Schedule for On Demand

Lindsay Lachance

Facilitator

Dr. Lindsay Lachance is from an Algonquin Anishinaabe family and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. Lindsay has played a leading role in the creating and direction of the Indigenous Theatre department at the National Arts Centre as the first Artistic Associate. She earned a PhD in Theatre from the University of British Columbia and, in January 2018, successfully defended her dissertation titled “The Embodied Politics of Relational Indigenous Dramaturgies.” Lindsay’s academic work exists at the intersections of Indigenous Theatre and Critical Indigenous Studies, where she celebrates and supports Indigenous theatre theory and dramaturgical structures.

Santee Smith

Panelist

Santee Smith/Tekaronhiáhkhwa is from the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, Turtle Clan from Ohswé:ken / Six Nations of the Grand River. Santee is a multidisciplinary artist, who dances forward from an ancestral path of creatives and activists. Santee trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and completed Physical Education and Psychology degrees from McMaster University and a M.A. in Dance from York University. Santee premiered her debut work Kaha:wi – a family creation story in 2004 and one year later founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre which has grown into an internationally renowned company. Through embodied storytelling and conceptual design her work speaks about identity, Indigenous narratives and continuance. Santee is a sought-after creative collaborator, teacher and speaker on the performing arts and Indigenous performance and culture. Smith is the 19th Chancellor of McMaster University. 

Tammy Hailiopua Baker

Panelist

Playwright/Director Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her work centers on the development of an indigenous Hawaiian theatre aesthetic and form, language revitalization, and the empowerment of cultural identity through stage performance. Baker is the artistic director of Ka Hālau Hanakeaka, a Hawaiian medium theatre troupe based on O‘ahu. Originally from Kapa‘a, Kaua‘i she now resides in Kahalu‘u, Ko‘olaupoko, O‘ahu with her ‘ohana.

Tara Beagan

Panelist

Tara Beagan is a proud Ntlaka’pamux and Irish “Canadian” halfbreed. She is cofounder/director of ARTICLE 11 with Andy Moro, based in Mohkinstsis. Beagan served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts from February 2011 to December 2013. She’s been writer-in-rez at Cahoots Theatre (Toronto), NEPA (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon). And during pandemic times at Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg). Seven of her 32 plays are published. One won a Dora Award. In 2020, Honour Beat won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. Recent premieres include Deer Woman in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Honour Beat opening the 2018/19 season at Theatre Calgary, The Ministry of Grace at Belfry Theatre in Victoria, and Super in Plays2Perform@Home with Boca Del Lupo (Vancouver). Beagan was the 2020 laureate of the Siminovitch Prize for theatre, playwriting. In 2022 she will direct the premiere of the Kenneth T. Williams work The Herd at Citadel/Tarragon/NACIT.

Deneh’Cho Thompson

Witness

Deneh’Cho Thompson (he/they) is a director, actor and playwright and displaced and dispossessed member of the Pehdzeh ki Nation. His artistic practice focuses on new plays and new play development. As Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan Deneh’Cho oversees the wîcêhtowin Theatre Program, one of few Indigenous theatre programs at a Canadian university.  Deneh’Cho’s research focuses on the development, naming, and centring of Indigenous pedagogies; new play development (in various roles) and Indigenous collaborations –  centering the values of reciprocity, respect and reflexivity.

Dolina Wehipeihana

Facilitator

Dolina Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa) is a producer, arts manager, choreographer and performer. Dolina is currently Kaiārahi Māori at PANNZ (Performing Arts Network New Zealand), General Manager of Kia Mau Festival, and Chair of Atamira Dance Collective Charitable Trust. She is also a co-director and producer for Betsy & Mana Productions, and an advocate for contemporary Indigenous theatre and dance.  As a producer she has toured New Zealand work to Australia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and Edinburgh.

A founding member of Atamira Dance Company, her creative background also includes dancing with New Zealand companies such as Black Grace and Touch Compass and independent choreographers and projects such as the Limbs Retrospective and Maui One Man Against the Gods. Dolina is currently a choreographic practitioner in the collectively created work Te Wheke by Atamira Dance Company, which premiered in June 2021.

Margo Kane

Panelist

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 celebrating its 20^th Anniversary this passt year 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 International Citation of Merit from ISPA – International Society for the Performing Arts, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, the Order of Canada from the Governor-General and most recently an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from SFU – Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC.

