Stageworthy

Emmilia Gordon Emmelia is a Vancouver actor making the big leap into the Toronto theatre scene. Fierce will be her first semi professional debut in Toronto and couldn’t have ask for a more supportive and kick ass team. She is two time Jessie Richardson award winner (New Canadian Kid, Green Thumb Theatre & Dissolve, Shameless Hussy Productions) Acting credits include: Lady Parts (Pi Theatre); The Food Project (Theatre by Committee); Perter and the Starcatcher, (Arts Club Theatre); Proud, (Firehall Arts Centre (Jessie nominated)); Dirty Old Woman (wet ink collective); Fat Pig (Short, Sharp & Pointy); Measure for Measure (Honest Fishmongers/Pacific Theatre); The After Party (Sum Theatre/Pull Fest); Twelve Angry Men (Hardline Productions); She’s also had the pleasure of being co-creator, alongside Pippa Mackie, of the touring Fringe hit The Progressive Polygamists and an improviser in The Life Game created by Keith Johnstone. Emmelia is a graduate of Studio 58 and the recipient of the Antony Holland Schol

Chris Tolley is a writer, director and producer, and the Co-Artistic Director of Expect Theatre. After graduating from York University he teamed up with Laura Mullin, and together they have created award-winning multi-disciplinary productions that have toured across Canada and the US.Chris’ work has been nominated for five Dora Awards in the General Theatre category, and has been shortlisted twice for the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards. In 2006 both Chis and Laura won Harbourfront Centre’s inaugural FreshGround commissioning award.His most notable works include Romeo/Juliet REMIXED (Toronto and Philadelphia), STATIC (World Stage Festival) and AWAKE (Next Stage Festival). Other work with Mullin include the CBC Radio drama, The Tunnel Runners, and the short film, AWAKE.Most recently, Chris and Laura launched PlayME, a national digital theatre dedicated to producing Canada’s most innovative theatre works distributed globally via podcasts.He sits on the Board of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and serves as the C

Kat Sandler Kat Sandler is a writer, director and the Artistic Director of Theatre Brouhaha. She has directed twelve of her original plays in the last six years, including Toronto Best of Fringe hits Bright Lights, Punch Up and Help Yourself (winner of the New Play Contest), Delicacy(Summerworks Spotlight Award), and Liver, Cockfight and Retreat (Storefront Theatre). Other directing credits include Big Plans, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Cabaret, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia. She was a member of the Tarragon Playwrights Unit, where she developed, Mustard (Dora Mavor Moore Award, Outstanding New Play) and is currently the Canada Council Playwright in Residence at Tarragon. She was the 2015 recipient of NOW Magazine’s Audience Choice Award for Best Director and Best Playwright. Kat is a graduate of the Queen’s University Drama Program.Twitter:@katsandlerInstagram: ksandler24Donna-Michelle St. Bernard Donna-Michelle St. Bernard aka Belladonna the Blest is an emcee, playwright, administrator and agitator. She has

JULIA NISH-LAPIDUS Julia is an actor, director, and producer, as well as a Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Shakespeare BASH'd, where she has produced all of the company's productions. She has worked as the Managing Director of Common Boots Theatre and is now part of the team at The Theatre Centre. For Shakespeare BASH'd, Julia has directed The Comedy of Errors, and assistant directed The Changeling. She has also performed in many BASH'd productions, including The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Volpone (staged reading). Selected Additional Credits: Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen and This Property is Condemned (Director, The Playwright Project), Modern Love (Co-Creator, Next Stage), As You Like It (Text Coach, Theatre By the Bay), and as an actor OVER, See Bob Run (Theatre Caravel), reasons to the pretty (The Labute Cycle), The Forest (Red One Theatre Collective), Dublin Carol (Fly on the Wall).​ Julia is a member of th

