Erin Brubacher

Erin Brubacher is a multidisciplinary artist. Her work has taken her to Scotland, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, the USA and across Canada. As a theatre director, she works with writers, performers, musicians, choreographers, visual artists, and other makers to collaboratively create new works.

Sherri Hay

Sherri Hay’s practice revolves around objects that transform, exist in time, and inhabit the world within an ecology of intention; potentials of time and presence draw her to performance. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto and at other places in the world.

Veda Hille

Veda Hille has been writing music, making records, and performing internationally since 1992. She is a classically trained pianist, art school drop-out, performance curator, self-taught singer, theatre interloper, and independent artist.

Erum Khan

Erum Khan is a film and theatre maker. She was the recipient of the 2019 Buddies In Bad Times Theatre Queer Emerging Artist. In film, she has worked in the festival programming department at The Toronto International Film Festival and the Rendezvous with Madness Festival. Much of her community-engaged work is underscored by a commitment to create space for youth to access and engage with the arts.

Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah

Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah is a Toronto based actor, writer, and producer. Living her life at a multitude of intersections, Khadijah's work is motivated by a pursuit of artistic expression that aims to challenge understandings of visibility and inclusivity. Whether working alongside like-minded artists or producing work through her company, 2Skins Entertainment, Khadijah is always striving to carve out space in this world to amplify the voices of those that have been pushed to the boundaries within it.

Moe Angelos

Moe Angelos is a theatre artist and writer. She works with The Builders Association, the Five Lesbian Brothers and she's collaborated with many downtown NYC show biz luminaries. She's mentored in Queer/Art/Mentorship and in Toronto, her work has been presented at FADO Centre for Performance Art and Buddies in Bad Times and during Covid-19, on Zoom, Twitch and Streamyard.

Bilal Baig

Bilal Baig (they/them) is a queer, trans-feminine, Muslim playwright, performer and workshop facilitator. Bilal's first play, Acha Bacha, had its world premiere in 2018 and has been published by Playwrights Canada Press. Other written work in development includes Kainchee Lagaa, Kitne Saare Laloo Yahan Pey Hain, and I want that free mind! Bilal is a core team member at non-profits such as Story Planet and Rivers of Hope, where they develop and facilitate workshops for youth in under-resourced neighbourhoods in Toronto focused on creative writing and literacy (Story Planet), and combatting Islamophobia through the arts (Rivers of Hope).

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is a kalaaleq (Greenlandic Inuk) performance artist, poet, actor, curator, storyteller and writer. She is known for performing uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance. She performs internationally, collaborates with other artists and is a fierce advocate for Inuit artists. She lives in Iqaluit with her husband and 3 children.

Maddie Bautista

Maddie Bautista is a Bi, Saudi Arabia-born Filipinx sound designer, composer, artist, and educator based in Toronto. She one-half of queer performance art duo xLq with Jordan Campbell. She is the Program Co-Facilitator of FIXT POINT Arts & Media's Empathy Squad – a podcast creation and audio storytelling training program.

Dawn Jani Birley

Dawn Jani Birley is a multi-award winning professional Deaf actor. Dawn Jani was born to a third-generation Deaf family in Saskatchewan and identifies herself as culturally and linguistically Deaf. She founded a Deaf-led theatre company, 1S1, with a desire to continue creating work that challenges people’s perception of Deafness as well as rebutting ideologies and myths surrounding Deafness. Provoking the hearing world is one of the ways to push for positive changes for us as a society.

Christine Brubaker

Christine Brubaker directs shows through her computer from her basement in Calgary for now. She also teaches directing and acting at the University of Calgary where she is on faculty at the School of Creative and Performing Arts. In other times, she directs shows on stages, mostly new work. For 2021, she is adapting a stage play into a podcast called Henry G20 for the Luminato Festival and sincerely hopes it can live in live bodies with a live audience one day.

Jordan Campbell

Jordan Campbell is a queer theatre/dance/drag performance artist. He is half of the pop art performance duo xLq with Maddie Bautista. He also teaches and directs neurodiverse community projects with Purple Carrots Drama Studio.

Stuart Candy

Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin’s practice extends across black boxes and white cubes, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals and single bathroom stalls.

Claudel Doucet

Claudel Doucet is an artist whose career was fostered in the culture of contemporary circus. She researches risk in bodies and presences to weaken facades and explores the forces that stretch, between violence and tenderness. Her creations are often site specific and always interdisciplinary. Claudel has toured internationally and is a frequent director at the National Circus School of Montreal. She is co-founder of the Cie du Poivre Rose (Brussels) and the organization LION LION (Montréal).

Sadie Epstein-Fine

Sadie Epstein-Fine (They/Them) is a second generation queer artist and activist. They live and work in Tkaronto on the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Haudenosaunee, Wendat and Mississaugas of the Credit. Sadie is a director, writer and creator whose passion lies in multidisciplinary, site-specific and immersive creations. They most often work with young people and queerspawn (folks who have LGBTQ2+ parents).

Ian Garrett

Ian Garrett is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; and Producer for Toasterlab. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography.

Jani Lauzon

Jani Lauzon is a nine time Dora Mavor Moore award nominee, a Juno award nominated musician, a Toronto Critics Award winning director, and a Gemini award winning puppeteer. She is the 2021 ACTRA Toronto Award of Excellence recipient and the current Associate Artistic Director of English Acting at the National Theatre School.

Tijiki Morris

Tijiki Morris has created, directed and performed in theatre, puppetry, community arts, film and visual art installation. Other pursuits include forests, the moon, plants and bright colours.