Keith Barker

Panelist

Keith Barker is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. His maternal grandfather was born in Mattawa Ontario, but Keith was raised in mostly Treaty 3 and the Robinson Superior Treaty Territory. He is a playwright, actor, and director from Northwestern Ontario, and the Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts. Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Carol Bolt Award for best new play, Keith was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English Drama in 2018 for his play, This Is How We Got Here. He received a SAT Award for Excellence in Playwriting for his play, The Hours That Remain, as well as a Yukon Arts Award for Best Art for Social Change.

ShoShona Kish

Panelist

ShoShona Kish is an Anishinaabekwe community organizer, producer, activist, songwriter and JUNO award-winning touring artist. In 2018 ShoShona was recognized for her work internationally with the prestigious “ Professional Excellence Award ” from the WOMEX organization “for her role in the ongoing revolution, using the medium of music as an agent of change, to awaken our humanity and help us connect”. 

ShoShona leads the multi-award-winning band Digging Roots, with her husband, Raven Kanatakta. Their music breaches categorization, blending global and Indigenous sounds with roots, blues, and trip-hop. They openly explore topical issues, treating music as a call to action. ShoShona is the Chair and founder of the International Indigenous Music Summit, the Indigenous Music Alliance and the Indigenous Music Advisory Circle. She also sits on the Music Canada’s Advisory Council.  She will be releasing a new album with Digging Roots in the spring of 2022 on Ishkōdé Records, a label she recently founded with Amanda Rhéaume.

Jacob Boehme

Panelist

Jacob Boehme is a director, writer and choreographer of theatre, dance and festivals from the Narangga and Kaurna Nations, South Australia. An Australia Council for the Arts Fellow and Alumni of the Victorian College of the Arts Jacob is the Artistic Director of The Wild Dog Project – a multi-generational project reconnecting dingo songlines, and communities across Australia and Asia. Jacob is also Artistic Director of The Elders Lounge – a documentary and archival series collating and celebrating the stories of Indigenous cultural and arts Elders across Australia, Canada and the USA. Jacob is the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival and sits on the Board of Directors for Dance House, Polyglot Theatre and the Ministry of Culture Taiwan South East Asia Advisory Panel. Jacob is currently the inaugural Director First Nations Programs for Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts centres located in Sydney.

Merindah Donnelly

Panelist

Merindah Donnelly is a descendant of Wiradjuri people, a proud Koori living in Meanjin, Queensland and is currently co-CEO and Executive Producer of BlakDance. Merindah has worked in Market Development at the Australia Council for the Arts and as a producer and curator nationally and internationally. In 2015 Merindah was a global International Society of Performing Arts fellow (ISPA) and worked with Margo Kane at the Talking Stick festival in Vancouver. In 2018 Merindah was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and in 2020 she completed her Masters in Cultural Leadership MFA at NIDA. Merindah is currently an Australia Council International Society of Performing Arts Fellow.

Hone Kouka

Panelist

Hone Kouka (Ngati Porou, Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Kahungunu, Kai Tahu) M.N.Z.M.  Hone is an acclaimed Maori director, producer and writer, youngest winner of the  Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and multiple award winner, he has had plays produced  in South Africa, Britain, Hawaii, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Caledonia, as well as  throughout New Zealand, with three plays being translated into French, Japanese and  Russian. Kouka, along with Miria George founded theatre and film production house  Tawata Productions, producing the works of Maori and Pacific artists and in 2015 he  became Artistic Director of Kia Mau Festival – a Maori, Pasifika and International  Indigenous multi arts platform based in Wellington. He became a member of the New  Zealand order of Merit for his services to Contemporary Maori Theatre in June 2009  and was awarded the New Zealand Writers Guild – Mentors Award 2013. He had two  films screened at the 2016 Berlin Film festival – Born to Dance (screenwriter) and  Mahana (Executive Producer) and in 2017 he was awarded the Arts Category for  Wellingtonian of the Year.

Denise Bolduc

Witness

Denise Bolduc is an established creator, creative director and producer who programs to transform perspectives and activate change.  Her career of three decades represents countless contributions and connections with numerous celebrated artists, creative thinkers and leading cultural institutions with an emphasis on elevating Indigenous voices. She has recently accepted the appointment as the inaugural Director, Indigenous Arts at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre.  Denise is Ojibwe-Anishinaabe (Lake Superior) and French, born and raised in the Robinson Huron Treaty Territory, and is a member of the Batchewana First Nation with familial ties in Garden River First Nation. 