Franny is an actor and playwright based in the GTA. She has performed her award-winning original work in Toronto, Hamilton, Oakville,, Stratford, Winnipeg MB, Saint John NB and New York City. She is returning for a second season at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre this summer. www.frannymcb.com Twitter: @franny_mcb Instagram: franny_mcb Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frannymcb/Stageworthy:http://www.stageworthypodcast.com Twitter @stageworthyPod Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Bil Antoniou has been performing for a number of years, amassing a number of interesting experiences that resulted from his decision to say yes to everything. Among them are appearing in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at Hart House (his favourite), singing Thenardier in Les Miserables at Honest Ed's on their closing weekend, a few stints as Jesus and a Pharisee on a wagon and making love to pots and pans in the middle of Michigan. Along the way he decided to take his love of writing and seriously and began writing plays, which thus far have resulted in four productions that, despite having forced him to say yes to fewer other projects, have gone well, including The Best Men at Bread and Circus in 2011, Operation Impervious at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, and two productions in 2015 at Red Sandcastle Theatre, We Say Such Terrible Things and Heart of the Storm. Between theatre gigs, he spends his free time writing film reviews for his blog, MyOldAddiction.com, or editing one of his two podcasts, BGM: Bad Gay Movie

Audrey Dwyer has been a theatre artist, teacher and mentor for over fifteen years. She was a mentor for the Summerworks Leadership Program and led the program in 2012 and 2013. She was the Assistant Coordinator and Educator for Nightwood Theatre’s Write from the Hip program from 2008 to 2010. She has taught improvisation with TIFF and leads screenplay courses for young women. Her theatre credits include: Blue Planet (YPT), One Thing Leads to Another (YPT – Dora Awards for Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding New Play), Patty’s Cake (Carousel Players – Dora Award Outstanding Play), Danny, King of the Basement (Roseneath Theatre). She won The Cayle Chernin Award for Theatre (Playwriting) in 2015. Audrey was the Associate Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre and was the Artistic Director of Cow Over Moon Children’s Theatre. Audrey graduated from The National Theatre School.Calpurnia A hilarious and provocative look at class, race, and appropriation, Calpurnia invites us into an outrageous and unexpected evenin

EmmaClaire Brightlyn is an actor arrived in Toronto. With an MA in Classical and Contemporary Text Performance from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, EmmaClaire has spent the last 8 years performing and making work in the UK. She has been a company member with Ipdip Theatre, creating engaging work for under 4 year olds and the big people who come with them, as well as an actor with Playwright’s Studio Scotland, workshopping new pieces of theatre. In 2012, EmmaClaire was part of the multi-award winning short film, Notes and has been involved with the production company Worrying Drake and director John McPhail ever since. Most recently she was seen as Apemantus in Timon of Athens, and Goneril in Queen Lear with Bard in the Botanics, Scotland’s largest Shakespeare Festival.EmmaClaire also works internationally as a Fight Director and Instructor.http://www.emmaclairebrightlyn.com/ Instagram: emcbrightlyn

Originating from Niagara, Jess McAuley is a Brock University graduate (theatre studies, honours) with a passion for devised theatre, writing, and pushing the bounds of adventure on stage.Her recent credits with New Twist include Peter Panhandler (co-creator/producer, 2017), Guilty Pleasures (writer/director, 2016). Previously, Jess has worked with Something-Something Productions for the 2013 production of The Rocky Horror Show (Usherette/Janet), Fragmentos (Maria Chambers, Brock University, 2013), and collaborated with NeXt Theatre Company in The Arab Spring Monologues (2013).Jess is taking the next steps with New Twist in touring the company with her first ever solo show - to premiere in the London Fringe Festival (2018). Currently untitled, the show is a true coming of age story, beginning in high school and all the way to graduation; it’s a story of finding love and closure while navigating through her depression and melancholy. Though she is a lover of fiction and adventure, Jess has morphed the show into

Victoria Urquhart is a Toronto-based actor and director from Caledon. She is also a graduate from the University of Windsor’s 2010 B.F.A. Acting Program. This training has helped her to develop a focus on marrying Physical Theatre Practices with Classical Text. This fascination, combined with her leadership and organizational skills developed through working six consecutive summers at a residential camp have led her to a passion for directing, and the creation of The Spur-Of-The-Moment Shakespeare Collective in Toronto. Through the SOTMSC, she has directed, produced, and sometimes performed in several community projects, including the Shakespeare-On-The-Subway Project, several sessions of Shakespeare-In-Hospitals, and JULIUS CAESAR PROJECT, garnering 4 N’s from NOW magazine at the 2014 Toronto Fringe Festival. Other theatre credits include: Waiting for Alonzo with Empty Box Theatre (2015), Teach Me with Newborn Theatre, and Macbeth with Hart House Theatre.Do not miss Spur of the Moment Shakespeare-in-Hospital