Andrea Nann

Andrea Nann choreographs, instigates, mobilizes and produces movement based practices to reach across distance, to experience herself and others in celebration of possibility, diversity, connection and belonging. As artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company Andrea channels her community building passion into unique, participatory, collaborative multi-arts experiences. Dance has taken her around the globe and she remains forever grateful!

Jivesh Parasram

Jivesh Parasram is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker of Indo-Caribbean descent (Trinidad & Tobago/Cairi). He is a founding member and Artistic Producer of the international award winning (and unfortunately titled) collective Pandemic Theatre. Jiv grew up in Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia), and spent over a decade as a freelance artist in Tk’aronto (Toronto) before moving to the Unceded Coast Salish Territories to join the team at Rumble Theatre as Artistic Director. Recent projects include: Take d Milk, Nah? (Pandemic/Rumble); And you’ll never believe what happens next… (Pressgang); Daughter (Quiptake/Theatre Centre/ Pandemic), The Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille).

Sarah Garton Stanley

Sarah Garton Stanley is a director, dramaturg and theatre maker. Recently she became a co-owner of an off grid paradise in Nova Scotia. Sarah co-founded SpiderWebShow Performance and FOLDA and created and co-curated the Cycles for English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre.

Syrus Marcus Ware

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, a visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth-advocate and educator. For 12 years, he was the Coordinator of the Art Gallery of Ontario Youth Program. Syrus is currently a facilitator/designer for the Cultural Leaders Lab (Toronto Arts Council & The Banff Centre). He is the inaugural artist-in-residence for Daniels Spectrum (2016/2017). Syrus is also a core-team member of Black Lives Matter Toronto.

We Quit Theatre

We Quit Theatre is a collaboration between Gislina Patterson and Davis Plett. Recent works include Men Explain Things to Us… and We Like It!, a short video work commissioned by the Stratford Festival Lab for Stratfest@Home, and a new full length performance piece, i am your spaniel, or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson, a drag performance lecture on propaganda, pop culture, and Shakespeare, which has been developed in residency at the Stratford Festival Lab and the SummerWorks Festival. Their overhead projector performance 805-4821 (adapted for Google Docs during the Covid-19 pandemic) has toured to SummerWorks, OFFTA, Théâtre Catapulte, and PushOFF.

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Maiko Yamamoto

Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Since 2003, she 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. She also teaches performance and mentors artists for a range of different companies and organizations, both in Canada and abroad.

Helen Yung

Helen Yung is an inter/transdisciplinary artist, researcher and consultant. A scenographer by training, she designs sets, costumes, exhibitions, installations, interactions and interventions. Helen is the founder and chief artistic officer of the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence, which develops arts-led ways of framing, training for, and solving complex social and public problems. Currently the Lab is active in areas such as immigration, health, and impact evaluation.

Helios Design Labs

Helios Design Labs is a car crash at the intersection of art and technology. Helios also art directed and coded this site.

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Shelby Bushell

Shelby Bushell is a grad student at Ryerson University pursuing a masters degree in Digital Media. She is a theatre creator and artist on Canada's West Coast exploring the future of performance in the digital age. Along with Emad and Vanessa, Shelby wrote the Platform Guide for this field guide, and she can't wait to see it in action.

Davine Byon

Davine Byon recently completed the 'Theatre in Pandemic' research course through Carnegie Mellon University and co-devised a LARP game on a video-calling platform called Gather Town. She is a Video and Media Design student at CMU Drama currently exploring the intersections of theatre, film, and gaming as they contribute to a new performative, interactive virtual artform.

Vanessa Dang-Lam

Vanessa Dang-Lam is a Master of Digital Media student at Ryerson University passionate about art installations and physical computing. She loves exploring and exposing herself to different things. For this collaboration field guide, she was able to research and contribute to the Platform Guide component.

Dr Richard Lachman

Dr Richard Lachman directs the Zone Learning network of incubators, Creative Technology Development for the Faculty of Communication and Design, and the Experiential Media Institute, all at Ryerson University. He is an Associate Professor, Digital Media in the RTA School of Media, and also serves as a Technology and Creative Consultant for entertainment and software-development projects. He was a consultant on this Field Guide.

Brian Quirt & Brittany Ryan

Brian Quirt is the Artistic Director and Brittany Ryan is the Producer of Nightswimming, a Toronto-based dramaturgical company that commissions and develops new works of theatre, dance and music. We've been thrilled to offer our 'dramaturgical eyes' to the guide and the process of creating it.

Miquelon Rodriguez

Miquelon Rodriguez provided editing support for the platform guide. He is a sound designer, music composer, and an emerging arts leader based in Toronto. He was the Apprentice Artistic Director at Factory Theatre from 2017- 2019, under the mentorship of Nina Lee Aquino, and co-curated Pan-Asian works over two seasons at Soulpepper, through both the Tiger Bamboo Festival and the Shen Development Series. He is currently an Artistic Leadership Resident with the National Theatre School of Canada and has worked as a sound designer/composer with a multitude of artists and companies in different provinces across Turtle Island. He streams live on Twitch at twitch.tv/troysteel.

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Emad Saedi

Emad Saedi is a pianist, composer, and music producer from Iran. He is currently a Master of Digital Media student at Ryerson University. Emad is interested in storytelling with music and has composed the original soundtrack for several podcasts and films. As an indie musician and digital media enthusiast, it is of his concern to find solutions to support artists, especially during the pandemic. Along with Shelby and Vanessa, he wrote the Platform Guide part for this field guide.

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Cara Spooner

Cara Spooner is an artist working in dance, performance and theatre. Her work has been presented at the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), The PuSh International Performance Festival (Vancouver), Canadian Stage (Toronto), The Goethe Institut (Toronto), Stromereien 11 (Zürich) and her Audience Handbook has been translated and printed internationally. She also works in Public Programming at Workman Arts.