PuSh in the Community

Anais West

​Anais (they/he) is a queer and trans writer, actor and producer, as well as a Polish settler on occupied xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) lands.

Anais’ work is transdisciplinary, merging theatre, film, poetry, and music to explore the multiplicity of gender, sexuality and culture. His playwrighting includes Kill Your Lovers (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb Festival, Toronto, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC); Poly Queer Love Ballad (Queer Arts Festival, the frank theatre and Zee Zee Theatre, Vancouver, and Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto); and The Café (Aphotic Theatre, ITSAZOO theatre and the PuSh Festival, Vancouver). His work has been nominated for two Jessie Richardson Awards, including Outstanding Original Script, and he was the 2023 winner of the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition.

As an actor, they’ve performed with the National Arts Centre, Orange Noyée, Savage Society, Firehall Arts Centre, Théâtre La Seizième, and more. Most recently, his writing was published in This is Beyond: A Time Capsule of Queer Experience with Playwrights Canada Press. Anais is the Artistic Producer at the frank theatre company.

David Geary

David Geary is of Taranaki Māori, English, Irish and Scottish blood. He grew up immersed in the Polynesian trickster tales of Māui and now lives on the lands of the Coyote and Raven Tricksters of Turtle Island/Canada. He is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg, director, screenwriter, fiction writer and poet. David works at Capilano University, where he teaches in the Indigenous Digital Filmmaking, Documentary and Playwriting programs. He also teaches playwrighting and dramaturgy for PTC Playwrights Theatre Centre. He’s a member of LMDA Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and does script consultation for theatre, TV and Film. He lives by the yogic mantra: Life is short, stretch it, writes haiku on twitter @gearsgeary, and takes comedy very seriously.

David Mesiha

David Mesiha is a Toronto and Vancouver based, award-winning music composer, interactive designer, sound/video designer and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy in Vancouver. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. He is intrigued by the relationships between form and medium. His work utilizes multi channel immersive audio, interactive design and Digital Performance.

He has worked on shows such as Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy, and You Should Have Stayed Home by Spiderweb Show. He has been nominated and won Jessie Richardson Awards in multiple categories and has received a Dora award nomination for his sound design work on Oraltorio by IFT theatre.

David’s music has spans multiple mediums and formats such as video games, film, theatre and interactive media. 

Chosen credits: Theatre: Sound designer for The Humans (Arts Club Theatre), Antigone (YPT), Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille), You Should Have Stayed Home (VR Performance, SpiderWebShow), asses.masses (video game performance), 15 Dogs (Crow’s Theatre) and Szepty (Rumble/Pi Theatre).

Esar Rabadi

Esar Rabadi is a BFA Creative Writing student at the University of British Columbia where she specializes in writing for the stage, writing for the screen, and graphic forms. A majority of her work focuses on themes of capitalism and its impact on a local and global scale, self-identity, and the many dynamics at play in interpersonal relationships. It is her hope to initiate conversations surrounding these scopes and to inspire others to act with the means of resolving these issues that intersect within audiences’ and readers’ lives. Literary work Esar has completed includes her participation in the 2023 Brave New Playwrights Festival where she wrote a one-act comedy play titled “The Debate” and a zine titled “to be human”. Esar plans to produce another play for the Brave New Playwrights festival in March 2024, as well as transform her zine into a stand-alone graphic novel. In her free time Esar loves to bake banana bread, karaoke to Lana Del Rey, and play with Gremlin, her friend’s Bengal cat.

Gavan Cheema

Theatre Conspiracy

Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, producer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is based out of Vancouver: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a first generation Canadian, with roots coming from the five rivers of Punjab. She is a recent recipient of the Sam Payne Award for Most Promising Emerging Artist at the Jessie Richardson Awards.

Gavan’s play Himmat premiered in Vancouver at The Cultch in May 2022 and will be presented at the Surrey Civic Theatres in Spring 2024. She holds a double major from the University of British Columbia in Theatre and History, as well as a high school teaching certification. She has created work and directed for various local, national and international stages and has extensive experience in youth engagement, theatre education and workshop facilitation.

