Stageworthy

Anne is a Toronto based actor, and Artistic Director of Leroy Street Theatre. She received her Bachelor of Drama from Bishop’s University in 2006, and just last year, successfully navigated a year of training with New York’s prestigious Circle in the Square Theatre School. In the interim, Anne has been living and working in Vancouver, BC. Some favourite roles include Connie Dayton in Come Blow Your Horn (OLT), Ann Deever in All My Sons (OLT), Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Beach House Theatre); May in Fool For Love (High Horse Theatre Productions); Constance Ledbelly in Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet (BU) Viola in Twelfth Night (BU).

Instagram:annevanelle

C'mon Angie
In the pre-dawn hours following a one-night stand, Angie and Reed spend a fraught morning confronting questions related to intimacy, consent, and sexual assault. As the two characters uncover the truth of what happened the night before, a major gap between their understanding of the situation - and the meaning of consent - is revealed. Told with humour, heart, and unflinching honestly, C'MON ANGIE! dramatizes a difficult and all-too familiar situation, resulting in what the Vancouver Sun calls, "a thoughtful and provocative contribution to cone of the most compelling issues of our time."


www.leroystreettheatre.com
Twitter:@leroysttheatre
Instagram:leroy_street_theatre
Tickets:https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4089866

Lucas Penner is a professional actor and songwriter specializing in composition and musical direction for theatre. He holds an Advanced Diploma in Theatre Arts (2017) from the George Brown Theatre School. Within the last three years he has been in charge of musical direction for the Toronto Fringe Festival's "The Miserable Worm" and "Meant" as well as "Cavalcade", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It" while at George Brown. He was also hired by Mike Ross for the Edna St.Vincent Millay workshop at Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre in January 2018, and sang in Tapestry Opera's production of "Oksana G in 2017. Being a multidisciplinary artist, Penner has recorded albums “Passerby” (2012) and “Soul Fire” (2009), performed as a solo acoustic artist and band leader, and has written music for and co-created two shows: "Dead and Lovely: a Cabaret" and "Circles", which was played to sold-out audiences at the Cameron House in October 2017. Lucas is creatively inspired by classical literature, contemporary art, anime, trees, current events and social issues. His musical style is informed by alternative and punk genres, and is influenced by artists such as Tom Waits, Elliott Smith, and Nick Cave. As an actor and a singer, he appreciates storytelling, and loves poetry for its ability to be clear and vague at the same time. He aspires to bring this quality to music theatre, in order to create new experiences for audiences. After ‘Circles: In Concert’, Lucas will be performing and touring as a musician with Theatre Direct’s ‘Flying Hearts’.

Circles: In Concert
Inspired by Dante's Inferno, CIRCLES: IN CONCERT is a re-imagining Lucas Penner's dark musical, CIRCLES - a show set at an open mic in Hell. Hear the completely original score featuring classical instrumentals, Tom Waits-like growlers and singer/songwriter intimacy. It rocks, swings and grooves with jazz, funk, latin and pop influences. CIRCLES: IN CONCERT follows Dante, a trio, striving to be signed by Beatrice Records as Lucifer tries to bind their souls to him every step of the way.

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/388799178572144/
Tickets: https://circles2019.brownpapertickets.com

Dead and Lovely Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deadandlovelycollective
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/deadandlovelycollective
Instagram: deadandlovelycollective

Poised to join the ranks of Toronto’s favourite indie theatre spots, Blood Pact Theatre, in association with The Storefront Arts Initiative, announces the Grand Opening of a brand-new venue: GRAND CANYON. Located in the lively Junction neighbourhood, GRAND CANYON will serve as a new vibrant hub for multidisciplinary artists to play, explore and share.