Mique’l Dangeli

Facilitator

Mique’l Dangeli was born and raised on the Annette Island Indian Reserve, and is of the Tsimshian Nation of Metlakatla, Alaska. She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Her work focuses on Indigenous visual and performing arts, protocol, cultural resurgence, sovereignty, decolonization and language revitalization. Dangeli is a dancer, choreographer, educator, curator and activist. As one of the youngest advanced speakers and teachers of her people’s language, she is dedicated to teaching Sm’algya̱x in community-based and university-accredited classes as well as mentoring educational staff in their process of language acquisition and the creation of pre-K to high school programs. For the past 15 years, she and her husband, artist and carver Mike Dangeli (Nisga’a Nation), have led the Git Hayetsk Dancers, an internationally renowned Northwest Coast First Nations dance group specializing in ancient and newly created songs and mask dances.

Reneltta Arluk

Panelist

Reneltta is an Inuvialuit, Dene and Cree mom from the Northwest Territories. She is founder of Akpik Theatre, a northern focussed professional Indigenous Theatre company. Raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age, this nomadic environment gave Reneltta the skills to become the multi-disciplined artist she is now. For nearly two decades, Reneltta has taken part in or initiated the creation of Indigenous Theatre across Canada and overseas. Under Akpik Theatre, Reneltta has written, produced, and performed various works creating space for Indigenous led voice. Current works include Pawâkan Macbeth, a Plains Cree takeover of Macbeth written by Arluk on Treaty 6 territory. Pawâkan Macbeth was inspired by working with youth and elders on the Frog Lake reserve. Reneltta is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program and Reneltta is the first Inuk and first Indigenous woman to direct at The Stratford Festival. There she was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie – Derek F. Mitchell Artistic Director’s Award for her direction of the The Breathing Hole. Reneltta is Director of Indigenous Arts at BANFF Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Dakota Alcantara-Camacho

Panelist

Ancestral Lineages: Matao/CHamoru

Dakota Camacho is a multi-disciplinary artist / researcher working in spaces of indigenous life ways, performance, musical composition, community engagement, and education.

Camacho holds a Masters of Arts in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Bachelor of Arts in Gender & Women’s Studies as a First Wave Urban Arts and Hip Hop Scholar. 

Camacho is a chanter, adjunct instructor, and core researcher for I Fanlalai’an Oral History Project based at the University of Guåhan. 

Camacho co-founded I Moving Lab, an inter-national, inter-cultural, inter-tribal, and inter-disciplinary arts collective that creates community and self-funded arts initiatives to engage and bring together rural & urban communities, Universities, Museums, & performing arts institutions. 

Camacho has worked at festivals, universities, and community organizations as a public speaker, facilitator, composer and performer across Turtle Island (USA), Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, Sweden, and South Africa.

Rosemary Georgeson

Panelist

Rosemary Georgeson is a Coast Salish and Sahtu Dene artist, writer, and storyteller. 

The recipient of the 2009 Vancouver Mayor’s Award recognizing her as an emerging artist in community arts, Rosemary has applied her talents in dozens of theater, film, and performance projects throughout Canada. Rosemary was the 2014 storyteller in residence for the Vancouver Public Library.

Born to a fishing family, Rosemary worked as a commercial fisherman along the west coast for three decades. Rosemary has spent her lifetime reconnecting with her Coast Salish ancestry and family and is now working to publish a digital and print book and build an installation that shares and celebrates the reconnection of family and strong Coast Salish women from around the Salish Sea. This installation will be launching in the summer of 2022 on Galiano Island.

Ronnie Dean Harris

Panelist

Ronnie Dean Harris aka Ostwelve, is a Stō:lo/St’át’imc/Lil’wat/N’laka’pamux multimedia artist based in New Westminster, B.C. Beginning in music, he has explored various mediums such as TV, film, visual + sound design along side various research subjects including history, cosmology, genealogy and Indigenous policy.  Ronnie can be heard as the voice of Dad/Walter Mabray on the PBS/WGBH series Molly Of Denali and seen on various other TV + film projects.