Select directing credits: Conspiracy Now (Theatre Conspiracy), Rishi & d Douen (Carousel Theatre), Danceboy (Tremors Festival/ Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse), Burqa Boutique (Revolver Festival), Marie’s Letters (Shift Festival).

conspiracy.ca

Joanna Garfinkel

Joanna Garfinkel (she/any) Dramaturg, Creative Engagement at Playwrights Theatre Centre and co-founder, with Yoshie Bancroft, of Universal Limited. Current dramaturgy: National Queer & Trans playwriting unit; UL’s To the Sea; Kamila Sediego’s Engkanto, José Teodoro’s Binary Star, Christina Cook’s PTMYTS, Tara Cheyenne’s Pants, and Anais West’s Tomboy. Co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and more. Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and commits to trouble those patterns through performance. Other credits: Berlin: The Last Cabaret (PuSh), PQLB, (Passe Murailles) Nominated for three

Jessie awards; Pure Research grant (Nightswimming), Sydney Risk award for directing. Joanna moved to Unceded Coast-Salish territory to get an MFA in directing at UBC, and focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York.

Josh Martin

Originally from Alberta, Canada, Josh Martin is dance maker/performer who now lives and works in Vancouver, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. Inspired by the overlap of urban and contemporary forms, he received his diverse training across North America and Europe, studying in many genres.

In his ongoing career as an interpreter and collaborator, he has worked with many dance companies and independent choreographers such as: Justine A. Chambers, Dana Gingras (Animals of Distinction), Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Helen Walkley, Martha Carter (MMhop), Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Rachel Meyer, Serge Bennathan (Les Productions Figlio), Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance), Karen Jamieson, and as a past company member of Ottawa’s Le Groupe Dance Lab under the direction of Peter Boneham.

June Fukumura

June Fukumura is a Japanese-Canadian inter-disciplinary theatre artist with a BFA in Theatre Performance and a Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Simon Fraser University. June is also the Co-Artistic Director of Popcorn Galaxies an experimental theatre company interested in re-enchanting the everyday through unconventional site-responsive and site-specific works. She was the Associate Dramaturg at the Banff Playwrights Lab from 2019-2021. From 2019 – 2021 June worked as the Emerging Dramaturg/Producer/Curator for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG Lab program. She was the Resident Dramaturg of vAct in 2022-23. Her freelance artistic practice includes: experimental theatre creation, acting for theatre/film, performance, clown/bouffon, dramaturgy, directing, and producing.

Marcus Youssef

Marcus’ fifteen or so plays have been produced in multiple languages in more than twenty countries across North America, Europe and Asia. His work is often collaborative, usually highly personal, and almost always investigates questions of difference, belonging and dissent.

Marcus is a recipient of Canada’s largest theatre award, the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright and mentor, as well as the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, and the Vancouver Critic’s Innovation award (three times).

Marcus is also well-known in Canada as an advocate for central role culture can play in making our worlds more humane, just and joyful. He co-founded the artist-run production centre Progress Lab 1422, where he led Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre for fifteen years. Marcus was also the inaugural chair of the city of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council and implemented Canada’s first mutli-institutional Bachelor’s of Performing Arts program, at Capilano University.

Paige Louter

Paige Louter is a theatre creator and producer living and working on the traditional territories of the the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver). She holds an MA in Theatre from the University of Galway, works as ITSAZOO Productions’ Co-Artistic Producer, and is pursuing certification as an Intimacy Director.

Credits include co-producing and acting in The Wolves (With a Spoon /Rumble; Jessie Nomination: Outstanding Production) and performing in The Lonesome West (Cave Canem), Twelfth Night (Tottering Biped) and Coarse: The Brontes (Sarah Deller/Edinburgh Fringe). She loves creating strange pockets of time and space in which to share stories.

Bring yourselves and your words to Vancouver Poetry Slam, the longest-running poetry slam in Canada. As part of PuSh’s partnership with Vancouver Poetry House, Sound of the Beast creator/performer Donna-Michelle St. Bernard will appear as the Feature Poet.

January 22, 7:30PM at Community Taps and Pizza | $10-$15 sliding scale

Following the Feb 3 performance of Pli, creator/performer Inbal Ben Haim will share an artist talk en Français, hosted by PuSh Programming Director Gabrielle Martin. This talk is presented in partnership with Alliance Francaise Vancouver who provide French language programs and promote local and international francophone cultures.