Uche Ama is a Black queer performer, actor & vocalist born on the indigenous land called Tkaronto. She is passionate about cathartic art that intrigues and makes you ask questions. A 2019 Dora nominated graduate of the Music Theatre Performance program at St Clair College and an alumni of  'Broadway Theatre Project', her previous performances include 21 Black Futures (Obsidian Theatre & CBC Arts),The Negroes Are Congregating (Piece Of Mine Arts) & Obeah Opera (Asah Productions).

www.ucheamaartist.com

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Erin Jones wrote Time Limits Dropped on Easter Sunday especially for the digital Toronto Fringe Festival.  As a playwright, she is taking an anti-oppressive stance and is focused on exploring and developing untold stories in Canadian history that represent BIPOC folx with dignity.  She is thrilled and humbled to have had talented and supportive people in her world. 

Erin Jones is a writer, actor, playwright and emerging director. She has performed in theatre and independent films across the GTA. She supports performing arts behind the scenes with publicity, articles, newsletters, social media, grant writing, governance, photography, director hiring committees, and Respect in the Workplace committees.   

Her short story script Lovingly Yours, Olive was recently featured in the Toronto Fringe Next Stage Community Booster Series.  She also recently directed Exit:  An Illusion with Shadowpath Theatre Productions.

Time Limits Dropped on Easter Sunday

Wonder Jones Productions is a collective of talented artists who are willing to take risks and explore new forums to keep theatre alive!  Our team is comprised of talent across Canada. Opportunities are not limited by how individuals self-identify.  Our collective represents our community. 

"Time Limits Dropped on Easter Sunday" was inspired by family memories and the regret of not having the opportunity to get to know a loved one.  It was especially written for the Digital Toronto Fringe Festival.

wonderjonesproduct.wixsite.com/timelimitsdropped

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Steven Griffin is a Canadian filmmaker and theatre creator. He is currently based in Toronto. He has directed numerous projects, including short films that have seen screenings at the Boston Shorts Film Festival, Toronto Arthouse Film Festival and Kingston Canadian Film Festival. His theatre work has been shown at the Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival, Toronto Queer Theatre Festival and soon to be the Hamilton Fringe Festival. His style revolves around the still and the deliberate, based firmly in an art history background and trusting that the decision to not do something within a frame is just as important as the choice to do something.  

stevenpgriffin.ca

Black Deer In Blizzard

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Megan Legesse will be playing the role of Katrina in the production of Black Deer in Blizzard. Some of her credits include Lion Womxn (Summerworks 2018), The Breath Between (Summerworks 2019) as well as numerous acting work within the York University’s Acting Conservatory. She comes from a family much obsessed with the world of news and storytelling, which is one of the many reasons she is especially excited to dive into the plot of Black Deer in Blizzard. With all the time the pandemic has given her, she has been dusting up on her poetry skills, rewatching every Pixar film, and exploring the lovely world of face masks.

Instagram: @megsventures

Gwyneth McFall-Gorman is an American-Canadian actor, vocalist, and playwright. She was born in Connecticut in 1997 and is currently working as a theatre professional in the Toronto area. Gwyneth has been building her career as a stage actor and playwright since 2017, and she’s found early success in the film industry - above and below the line. She has a particular passion for re-imagining classics, and she believes strongly in the efficacy of the Performing Arts and its Creatives in their ability to create an accessible and equitable world by amplifying diverse human experience.

www.gwynethmcg.com

Black Deer in Blizzard

blackdeerinblizzard.squarespace.com

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Karen is a Hamilton-born Filipina- Canadian multidisciplinary artist She’s an original member of the Hamilton 7 and just finished a project with Kwentong Bayan Collective lcpcomicbook.com for myseumoftoronto.com as a storytelling facilitator and Decolonise Your Ears Festival with redbettytheatre.org directing/outreach.

