PWM’S YOUNG CREATORS UNIT IS NOW IN ITS 10TH YEAR, FEATURING AN EXCITING GROUP OF emerging MONTRÉAL THEATRE ARTISTS.
With a focus on artistic risk and discovery, this year’s cohort is preparing for the annual YCU showcase! This private event will take place at the PWM Studio on Tuesday May 27th and Wednesday May 28th at 7:00 PM.
Learn more about each cohort member by clicking the “show more” button under their names.
The YCU showcase is a private event due to limited seating capacity. If you are interested in attending, please contact leila@playwrights.ca. Please note that seats are provided based on availability.
Thank you for supporting Montréal’s emerging artists!
TUESDAY, MAY 27
bio:
Misha Nye is a theatre-maker originally from the UK. Misha is drawn to shows that are inventive and unsettling, those that shine a light into the dark auditorium and disrupt theatre’s cozy voyeurism. Soon after arriving in Montreal, Misha did Imago’s Nested Circles residency, and he is grateful to YCU for marking the next step in his Montréal theatre journey. Misha is currently creating work about the messy link between art and activism, exploring how the climate crisis asks new questions and twists old ones into new shapes. In recent years, Misha has written and directed ‘Soil’ (2024) and ‘Floodgate’ (2022) for the Ottawa and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. With his company Pyrite Theatre, Misha is excited to bring his YCU show to the Montréal Fringe this summer!
Play description:
‘A protest gone wrong. A man killed. Kai, a bad activist with a good heart, must reckon with what he has done’. A dark comedy exploring the messy morals of modern life, this is a show about fear, f***ing up, and finding the light.
“Manslaughter is an ugly thing. Laughter shouldn’t take up that much of the damn word.”
Lila Ciesielski (she/they)
Courriel : lila_cie@hotmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Community & Connection
• Curiosity
• Sincerity
“Do you think anyone can choose to do this kinda stuff? to rebel radically?”
bio:
Lila (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and performer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Thriving in curiosity and collaborative spaces, she approaches art with an open heart, and a desire to evoke self-reflection and positive change through themes of identity, home and connection. Alongside developing their artistic practice, Lila is dedicated to sharing the power of theatre and storytelling by working with youth and fostering a love for the arts. Outside of theatre, she also loves learning, trying out new hobbies and baking for others. Lila holds a BFA in Acting for the Theatre from Concordia University and developed her play Summerhouse through Teesri Duniya’s Fireworks Playwriting Program in 2024.
play description:
Stella and Frankie share an intensely intimate friendship. Bound by trauma and a shared hunger for justice, they’ve turned to murder as a form of revenge. As they leave a trail of dead men, Stella starts to question their actions and morals, while Frankie clings tighter to their mission, and, to her. Their bond begins to unravel, revealing something possessive and volatile.
Huirui Zhang (she/her)
Courriel : huirui.zhang.work@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Love & Fear for dreams
• Trust
• Contact with body(ies), nature and
history of womanhood
“What happens if the soul doesn’t want to forget? What does the soul want to hold on to, at the risk of losing a possible new life?”
bio:
Huirui 晖睿 is a Chinese-born interdisciplinary theatre artist whose practice spans directing, writing, curation, and dance. A tea-lover who trained in Chinese classical dance and holds a B.A. from McGill University, she champions experimental work that interweaves movement, devised creation, and cross-cultural narratives. Huirui co-founded Wild Sheep Collective with Hwaan Han and Elsa di Paola. Her artistic development includes ARTISTA at Imago Theatre (2019), Nested Circles (2024), Black Theatre Workshop’s AMP program (2024), and currently, Infinithéâtre’s residency. Notable works include They Must Have Smoked (Calgary Fringe, 2023), producing/directing the bilingual production of Rhinoceros In Love (Mainline Theatre, 2023), Good Morning, Townville! (McGill English Department, 2023), and The Sages of Chelm (Segal Centre, 2022). As past leader and current advisor for Cheng Huai Art and Culture Association, she also explores the intersectionality between art and technology. Huirui will advance her artistic practice by pursuing an MFA in Directing at the University of Alberta this fall.
play description:
When Zi An’s grandmother dies under cryptic circumstances, her ashes pull the young Chinese woman into the surreal realm of Oblivion, where dreamscapes of cave, river, tunnel, and desert reveal long-buried family secrets. As three generations of women confront buried truths, generational pain, and gendered tradition, Zi An must reckon with the soft, burning question: what does it cost to choose your own path? A lyrical and memory-soaked journey through grief, identity, and maternal legacy.