GRAND CANYON is owned and operated by Blood Pact Theatre’sBri Proke and Bryce Hodgson, who have been praised as “excellent storytellers bringing unique, fresh voices to the Canadian theatre scene” (NOW Magazine). The Storefront Arts Initiative continues as a collaborating company to several indie productions after being suddenly forced to shutter the doors of its flagship space in 2017. The partnership between Blood Pact and Storefront Arts is a tried-and-tested recipe for success, with the two companies having partnered on such hits as Kill Your Parents in Viking, Alberta(Storefront Theatre, 2016), and After Wrestling (Factory Theatre, 2017). The partnership gained praise from critics and audiences alike, with NOW Magazine stating, “Toronto is the lucky site of the world premiere of this collaboration between these young, vibrant indie companies”. Blood Pact Theatre most recently won over our cold dead hearts with graveyard comedy No Clowns Allowed (Assembly Theatre, 2018), and also shot their first feature film, Shark Week (written and directed by Proke, starring Hodgson) which is due to hit the festival circuit later this year.

Blood Pact Theatre is committed to providing accessible, inventive, and original work to the community. By opening GRAND CANYON, Blood Pact is extending this effort to provide a safe space for artists to create and collaborate. This versatile ex-mechanic spot boasts high ceilings and ample space to fit artists of all kinds. GRAND CANYON can be rented as a theatre performance venue, movie theatre, concert hall, rehearsal space, workshop venue, pop-up shop, bathtub; you name it, we’re ready to accommodate it.

GRAND CANYON will open its doors to the public on Saturday, April 06, 2019 with a Grand Opening Fête! This is a FREE EVENT and open invitation to the entire community to meet, mingle, and pitch their ideas while enjoying live music and libations. GRAND CANYON is proud to present special performances by indie rock cuties Sundae, and a late-night dance party with DJ Valeroo!

Join us for this special milestone in the Toronto indie theatre community!

GRAND CANYON
Grand Opening Fête!
Saturday, April 06, 2019
Doors at 8:00pm
2 Osler St (Dundas & Dupont, NW corner)
This is a FREE event!

www.bloodpact.ca
Instagram: bloodpacttheatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BloodPactTheatre/
Opening night Party Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/305252730161436/

Scarred Leather is a supernatural Western by Adrianna Prosser that sends you back in time to Canada in 1842 when ghosts walked with you and your gun holster, "You can’t beat Death, and you sure as hell can’t cheat Death, but one day you might see plain what Death truly is…” starring Adrianna Prosser (Theatre by the Bay, Canada: Story of Us) and Caroline Concordia (Paro Caro, Web of Lies), with Jason Martorino (The Handmaid's Tale, Bad Blood), and Phil Rickaby (The Commandment), dramaturgy by Eric Woolfe (Eldritch Theatre).

Adrianna Prosser
www.adrianna-prosser.com
Twitter: @adriannap
Instagram: adriannaprosser

Jason Martorino
www.jasonmartorino.com
Twitter: @jasonmartorino
Instagram: jasonmartorino

Caroline Concordia
www.carolineconcordia.com
Twitter: @careovision
Instagram: careovision

Scarred Leather
by Adrianna Prosser
Costumed staged reading of a supernatural Western.
"You can’t beat Death,
And you sure as hell can’t cheat Death,
But one day you might see plain what Death truly is…"
-Red Anna, memoirs dated November 12, 1840.
Starring Caroline Concordia, Adrianna Prosser, Phil Rickaby and Jason Martorino

Waltzing With Puppets
by Chloe Whitehorn
When searching for the man of your dreams, why would you marry the man in your nightmares?
Directed by Victoria Shepherd
Starring Brianna Riche and Matt Jensen
Aurelia Adams (Stage Manager), Liam Stewart (Lighting Designer), John Stuart Cambpell (Composer/Sound Designer), Alexis Chubb (Set Designer), Brent Shepherd (Master Carpenter)

Sweet Mama and the Salty Muffins
by Ciarán Myers
A workshop production.
A child goes missing. Another grows up her in shadow. A husband has failed. The 27 club looms large. And the music is hotter than hell.
Directed by Kendra Jones
Performed by Liz Whitebread, Michelle Jedrzejewski, Renée Strasfeld, Ara Glenn-Johanson.

www.whiskeygingercollective.org
Twitter: @WhiskeyGingerC4
Instagram: whiskeygingercollective
Facebook: www.facebook.com/whiskeygingercollective/