Ronnie is currently the Indigenous Cultural Developer at Massey Theatre and Eighth + Eight Creative Spaces and a Board of Directors member of the 2 Rivers Remix Society. 

Meena Natarajan

Panelist

Meena Natarajan is a playwright and director and the Co-Artistic and Executive Director of Pangea World Theater, a progressive, international ensemble space for arts and dialogue. She has led the theater’s growth since it’s founding in 1995. She was on the Advisory Council of the Community Arts Network and has served on the board of the National Performance Network. She is currently on the board of Longfellow Rising, an organization in Minneapolis committed to rebuilding the Longfellow neighborhood destroyed during the uprising of 2020 and using theatre and the arts to build community vitality. She has written several full-length works for Pangea, ranging from adaptations of poetry and mythology to original works dealing with war, spirituality, personal and collective memory. 

Michelle Olson

Panelist

Michelle Olson is a member of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation and the Artistic Director of Raven Spirit Dance. She studied dance and performance at the University of New Mexico, the Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff Centre and was an Ensemble Member of Full Circle First Nations Performance.  Michelle works in areas of dance, theatre and opera as a choreographer, performer and movement coach and her work has been seen on stages across Canada. She was the recipient of the inaugural Vancouver International Dance Festival Choreographic Award.  She is currently teaching at Langara’s Studio 58 and pursuing her MFA in Theatre at UBC.

S7aplek Bob Baker

Witness

Bob Baker (Squamish Ancestral name is S7aplek, Hawaiian name is Lanakila) is co-founder and Spokesperson for Spakwus Slolem (Eagle Song) the most reputable Dance Group of the Squamish Nation.

Born and Raised Squamish, Bob has been exercising his Culture through Singing, Dances, and various presentations, for over 35 years . Accomplishments range from revival of Sea-going Canoes and traditions, to Cultural projects such as the 27 ft. Grandmother Welcome Figure, at Ambleside Beach Park, to dance presentations in Taiwan, Hawaii, Japan, Switzerland, (Montreaux Jazz Festival), and opening Ceremonies for Western Canada Summer games, Nation Aboriginal Hockey Championships, International U18 Lacrosse Championships, and recently, opening ceremony for the Canada Aboriginal Music Awards. To Blessing Ceremonies for B.C. Ferries, in Flensburg, Germany and the Tallships flotilla Blessing Ceremony here at English bay, Vancouver. On-going performances and projects continue through-out the Lower Mainland, Vancouver, Squamish-Whistler and Vancouver Island.

In the warmer months Bob can be found training in the traditional dug-out war canoes, as well as the Great Sea-going Canoes, and as a steersman for Tribal Journeys, and the Pulling Together Journey, visiting Villages along our beautiful coasts of British Columbia and,Washington State.

Cease Wyss

Advisor/ Devrlooer of Futurisms, IM4

T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss (Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo, Hawaiian, Swiss) is an educator, interdisciplinary artist and Indigenous ethnobotanist engaged in community based teaching and sharing. Throughout Wyss’s 30 year practice, Wyss’s work encompasses storytelling and collaborative initiatives through their knowledge and restoration of Indigenous plants and natural spaces. Wyss has been recognized for exchanging traditional knowledge in remediating our relationship to land through digital media, site-specific engagements and weaving. Wyss has participated and exhibited at galleries, museums, festivals and public space such as Vancouver Art Gallery, Morris, Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery and the PuSh Festival  to name a few. Their work can be found in various collections such as the National Library of Canada, Special Collections at the Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Vancouver Public Library. They have lead the transformation of Semi-Public (半公開) during their Fellowship at 221a and they are the 2021 ethnobotanist resident at the Wild Bird Sanctuary. They have assisted in developing an urban Indigenous garden currently showing at the 2021 Momenta Biennale in Montreal.

Tracey Kim Bonneau

Tracey Kim Bonneau (syilx) is a veteran award-winning television writer and producer residing on the Penticton Indian Reserve in British Columbia, Canada. Her most recent industry accolade include garnering four Leo nominations in 2016 from the Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation of British Columbia for her original rich cultural documentary series Quest Out-West Wild Food, airing on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) . In 2018 Tracey was awarded the Aboriginal Business Excellence Award from the Penticton Chamber of Commerce for her contributions to the local economy within the film and television industry.