Jackson Thompson (they/them)
Courriel : jacksonleethompsonab@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Interpretation
• Excess
• The word “Fuck”
“I hesitate to name you.
I’m sorry, baby.”
BIO:
Jackson Lee Thompson is a divisor, playwright, actor and director from Edmonton Alberta. They have performed in Sorry not Sorry, U.I.G, Rapid Fire and Shame!’s improv ensembles. They founded Out of Body Performing Arts with Baird Duncan. They have participated in many original and devised productions with the company including: The Waves (2022, 2024), BOO! Cabaret (2023-ongoing), My Dinner with Arby (2024), and The Public Domain Festival (2025) for which they were festival director and curator. . They are currently a member of the Young Creators Unit with Playwrights Workshop Montreal, working on an “adaptation” of Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (& Boris Karloff) and is currently researching an “adaptation” of King Lear under the mentorship of Rose Plotek and with support from the Jeunes Volontaires grant. As one might gather from the previous paragraph, Jake is fascinated by the adaptation of classical text into antifacist, anticolonial contexts.
PLAY DESCRIPTION:
Two doctors contend with artificial life and loneliness. 25 people are denied death. A guy getting a vasectomy lands an awful job. A woman discovers she is, in fact, a saint.
Meenu Atwal (she/her)
Courriel : meenu.atwal2001@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• An open mind and open heart
• Representation
• Love
BIO:
Meenu Atwal is a Montreal based artist. She trained in the Professional Theatre: Acting program at John Abbott College. Upon graduating, Meenu got the chance to perform in the Geordie 2Play Tour. Most recently, she got to show off her soccer skills in The Wolves, a co-production between Geordie Theatre and Imago Theatre. Although Meenu is primarily an actor, her love for writing is not a new one. One of her earliest works was a short story she wrote in elementary school about a cat sitting by a window on Christmas. Since then, she has evolved a lot in her writing. Meenu is a storyteller through and through. She believes that as creatives, we have the power to validate, influence and make a difference. Whether it is through acting or writing, she intends to tell stories that do just that.
PLAY DESCRIPTION:
Moran Sarkar, a nautch girl, and Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the beloved emperor of the Sikh Empire, fall in love. When a tragic event shakes the world around them, Moran’s life is drastically turned upside down. She must learn to navigate public scrutiny all while carrying the weight of great grief and loss.
“No one besides us will decide who we are and aren’t allowed to love. Do you love me?”
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28
Olaoluwa Fayokun (he/him)
Courriel : o.fayokun@yahoo.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Curiosity
• Play/Serious Fun
• Physical and Emotional Empathy
“I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on all of this.”
BIO:
Olaoluwa Fayokun, also known as Lu, is a Nigerian-Canadian artist, born in Nigeria and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Having immigrant parents, his conventional journey towards a law degree took an unexpected turn when he discovered the stage in 2016. Since then, Lu’s passion for Theatre has resulted in an acting certificate from the National Theatre School of Canada, and starring in the premier production of Sinkhole(or six ways to disappear) (dir. Keith Fernandez) and Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold (dir. by Tawiah M’Carthy). Through his journey, Lu finds himself continually driven by play and the need for connection through storytelling. It is a great honour for Lu to be a member of this year’s YCU cohort, as he desires to tell stories that are situated at the intersection of family, spirituality, and identity.
PLAY DESCRIPTION:
A restrained young man, born to a Christian family, embarks on a journey of self-discovery and religious deconstruction, when he falls in love. As that love and his own transformation upends his view of the world he has always known, he questions “if he can be saved?”, “what is worth saving?”, or “if he wants to be saved?”.
Sandra Soulard (they/them)
Courriel : soulardsandra@hotmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Warmth
• Intentionality
• Care
BIO:
Sandra Soulard is a queer bilingual educator and artist based in Tiohtià: ke, Montreal. Their work thrives in environments where creativity fosters growth, mutual support, and kindness. A graduate of Concordia’s Performance Creation program, Sandra has immersed themself in the world of puppetry and devised theatre, contributing to a range of exciting projects. Notable works include the writing and directing of Vers de terre et dents-de-lion: A guide to plants for Montreal’s Fringe Festival (2023), the assistant directing for Amélie: The Musical with Penumbra theatre (2025), and the multitude of projects produced through PUSSYPOP. Sandra is endlessly grateful for the patience, playfulness, and community that enriches the creative spaces they are privileged to collaborate in.