Lianna is a second generation Ukrainian Canadian theatre artist. Lianna has enjoyed a diverse career working as an actor, creator, instructor, and artistic producer. Her main artistic ventures have been as an Artistic Associate and Producer with Pyretic Productions. Lianna has managed audience outreach and communications for several Edmonton arts festivals. And she co-founded, manages, and teaches at a children’s summer theatre camp, Spark! Youth Camp, which provides affordable arts education to youth in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue Community. She is the playwright and principle performer in Blood of Our Soil, which won the ACUA-URDC Award (2018), the inaugural Rena Hanchuk & Yaroslav Kitynskyy Artist Award (2018), and was nominated for four Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards (Edmonton's premiere theatre awards), including Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Production. Lianna was recognized as a Top 30 Under 30 Artist by the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts. Lianna is a graduate of the BFA Acting Program at the University of Alberta.

Twitter: @liannamakuch

Blood of Our Soil
Blood of Our Soil is the story of Hania, a Canadian woman, who often reflects on fond memories of summers spent with her beloved Baba. After a chance discovery allows her to gain new insights about her Baba’s struggles during WWII, Hania is compelled to gain a deeper understanding of both her personal and cultural history. Hania’s search for answers brings her to the edge of the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine. Here she meets the people and sees the places touched by war, and finally confronts the truths of her Baba’s past.

Blood of our Soil was nominated for four Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards, gives voice to the people whose lives have been affected by the frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine, Europe’s current “forgotten war,” where current Russian aggression has killed more than 10,000 people, and displaced millions. The play is inspired by the experiences of the playwright’s grandparents who fled Ukraine during WWII, and the true accounts of people interviewed in conflict zones in Eastern Ukraine.

Pyretic Productions
www.pyreticproductions.ca
Twitter: @Pyretic_Prod
Instagram: pyretic.theatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PyreticProductions/
Tickets: http://www.tarragontheatre.com/show/blood-of-our-soil/

Evan is the Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of Directors Lab North, a sister program to the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, of which he is an alum and now partnered with Luminato Festival. He is also the Co-Founder of the World Wide Lab, an International Directors collective. With that company, he has co-directed/created festivals in New York, Italy, Greece and Taiwan. In Canada, Evan has directed for Angelwalk, Musical Stage Company, Impact Festival, Theatre Aquarius Studio Series, Summerworks, Fringe, Next Stage, Koogle Theatre and more. His plays include Aftershock and Strange Mary Strange (Best of Summerworks - Now Magazine), The Murmuration of Starlings and Unstuck (Frank Theatre Company). His short film Bagged, aired on the CBC, WIFT, DC Shorts and NSI. He has co-produced Homebody/Kabul (Mercury Theatre, Dora Nomination), Pterodactyls (Shakti Ent.), Talk Sixty To Me and an Ontario Tour of Shirley Valentine.

www.evantsitsias.com

www.eclipsetheatre.ca
Twitter: @eclipsetheatre3
Instagram: eclipsetheatrecompany
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EclipseTheatreCompany/

Kristen Da Silva is a playwright and actor living near Toronto, Ontario.

Her writing credits include Book Club (August Theatre Co, Port Stanley Festival Theatre); Gibson & Sons; Five Alarm (Port Stanley Festival Theatre, Lighthouse Festival Theatre); Sugar Road (Theatre Orangeville, Rubarb Productions, Globus Theatre); Hurry Hard(Commissioned by Lighthouse Festival Theatre) and Where You Are (Theatre Orangeville).

In 2016, she was the recipient of the Stage West Pechet Family Comedy Award for Gibson & Sons, and was shortlisted for the same in 2017 for Sugar Road.

She is a graduate of York University, where she was a founding member of the Vanier Improv Company and a company member of Vanier College Productions. As an alumna, she has continued to work with VCP as a director and collaborator.

She is currently the playwright-in-residence at Theatre Orangeville.

www.kristendasilva.com
Twitter: @kristenddasilva

Franco Nguyen is an award-winning-multi-hyphenate-comedian-filmmaker-writer-director. Franco is a graduate of the Second City Conservatory, a member of their HouseCo ensemble, and a Bob Curry Fellow. A proud member of the sketch troupe Tallboyz II Men, a diverse group of comedians being diverse diversely, the troupe sold-out their run of A 6ix NNNNNN Revue at the 2018 Toronto Fringe and won the Best Comedy Award.