Season three of Quest OutWest Wild Food: LAUNCH February 11, 2021 on (APTN) totaling 39 ½ hour episodes produced & written solely by her. Tracey’s freelance portfolio includes the publications and networks: Aboriginal Voices, Wind-Speaker News, Ravens Eye News, CBC Radio-One – Kelowna- Daybreak, Peach City Radio, Global Okanagan News, PBS, KCTS-Seattle and APTN National news. Aside from her professional arts career Tracey is employed by local non-profit organization En’owkin Centre located in Penticton.

Howard Dai

Associate Artist / Artist in Residence, rice & beans theatre

Howard Dai is a Taiwanese actor, writer, and theatre artist. As a multilingual artist, he was most recently a co-creator/performer of 蝦仔 Little Shrimp, a bilingual audio play about intergenerational relationships within Chinese culture (Carousel Theatre).  He is currently writing a new play 菠蘿麵包Pineapple Bun that explores nostalgia and diasporic guilt set in quotidian Taiwan, supported by rice & beans theatre, PuSh Festival, and UK’s Royal Court Theatre.  Some other co-creation/performance credits in 2021 include: Passenger Seat, a theatre-concert (Library Performance Co.); Collider, a VR devising ensemble (Single Thread Theatre). He also went on a digital tour across Canada as a co-creator, performer, and digital programmer of New Societies (re:current theatre). Howard works on the unceded land belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ  Nations; colonially known as Vancouver. He is currently an Associate Artist with rice & beans theatre, and is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts

Carmela Sison

Actor/Translator

Carmela is a Filipino-Canadian artist privileged to live and work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program and has worked with many companies in Western Canada including The Arts Club Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Western Canada Theatre, Concrete Theatre, and Theatre Calgary.She is currently working on a Tagalog translation and adaptation of Jovanni Sy’s A Taste of Empire with Nina Lee Aquino as dramaturg. She and Jovanni also participated in the Glassco Translation Residency in Tadoussac, Quebec in June 2019.

Johnny Wu

Director / Interdisciplinary Artist

Johnny Wu is a bilingual Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary, international performer and creator. As a graduate from Simon Fraser University with a double major in Theatre performance and Criminology, his work seeks to investigate humanity through exploring social justice via storytelling. Johnny believes that storytelling, on stage or screen, is a craft rooted in compassion — inviting participants to submerge themselves into the circumstance and experience the joys and traumas first hand to understand diverse lived experiences from an empathetic mind, critical to the catalyzing of social change. Understanding is the key to change, and storytelling is the hand that turns the key.

Johnny has trained nationally and internationally with mentors from schools such as Yale, Columbia, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, York University, and National Theatre School, as well as many other independent studios. His theatre credits include The Pink Line: Pain Held Tight presented at the Queer Arts Festival, These Violent Delights presented at the Summerworks Performance Festival, Movement consulting for Animus Anima//Anima Animus presented at The Public Theatre in New York City, Creative consulting for Portrait of my DNA presented at the PuSh Festival. His film and TV credits include Bunny Man placed first in the 10-minute short category and voted as Fan-Choice for best Overall Short at the Mighty Asian Filmmaking Marathon hosted by Vancouver Asian Film Festival. The film screened at 13 international festivals, including the Asian American International Film Festival, Diversion International Shot Film Festival, Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival, CAAM Fest. He can also be seen in CW’s Legends of Tomorrow and Kung Fu.

Laurence Dauphinais

Actor / Director

Laurence Dauphinais is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s acting program, and works in multidisciplinary creation as an actor, author, director and musician.

After premiering at the Festival Trans Amériques, Laurence’s solo piece, Siri, has toured internationally to cities such as Rio De Janeiro, Edinburgh and Dublin. After co-directing iShow, a performative theatre piece that toured Europe for a couple years, she’s recently written and directed Aalaapi at the Theatre Centre du théâtre d’aujourd’hui (CTDA). The piece marks her first solo direction and won the Playwrights prize at CTDA last year. She also just wrote and directed Lumens : Game, a generative music and video piece created by Video Phase. The show is currently touring in Asia and Canada. She is now dedicating her time to her next co-creation with Maxime Carbonneau; In order to join me in the cloud, their next theatre/artificial intelligence project, as well as writing A.D.A., their first series for television. She is cowriting Marrow, an interactive/AI theatre project co-produced by the National Film Board Interactive Media Lab and Atlas V, and is currently in pre-production for her first short film.

