The 2025-2026 Young Creators Unit

Alyssa Angelucci-Wall is a half-Haitian, Montreal-born artist and a graduate of Concordia University with a BFA in Theatre Performance. She is passionate about storytelling’s power to challenge and inspire, creating work that aims to be bold, inclusive, and culturally engaged, while also delighting in the funky, weird, and fun. Alongside experience on both established and original productions, she has contributed to the development of new plays through staged and private readings with several Montreal companies and training institutions. Committed to accessible and thought-provoking narratives, Alyssa seeks to amplify diverse voices and explore complex themes, fostering meaningful connections through writing, collaboration, and the creation of socially resonant work.

Photo Credit: Andrew Miller

Hanesa Banks is a writer living in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). She holds a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University. Hanesa has been a performing spoken word artist since 2016. Her most notable shows include an International Women’s Day show for Sofar Sounds (2018), and a United Way Gala (2018). In April of this year she completed a Horror Writer’s Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her speculative horror stories explore a future-now in which people experience oppression as old patterns of colonization, white supremacy, and dominance digitize or become more layered while re-enforced by technology.

Photo credit: Hanesa Banks

Huriell Jerome is a multiliterary and multilingual writer based in Montreal. His artistic journey began in 2022 with the self-publication of a poetry collection, which was presented at the YES Montreal Festival. Since then, Huriell has written and directed three short film projects. Lived experiences, diasporic narratives, and folkloric influences often inspire his current work. Having lived in different countries and observed how cultural narratives evolve across time and space. He is committed to telling stories that resonate emotionally and reflect the complexity of human interactions.

Photo credit: Dorothy Mombrun

Ian McCormack is an award-winning neurodivergent and queer playwright, dramaturg, producer, and puppeteer who splits their time between North Bay, Northern Ontario and Montréal, Quebec. With a focus on politics and social change, Ian’s theatre practice combines absurdity with reality, to create new works of theatre that transcend bodies and abilities. Ian is the Artistic Producer of Dense & Stage Theatre Collective in Montréal. Ian has also cultivated a transdisciplinary practice, working with a variety of companies, including Teesri Duniya Theatre (Montréal, QC), Theatre By The Bay (Barrie, ON), The Tamarack Festival (Timmins, ON) and the Bread & Puppet Theatre (Vermont).

Photo credit: Jack Murray Morgan

Logan Isaac is a Montreal born actor and writer. He graduated from the John Abbott College theatre program in 2024 where he found a love for creating and developing his own pieces. His works are often inspired by themes of mental health, identity, and self discovery. As a trans artist, he hopes to one day develop his own LGBTQIA+ focused theatre company to provide the kind of representation to his community that he needed when he was younger.

Photo credit: Logan Isaac

Mercedeh is a theatre, film, performance, and visual artist. This storyteller loves to share Islamic subcultures, public ritual, and radical punk aesthetics. Past works include the short film Daughters of the Believers with the Michaëlle Jean Foundation & Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; performances of The Freedom Fighter, Surrender without Surrender & Solidarity Sema with articule gallery; and Sema ritual with Rumi Canada & The Aga Khan Museum. Originally hailing from a nomadic tribe of the Silk Road, they turn in the eye of the storm as a dervish, and in the same breath co-create at PME-ART in Tiotia:ke. Unlike a good dervish, Mercedeh is afraid to die.

Photo credit: Mercedeh

Patrick Dale AKA Little Star is an interdisciplinary performance/drag artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Their work is always genderfucked and often explores themes of Desire / Shame, Sex, Glamour, Image Manipulation, and Creation of the Self. The choice to take on the name Little Star was inspired by the 1998 Madonna song, in which she sings, “Never forget who you are, Little Star.”

Photo credit: Lauryn Andersson

Ravyn R. Bekh is an emerging, Montreal-born & Dawson Dome-raised, multi-hyphenate creative. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Hansberry and Parks, she aims to bring to life those homegrown stories of grime and grit – with a dash of soul and poetry. Always with angry women in mind, her practice roots itself in the exploration of blood memory, ancestral heat, and a refusal to sit politely inside Western expectations. Through the guidance of the YCU, Ravyn hopes to deepen this work—learning ( forever learning ) to braid it with the quiet divinity of the Land & the Spirit, and the power held within the Shadows.

Photo credit: Emelia Hellman

Born in Medellín, Colombia, and raised in Canada from age thirteen, Sebastian Quint has pursued acting as a way to give voice to his Latinx community. A graduate of Dawson’s Professional Theatre Program (2023), he toured Eastern Canada with Geordie Theatre and has collaborated with institutions such as Concordia University and Mount Royal Cemetery. Expanding his artistry beyond the stage, Sebastian works in film as an actor, producer, and writer, while also modelling. As founder of ACTRA Montreal’s Latinx Subcommittee, he champions authentic Latinx representation, building a multidisciplinary career that bridges cultures, stories, and communities.

Photo credit: Jeremy Cabrera

Shannon is a multi-disciplinary theatre artist focused on uplifting the voices of women of color on stage. After earning her BFA in Theater Performance at Chapman University in Southern California, she moved to New York City where she worked for various arts organizations such as The Vineyard Theatre, The Drama League, Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre and Dancewave. 

Now a Producer at Black Theatre Workshop, Shannon is excited to grow within the Montreal theatre community and rediscover herself as an artist.

Photo credit: Brooklyn Melnyk

Vassiliki Gicopoulos is a Montreal (Tiohtià:ke) based actress, playwright, and dramaturg. A graduate of the DOME Theatre and the Concordia Performance Creation program, her artistic practice is grounded in vulnerability and embracing messiness as part of the method. Her work is often inspired by mythology and based in magical realism, exploring the “female” experience, grief, cyclical-violence and what it means to endure.

Photo credit: Emelia Hellman