Lucy Eveleigh is the Executive Director of the Toronto Fringe Festival, and has been the Managing Director of the Toronto Fringe for the last five years, after two years as the General Manager for the SummerWorks Performance Festival and three years as the General Manager of the Pleasance Theatre in London, England. Her extensive knowledge of theatre administration and company management, and her passion for the mandate of the Fringe movement, make her the ideal candidate to lead this organization into its 30th year and beyond.@eveleigh_lucyToronto Fringehttps://fringetoronto.com/@Toronto_FringeStageworthy:http://www.stageworthypodcast.com Twitter @stageworthyPod Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod

Grace fell in love with the theatre at a tender age playing Goldilocks in nursery school. In high school she toured Macbeth and The Two Gentlemen of Verona with Montreal Shakespeare Theatre Company. Grace spent her summers exploring and cultivating her passion for classical theatre with the Stratford Festival’s Shakespeare School and Theatre Performance Intensive under the direction of Edward Darayni. In summer of 2011, she appeared in Ottawa parks and the National Arts Centre’s 4th stage playing Desdemona in Salamander Shakespeare Co.'s Othello.Graduating in 2012 from Dawson College’s Dome Theatre Program, Grace’s hunger for challenging material was always satisfied during her time there, where she played an interesting range of leading and supporting roles - including Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Masha in Three Sisters and Alma in Tennessee William’s Summer and Smoke. She was honored to be chosen as the recipient of the Beryl and Willie Moser Award for Theatre in recognition of 'outstanding acting abil

Factory Theatre, in association with b current performing arts, is proud to present the world premiere of trace, a one-man-two-piano-play written, composed and performed by former Factory Artistic Associate Jeff Ho (Ophelia, Prince Hamlet/Why Not Theatre), and directed by Factory Artistic Director Nina LeeAquino.A painfully personal story of family and genealogy, trace follows the footprints taken by Jeff’s great grandmother who fled the Japanese in WWII by escaping to Hong Kong, losing one of her two sons during the trek; his mother’s similar pilgrimage to Canada, also with two sons in tow; and by Jeff himself, when he too embarked on a journey, moving from Markham to Montreal to pursue an uncharacteristically Chinese life.Spanning 100 years and three generations, and featuring virtuosic original piano compositions composed by Jeff, traceis a chamber play structured as a piano sonata with a prelude, three movements and a coda. A convergence of theatrical and symphonic storytelling, trace celebrates the coura

This year Jacquie P. Thomas celebrates her 25^th Season as the Artistic Director of Theatre Gargantua, which she founded in 1992. In addition to her role as founder and Artistic Director, Jacquie has served Gargantua as an actor, director, producer, composer, choreographer, dramaturge and writer, earning 10 Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations for her artistic contributions to the company. Her most recent directorial projects include the upcoming November 2017 presentation of Reflector as well as Avaricious, The Sacrifice Zone and Imprints, among others. Other selected credits include the Ossetynski Actors Lab in Los Angeles, Roy Hart Theatre in France, The National Theatre of Greece and the Gardzienice Theatre Association of Poland. Under her leadership, Theatre Gargantua has earned over 30 Dora nominations and awards for categories including Outstanding New Play, Direction, Sound Design, Set Design and Lighting Design. She has also directed and led an 11-city tour of Phantom Limb across

Sarah Lynn Strange is stoked to be Phil’s 100th podcast! 2017 marks a banner year, with 8 of 12 months working on stage, classics like Singin’ In The Rain and My Fair Lady, to a Disney dream role in Beauty & The Beast, and capping off the year with A Christmas Story… which pssst she has never even seen the movie of, don’t tell anyone!! A Sheridan Graduate, previous credits include evil queen’s and lots of mothers, not a character actress in any way <img src= "https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/z4c/1/16/1f642.png" alt="