Laurence is the recipient of a Gemini Award for her performance in the TV5’s Listen To This Story and has just released her second EP with the music project Darrick.

Mayumi Yoshida

Actor / Writer / Director

​Born in Japan, raised in three continents, Mayumi Yoshida is an actor, writer, director, based in Vancouver, BC.

Her role as Crown Princess (The Man in The High Castle) received a 2016 UBCP/ACTRA’s Emerging Actor nomination. For detailed acting credits please click here.

As an award-winning writer/director, Mayumi has been a leading force in emerging Asian-Canadian Cinema.

She’s an alumna of Women in the Director’s Chair Career Advancement Module, Women in Focus Mentorship at Whistler Film Festival and currently the participant of the inaugural WarnerMedia x Canadian Academy Access Writers Program. She recently was also selected to be part of TIFF Netflix Talent Accelerator Fellowship and TIFF Writer’s Studio for 2022. 

She is currently working on her feature film version of Akashi-あかし-.

Mayumi is repped by Gersh, Characters Talent Agency and Atlas Literary

Pedro Chamale

Co-Artistic Director, rice & beans theatre

Pedro Chamale was born and raised on treaty 8 territory, colonially known as Chetwynd, BC and now resides and creates on the unceded and traditional lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Pedro is a director, playwright, performer, co-founder and co-artistic director of rice & beans theatre, was the Artistic Resident at Neworld Theatre in 2014, guest curator of the 2018 rEvolver Festival and one of the playwrights in the 2019 Playwright’s Lab at the Banff Centre. Pedro was part of the second cohort of Banff’s Arts and Culture Leadership, is a co-founder of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Alliance, sits on the Latinx Theatre Commons steering committee and was part of Director’s Lab North in 2020.

Nancy Saunders

Artist

Niap (Nancy Saunders) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work has been collected by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec and Avataq Cultural Institute in Westmount, QC, among others. Based in Montreal, QC, the artist divides her time between the city and her home community of Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, QC—a place that continues to deeply influence her work. 

Darren O’ Donnell

Artistic Director, Mammalian Diving Reflex

Darren O’Donnell is an urban cultural planner, novelist, essayist, playwright, filmmaker, performance director and the Artistic and Founding Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. With a M.Sc. in urban planning from the University of Toronto, he brings a rigorous and robust social scientific approach to his art-making and the advice he offers to others through his consulting practice. He helps organizations connect with their locale, not only affecting and strengthening community but changing the lives of those he advises and those they engage.Darren’s latest book Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract is an innovative proposal for the radical inclusion of children. Darren insists that working with kids in the cultural industries can be a pilot for a vision of a very different role for young people in the world — one that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child considers a “new social contr

Lisa Marie DiLiberto

Artistic Director, Theatre Direct Canada

Lisa Marie is the Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, one of the country’s leading companies for young audiences. She is the founding Artistic Director of FIXT POINT, a nationally renowned theatre and media company where she was also co-creator of The Tale of a Town – Canada and Main Street Ontario, an animated series on TVO.  Lisa Marie is a mother of 2 wild children, an advocate for parents in the performing arts, and the founder and Executive Director of Balancing Act, a national artist-caregiver support initiative. Lisa Marie is a graduate of George Brown Theatre School and Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, France. She holds an MA from York University where she is currently pursuing her PhD while also conducting research through PULSE at Concordia University. Lisa Marie’s expertise include site-specific, community engaged, participatory and immersive and devised theatre practices.

Milton Lim

Independent Artist / Hong Kong Exile / Theatre Conspiracy

Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. 

He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, co-founder and archivist with videocan, and co-creator of culturecapital: the performing arts card game. Milton is an artist-in-residence with UKAI Projects studying Artificial Intellige

Patrick Blenkarn

Artist

Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His work revolves around the themes of language, labour, and economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. Patrick is the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan and one of the co-creators of culturecapital. He is also one half of Guilty by Association.

Nassim Soleimanpour

Artistic Director, Nassim Soleimanpour

Nassim Soleimanpour is an Iranian playwright, theatre maker and the Artistic Director of the Berlin Based Theatre company Nassim Soleimanpour Productions. His plays have been translated into more than 30 languages and performed globally in over 50 countries. Best known for his play White Rabbit Red Rabbit, written to travel the world when he couldn’t, his work has been awarded the Dublin Fringe Festival Best New Performance, Summerworks Outstanding New Performance Text Award and The Arches Brick Award (Edinburgh Fringe) as well as picking up nominations for a Total Theatre and Brighton Fringe Pick of Edinburgh Award. White Rabbit Red Rabbit had a 9 month Off-Broadway run casting celebrated actors like Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Martin Short, Bobby Cannavale, Wayne Brady, F. Murray Abraham, Cynthia Nixon and etc.