Twitter:@francowins
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/francocomedy

Good Morning, Viet Mom

Good Morning, Viet Mom is Franco Nguyen's hilarious and heartfelt story about a second-generation Canadian being raised in Toronto by his single mother. Nguyen shares personal stories about his childhood, about his relationship with his mother–a complex and private woman, and about their emotional trip to Vietnam together; his first time ever and her first time since she left 28 years ago. Authentic and irreverent, Good Morning, VietMom is about family, history and love.

Cahoots Theatre
Twitter:@cahootstheatre
Instagram:cahootstheatre
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/CahootsTheatre
Tickets:http://www.cahoots.ca/shows/goodmorning/

Daniela Vlaskalic is an award-winning Canadian actor, writer and producer who has worked extensively across Canada including appearing in Theatrefront’s critically-acclaimed production of The Orange Dot by Sean Dixon, last year. Daniela hosts a comedic travel podcast called Every Place is the Same, produced by Drumcast Productions and available on iTunes.

Mules

MULES is a scathing exploration of the desperation that emerges when people find themselves trapped and powerless with no clear way out.

Best friends in high school, Cindy and Crystal haven’t see each other in ten years. They reunite through social media, only to find they are both miserable and desperate to move up in the world. Holed up in the airport arrivals washroom, Crystal with a belly full of cocaine from Colombia and Cindy fearful of her violent boyfriend, the action unfolds in one single night, but changes their lives forever.

A dark comedy about poverty, friendship … and drug smuggling, MULES is a tragic journey for the two women, as well as the airport janitor, who discovers them mid-plan only to escalate the crisis.

Theatrefront:
Twitter: @theatrefront
Instagram: theatrefrontyyz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theatrefrontyyz/
Tickets: https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/mules

Leroy Street Theatre will be kicking off the 2019 winter theatre season with a new production of Gruesome Playground Injuries by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rajiv Joseph. This highly acclaimed, time-jumping modern masterpiece is a rough-edged and heart-wrenching play from one the most exciting contemporary voices in American theatre. Staged by core members of The Assembly Theatre’s resident company, this new production of the timely and tender dark comedy is sure to be one of the most exciting events in the indie theatre scene this winter.

Gruesome Playground Injuries follows Kayleen and Doug over three decades, from their first meeting in a school nurse’s office into an adulthood filled with scars, heartbreaks, and other wounds that never quite heal. The characters share a unique bond of friendship, viscera, blood, scar tissue, and unspoken love. Their often tenuous connection grows stronger through a lifetime of injuries, as they discover the only thing that can really heal them is each other.

The new production will be directed and designed by Leroy Street Theatre’s resident designer, Chris Bretecher(The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; set design The Parkdale Place Trilogy by George F Walker) and will feature Alice Lundy (MARRY ME MARRY ME MARRY ME, House + Body) and Anurag Choudhury (Becoming Banksy, Redwood Theatre). It will feature lighting design by the production’s stage manager, Chin Palipane(Confessions of a Readheaded Coffee Shop Girl, Edinburgh Fringe), sound design by local musician Will Jarvis(Kill the Poor by George F Walker), and costumes by Dora Award-winning designer Lindsay Dagger Junkin (Tough Jews, Spadina Avenue Gang; Jerusalem, Outside the March). Special makeup effects will be designed by Rhonda Causton (founder, “Reel Twisted FX”).

Leroy Street is the resident company at The Assembly Theatre. Its first production of 2019 will be staged with the support of LOFT Community Services. Through this community partnership, The Assembly Theatre will host introductory theatre workshops for LOFT Community members, and a gallery space to display members’ visual art.

With a cast and creative team of some of the most daring, up-and-coming indie theatre artists in town, Leroy Street Theatre’s new production of Rajiv Joseph’s “modern masterpiece,” is certain to be an unforgettable addition to this winter’s theatre season.

GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES
By Rajiv Joseph Directed by Chris Bretecher
THE ASSEMBLY THEATRE- 1479 Queen St. W
January 18 - February 09, Tuesday-Saturday 8pm
Tickets available at www.leroystreettheatre.com

Twitter: @LeroyStTheatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leroysttheatre