Cathy Huang is an Asian-Canadian multidisciplinary theatre and film artist, and a classically trained singer and pianist. She aims to redefine what it means to be Canadian, and eventually start her own company to create art for and support young people that feel caught between their Asian and Canadian identities. Cathy is one of Nightwood Theatre’s 2017/18 Young Innovators, and is the recipient of Theatre Ontario’s first Summer Intensive Youth Scholarship, having recently returned from Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s playwriting course in Stratford. Past credits include The Headless Hipster (Adrian - Sixteen F ilms Limited), Go Home (playwright / director / actor / deviser), lady in the red dress (Sylvia), IRIS (Madison), The Three Ladies of London (Lucre / Love), and BUST (Alex). Cathy is playing Agnes in Filament Incubator / Epigraph Collective’s Imp from November 15-26, and co-writing / acting in HERstory Counts Theatre Company’s production from December 14-17.http://www.twitter.com/kaffreeehttp://www.instagr

Will is a graduate from the BFA Acting program at the University of Windsor. Will has trained at the Moscow Art Theatre School, and completed workshops with R.A.D.A., the Stratford Festival, and the S.I.T.I. Company from New York. He is also certified teacher of the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique (GLMCC).Selected Credits Include: Albert Einstein in Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Seven Siblings), Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein (Echo Productions), Aladdin in Aladdin (Globus Theatre), Bernardo/Gravedigger/Player Queen in Hamlet (Unit 102 Actors Co), Sebastian in Twelfth Night (Hart House), Valere in Tartuffe, Constantine in The Seagull, Alfred David in Welfarewell (University Players), Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, and David/Timmy from Lion in the Streets (U.Windsor). Will is passionate about cultivating and producing the development of Fantastic Realism, while educating performers with the ideals of Michael Chekhov.http://www.willking.ca/ Twitter: @WillKingActor

Nigel Shawn Williams is a four-time Dora Mavor Moore Award-winner as both actor and director. His theatre credits include The Merchant of Venice for Bard on the Beach this past summer, five seasons at Stratford Festival, four seasons at Shaw Festival, as well as performances in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. Nigel is also heavily involved in new play development and mentoring young and emerging artists through the difficult transition from training schools to professional life.Nigel is the director of Cahoots Theatre and Obsidian Theatre's world premiere of Amanda Parris’ OTHER SIDE OF THE GAME.Set before the rise of Black Lives Matter, OTHER SIDE OF THEGAME is a time-spanning work that tells the story of silenced Black women who organize communities, protect loved ones, battle institutions, and live each day by a ride-or-die philosophy. This first-time partnership between Cahoots and Obsidian also marks the professional playwriting debut for Amanda Parris. Inspired by interviews conducte

Adam Paolozza is a director, performer, producer, teacher and Artistic Director of Bad New Days. As a performer Adam has collaborated with Zou Theatre, Fixt Point, Why Not Theatre, Soulpepper, Vertical City, Litmus Theatre & Ahuri Theatre. His co-translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Pylade (a modern re-telling of theOresteia story) was recently debuted in NYC by legendary La Mama theatre and toured all over Europe. He regularly teaches privately, giving classes based on his interpretation of the Lecoq pedagogy, designed to open up students' minds and bodies to spontaneity. He's a sessional instructor at Soulpepper Academy and guest instructor at Ryerson (he directed 2016's The Holiday Trilogy) and at U of T. Adam is currently directing Bad New Days and Ahuri Theatre's production of Flashing Lights. Twitter: @adampaolozza Flashing Lights: Created by award winning Bad New Days (The Double) and Ahuri Theatre (This is the Point), FLASHING LIGHTS is an original play exploring how digital technology is radical

A documentary play that looks at gender roles and sexual consent in the wake of the Ghomeshi scandal, Asking For It considers the various ways in which sexual consent is understood personally, culturally, and legally. Moon speaks with people of all ages and backgrounds about their assumptions and experiences around consent to sexual relations, and with crown prosecutors and legal experts about the current state of sexual assault law in Canada. The conversations are candid, funny, often uncomfortable, and describe experiences of shame, power, ambiguity, and misunderstanding in communication about sex.Ellie Moon:@elliemoonerBrendan Healy:http://misterbrendanhealy.com/Website: http://crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/asking-for-it Twitter: @askingtheplay Instagram: askingforitplayStageworthy:http://www.stageworthypodcast.com Twitter @stageworthyPod Facebook: http://facebook.com/stageworthyPod