Maiko Yamamoto

Artist

Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations. 

Since 2003, Maiko has been Co-Artistic Director of the Vancouver-based performance company, Theatre Replacement, founded with James Long. With the company she has created over 20 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. 

In addition, Maiko teaches performance and mentors artists for a range of different companies and organizations, both in Canada and abroad. She also occasionally works as a curator and writes about performance for a variety of publications. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, and a Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Maiko is the 2019 recipient of the Siminovitch Prize in Directing, with James Long. theatrereplacement.org / thelocalbubble.org

Ryan Tacata

Moderator

Ryan D. Tacata is a performance maker and educator based in Vancouver, BC. His creative research is deeply collaborative—playing critical intimacy in the key of everyday life—while engaging in place making, ordinary acts, and gift-giving. He’s kept busy with ‘the occasion of art’ by riffing on social ceremony, art history, and occasional literature. His current project The Welcoming, devised in collaboration with his performance collective For You, centers the lives and imaginations of isolated elders through a broad series of welcoming acts. He is Assistant Professor of Performance at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University.

Erin Boberg

Artistic Director & Curator of Performance, PICA

Erin Boberg Doughton, (she/her) Artistic Director & Curator of Performance at PICA, works collaboratively to curate and produce performance programs including dance, music, theatre, and multi-disciplinary projects as part of PICA’s TBA (Time-Based Art) Festival as well as year-round presentations, commissions and residencies including the Creative Exchange Lab. She also teaches performance as an Assistant Professor and Mentor at PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art.) She serves on the advisory council for the National Performance Network (NPN) and is a former National Dance Project hubsite advisor. Erin grew up in Portland and studied dance, music, and theatre at Lewis & Clark College, and has worked at PICA in various roles, starting as a volunteer, since the organization’s founding in 1995. 

Martine Dennewald

Co-Artistic Director, FTA – Festival TransAmériques

After completing studies in dramaturgy (Leipzig, Germany) and arts management (London, UK), Martine Dennewald worked for theatres and theatre festivals in Luxembourg, Germany, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland and Austria. She then joined Niels Ewerbeck for a few years as dramaturg at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. Between 2015 and 2020, she was the artistic director of Festival Theaterformen – an eleven-day performing arts festival which takes place alternately in the cities of Hanover and Braunschweig (Germany). Since mid-June 2021 Martine Dennewald co-directs Festival TransAmériques in Montreal (Canada) together with Jessie Mill.

Quito Tembe

Artist

Mozambique, Quito Tembe has a  degree in Management and Cultural Studies. He  started his career as a dancer and theater actor,  having quickly become interested in technical aspects  of the stage, deepening his studies in scenography  and lighting. He has worked on several short films and  national and international feature films in the area of  scenography. Later, between 2001 and 2007, he  worked as a technical manager at the Centro Cultural  Franco-Mozambicano, under the direction of Jean Michel Champault and François Belorgey.  

He created lighting and scenography for numerous  artistic productions with several choreographers and  performing arts companies, in Mozambique and  abroad. And as cultural manager Tembe created one  of the biggest street festivals, Aldeia Cultural also the  “Tridisciplinary” contemporary art project in  Mozambique. 

He is the artistic director of the International  Contemporary Dance Platform KINANI, and he is  currently involved in the development of artistic tours  on the African continent and, on a national level, in the  collaboration between platforms and festivals through  the Othàma platform.  Quito Tembe is also co-curator of the Afro-Vibes 2021  festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands and member of the  artistic direction of the Danse l’Afrique Dance 2021

Fernando Zugno

Director, Porto Alegre em Cena

Fernando Zugno graduated in Performing Arts from Teatro Escola de Porto Alegre and also holds a degree in journalism from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul – PUC-RS. 

Since 2006 he has produces projects of the international performing arts festival, Porto Alegre em Cena. And since 2012 is in charge on the program of the festival, which is the general director since 2017.