PLAY DESCRIPTION:
Trucmuche, the beloved but aging class gerbil, is set to retire, but Elle can’t bring herself to let go. Her well-meaning attempt to hold on to him goes awry when the frightened gerbil leaps into her hair and vanishes. Through their individual but intertwined journeys, both the girl and gerbil must learn to ask for help, face change, and find the courage to say goodbye.
“Les poux ont leur place dans les cheveux d’une petite fille… Les gerbilles, elles?”
Rachel Chin (she/her)
Courriel : chin.rachellm@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• pattern recognition and repetition
• the question the challenge the discovery the mystery
• why did god make me a tiger just to put me in a cage
BIO:
Rachel Chin is a writer and filmmaker from Kingston, Jamaica. She graduated with a B.A in History from Columbia University in 2018 and completed her M.A in History at McGill University in 2022. Her writing explores movement as a process at every scale, from migration to emotion. By examining the foundations of our relationship to reality— whether fictive, cultural, corporeal or tenuous— her work delves into the art and act of adaptation and the transformative potential of narrative. Narrative is her entire deal. With an artistic background spanning a number of disciplines, from prose to illustration to poetry, her participation in this year’s cohort marks her very first foray into creating for theatre.
PLAY DESCRIPTION:
All About Love (Projection) is about four Black women who are more alike than they can admit, at a bell hooks book club where no one has done the reading… or seems able to leave the building. As social expectations begin to break down within the club, their experience of reality quickly follows.
“You made everything sound so possible, so suffused with meaning, and I listened and I trusted you, sometimes even as I braided your hair.”
Lily Lachapelle (she/her)
Courriel : lilyanne.lachapelle@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Finding comedy in the everyday
• Embracing the intimacy of strangeness
• Puppets whenever possible
BIO:
Lily Lachapelle is a playwright, puppeteer, and actor from Ottawa, Ontario. Her work explores the spectrum of relationships between women, with a focus on queerness. Her play Lettuce Meat was a runner up for Infinithéâtre’s 2023 Write-On-Q award and was workshopped as part of their 2023 Pipeline series. Lily’s current piece Pain in Crustaceans explores the relationship employees have to a workplace that doesn’t love them back, and underwent a first development reading through PWM at the beginning of March. Other produced works include: ONE NIGHT ONLY (Youth Infringement Festival 2022) and Subject To Change (Dan Exposition Series, 2022).
Play description:
What is there to do about working a job you hate? After an anonymous complaint is placed with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the skeleton crew of McCall farms must decide whether this unfeeling company deserves their help at all.
“Science. Ingenuity. Shrimp.”
Elliot Million-Lovett (he/him)
Courriel : elliotmillionlovett@gmail.com
Artistic Pillars:
• Enthusiasm
• Earnestness
• Love universally
bio:
Born in Montreal a few years ago to teacher-poets and drummer-comedians, Elliot is a writer, actor, cyclist, enthusiast of puppets, bluegrass and railways. In 2023 he was a finalist in Infinithéâtre’s The-Write-Stuff contest for youth. In 2024 he graduated from Dawson College’s Professional Theatre Program. He is inspired by nature and death and humans and animals and trees and his friends and family.
play description:
Two cowmen, Jensen Farrower and Abraham Tucker, are on the run from the law together when the world ends. The cosmos descends on them, speaking to them and guiding (or misdirecting) them toward the end of everything. They try to find meaning, they find each other.
“NO TORMENT.
NO TORMENT.
IT’S ALL TORMENT.
TORRRRRNADO.
TORRENT,
TEMPEST,
TALLAHASSEE.”
Headshots by Emelia Hellman.
This program is facilitated by YCU Dramaturg, Leila Ghaemi.
Leila Ghaemi (she/elle) is a dramaturg, director and teaching artist. Her artistic pillars include responsible MENASA representation, radical theatre empowerment, and new play development. She received her BFA in Theatre Arts and MFA in Theatre Education & Direction from Boston University’s School of Theatre, where she grew her love for and skills in dramaturgical methods. She currently serves as the board president for Persephone Productions Montreal.
Recent external credits include: Creative Consultant, POTUS (The Segal Centre); Cultural Consultant & Audience Engagement, English (The Segal Centre for the Performing Arts); Senior School Drama Teacher, The Study School; Co-Director, Pool (No Water) (Persephone Productions Montreal); Director, Romeo & Juliet (Classic Repertory Theatre); Director, The Scarlet Letter (Classic Repertory Theatre); Artistic Associate, New Repertory Theatre; Dramaturg & Director, The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and Script Reader & Conservatory Associate, American Conservatory Theater.
THE YOUNG CREATORS UNIT IS FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED BY:
