most authentic (fake) dating app. A comedic-drama examining the rules of engagement in the endless world of swiping, insta-sharing and #relationshipgoals. What is vulnerability in 2019 and are we even open to experiencing it?
Rebecca Bauer and Patrick Park
Unplugged is comprised of performer/creators, Rebecca Bauer and Patrick Park. Inspired by their own experiences and curiosities as two friends of different racial backgrounds and genders, Unplugged aims to create theatrical experiences that draw attention to intersectionality – people who live between experiences and identities that connect and clash with each other.
Play in development: Hop into a ride with siblings, Patty P and Becca B, as they journey through the streets of Montreal, passing through locations that connect them to their past. If I Were You is a quirky, intimate play that immerses audience members into an experience which investigates the inherent biases, power dynamics, and learned ignorance that exist within the complex societal shifts of the millennial generation. With a poop stop or two along the way, of course!
Ryan Bommarito
Ryan is an actor. He studied acting in college and elsewhere – maybe a little too much, and now thinks that he can write a play. He is originally from small town Ontario. Waterford, to be precise.
Play in development: Tomorrow – About climate change. And Macbeth.
Simon Pelletier
Simon is a bilingual actor and emerging playwright. He recently graduated from Concordia University’s Acting program, and having always had a near-obsessive affinity for placing the right words in the right order, has decided to combine both his passions into one and write for the stage. The Smallest Gesture is his first play.
Play in development: The Smallest Gesture (working title) traces an intimate portrait of German-occupied Denmark and Bente, a fiery young girl with a penchant for resistance. Told through the lens of a woman outside of time, we are carried inside the three rooms that defined Bente’s story: a kitchen, a neighbouring attic, and Bente’s basement, to meet a man who fell from the sky.
Sophie-Thérèse Stone-Richards
Sophie-Thérèse is an emerging actor recently graduated from Concordia University with a Specialization in Theatre Performance (Fine Arts Valedictorian, Summer 2018). Montréal has proved a really enriching place for her to live and work as a bilingual actor who grew up in Europe and the States.
Play in development: Big Girls Don’t Cry / Goddesses Never Sleep – Soul and Sleep live in a soggy, unoptimistic brain. Together they take an absurdist romp trying to process an insurmountable depression. Soul wants to stop and wallow, but Sleep is desperate for an instant fix. Watch the two agonizing for answers during a long sleepless night.
Sophy Drouin
Sophy lives in Montreal and is currently writing her first play. Before beginning this project, she traveled and experimented with various occupations ranging from interior design to managing restaurants. This journey brought her to realize that her true passion and favorite job is that of creating, and she hopes to bring her varied life experience into her work to create relatable, captivating art.
Play in development: Twenty to twenty five is a play about grief, love, and loneliness – topics we all inevitably have to deal with as we face the task of growing up. She dives into these topics through the eyes of an honest and introspective young woman navigating her early twenties, turning the pain it takes to become a woman into prose and narrative stories.
Stefan Zajdler
Stefan is a graduate of McGill University with a BA in Cultural Studies. Most of his theatre experience is with improv in Montreal. He really liked the touring cast of Wicked.
Play in development: In Boys and Girls at a Party (Working Title), we see a party. A man has a question, and a woman refuses to answer. A girl makes a new friend and a boy tries on a new look. Friendships are tested and reevaluated. An actress your mom likes guest stars.