He has worked e.g. with Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine and the Théâtre du Soleil, Patrice Chereau, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Maguy Marin, Susane Kennedy, Romeo Castelucci, Eimutas Nekrosius, Meredith Monk. Since 2012 has produced new theater, dance, and music pieces and has also invited foreign productions do tour in Brazil, e.g. Class Enemy by Luciano Alabarse, Parole d’Acteur by Maurice Durozier, Bergman Affair by Serge Nicolaï, Godspell by Zé Adão Barbosa and residencies with dancers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch and performers of Theater Rotterdam. 

From 2017 until 2020 was the coordinator of performing arts sector of the Secretary of Culture of Porto Alegre and has been still the general director of the Festival Porto Alegre em Cena, Brazil.

Fernando has participated of seminars, workshops, pitches, markets and festivals around the world e.g. Australia, Argentina, Chile, Colombian, Peru, Uruguai, USA, Canada, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Holand, Belgium, UK.

Today is the director of the artistic and production company Canard Produções.

Daniel Gubay

Artistic Director, Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Daniel Blanga Gubbay is a Brussels-based curator in performance arts and researcher. He is the initiator and curator of Aleppo, a platform for public programs through theory and artistic interventions. Among the curated programs: The Second Nature (Riga, 2017); W.E. (Brussels 2017); Nature (Brussels 2016); Black Market (Brussels 2016); The School of Exceptions (Santarcangelo 2016). He works as programmer for the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. He is part of the curatorial board for LiveWorks (Centrale Fies). He teaches at the Académie Royale de Beaux Arts in Brussels, directing the performance and choreography department, and lecture regularly abroad. Among some recent presentations Dance Under Cover of a Fictional Rhythm (2018, Sharjah, UAE); The Movement as Living Non-Body (2018, Movement Research, NY); Knowing the Unknown (2017, Museum of Impossible Forms, Helsinki); The Möbius Strip, On Fictional Institutions, (2017, Buda, Kortrijk); and Prophecies Without Content (American University of Beirut).

Robert Thomson

Artistic Producer, Talking Stick Festival

Robert Thomson is a musician, artistic producer and a proud member of the Haida Nation. Robert is an Artistic Producer at Full Circle: First Nations Performance and the Talking Stick Festival music programmer. In 2019, Robert received the “Emerging Performing Arts Leader” award presented by the Canadian Association for Presenting Arts.

Outside of producing, Robert is currently the electric bass player in the projects Emily Best, Ostwelve, Bitterly Divine, a sound designer/performer/live looper in the experimental musical Morag, You’re a Long Time Deid, and board member for Canadian New Music

Bek Berger

Artistic Director, New Theatre Institute of Latvia

Bek Berger is the Artistic Director of the New Theatre Institute of Latvia and curator of the International Festival of Contemporary Performance, Homo Novus (Riga). Originally from Melbourne, Australia she has worked in festivals across the globe such as American Realness (NYC), Dance Massive (AU), Darwin Festival (AU), Fierce Festival (UK) and Forest Fringe (UK). As a curator she has (co)/initiated projects such as Critical Futures, Convergence, La Discorso and Possible Futures Forum. As a Dramaturg/producer, Bek has collaborated with Choreographer James Batchelor since 2017. Their work HYPERSPACE was selected for Aerowaves19 and has been presented in 17 countries.

Anthony Gray 

Producer & Programmer

Anthony has worked as a cross arts producer and programmer for the last eight years supporting artists to create work and push their practice across a number of schemes that he has delivered in different organisations. As a trained classical singer who has worked in organisations such as the Royal Opera House, Barbican Centre and The Lowry in Salford, his career to date has primarily been about making the sector as accessible to as many unheard voices as possible.

As the Senior Producer (maternity cover) within the Programming department at Fuel Theatre (UK), Anthony leads the strategic approach to artist development and delivered The Lowry’s programme of in-house schemes. These programmes helped to identify artists and companies that fit with the artistic vision of The Lowry and enabled him to commission them to create new work. This post was focused on the delivery of an ambitious and nationally visible model of artist development that sits within the heart of The Lowry’s creative and artistic ambition. Previous to this role Anthony worked as a Producer at the Barbican Centre for their Creative Learning department where his main responsibilities were the strategic overview, management and delivery of two main programmes; Creative Careers and Development of Emerging and Practising Artists.