Porch Light Theatre on Instagram: @porchlighttheatrehamilton

Transcript available at: https://stageworthypodcast.com/294-karen-ancheta/

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Andre is a Toronto-based Actor, Director, Producer and Writer. 

He has spent most of his career working in the Theatre across the country. This is his 7th season at Stratford where he is playing Bottom in A Midsummer's Night Dream, opening the new Tom Patterson Theatre Parking Lot under a tent. He also played the title character in the 2018 Stratford hit Coriolanus directed by the World Renowned Robert Lepage, and was in the top 10 shows of 2018 in the Washington Post and The Globe & Mail and more. 

In addition, he spent four seasons at The Shaw Festival where he played Tom in The Glass Menagerie and received a My Entertainment World Best Actor Award for his work in An Octoroon and a Dora Award & Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Actor for his work in Master Harold and the Boys. 

He has also worked at Soulpepper Theatre where he toured with Kim's Convenience across the country, and also played Othello at The St. Louis Black Rep, and many other companies across the country. He is a Resident Artist with The Actors Repertory Company (ARC). Online: Check out his new web series on YouTube called Private Idiots.

Instagram: @dre373

Private Idiots

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Sandi Becker is a professional stage manager who has been working all over Canada for nearly 20 years. She has worked on shows varying from school tours for kindergarteners to operas to horror/magic/puppet extravaganzas to Shakespeare. Sandi has recently started a collaboration on a podcast called "Chewing Scenery", a humorously angry look at theatre as portrayed in the movies.

Listen to Chewing Scenery: https://anchor.fm/chewing-scenery

Transcript at https://stageworthypodcast.com/292-sandi-becker/

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Vikki is an actor from Toronto, ON who accidentally stumbled upon her purpose. In 2012, she started a business, offering affordable studio and performance space to her fellow artists. It wasn't until a few years later that she realized that what she was doing was running a business and she was actually an entrepreneur and had been one all along. This led her to realize that all artists are actually entrepreneurs and yet all of the business resources and language that are made available to entrepreneurs are missing in arts education and culture. Vikki is now a multi-passionate artist-entrepreneur, business owner, author and coach, helping other artists turn their passion into a purpose and their creative skills into a paycheque, without losing the art.

www.spacespacerevolution.com

Artist-Bosses: https://www.facebook.com/groups/artistboss

Transcript available at https://stageworthypodcast.com/291-vikki-velenosi/

Phil's Patreon: https://patreon.com/philrickaby

Brad Fraser is one of Canada's best known playwrights. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1959, Brad won his first playwriting competition at the age of seventeen, and has been writing ever since. Brad's international hit play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love premiered at the Alberta Theatre Projects' PlayRites Festival in 1989. It has since been produced worldwide, in many languages, with highly successful runs in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Milan, Sydney and London. Poor Super Man, developed by Canadian Stage, was first produced by the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati in 1994 and has enjoyed successful runs in many cities, including Toronto, London, Sydney, Edinburgh and Denver. It was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama and adapted into a feature film, Leaving Metropolis, written and directed by Brad. Poor Super Man, like Unidentified Human Remains, was listed by Time magazine as one of the top ten plays of its year. Many other plays have followed in successful productions. Brad has also written extensively for magazines and newspapers, including The Globe and Mail and the National Post, and for three seasons was a writer and producer on Showtime's Queer As Folk.

Brad Fraser's Memoir, All The Rage, is available now at your favourite bookseller.

bradfraser.net

All the Rage: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665321/all-the-rage-by-brad-fraser/

Transcript available at https://stageworthypodcast.com/290-brad-fraser/

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Cooking for Grief

Breanna Maloney (she/her) is an actor, writer and indie theatre producer based in and around Toronto. Coming from a background in movement and devised theatre, her current practice focuses on the research and exploration of shame, grief and the healing process through use of dialogue and movement. Recently, Breanna has contributed writing to Tall Tale Theatre's Night Terrors podcast, the Windsor-Essex Nature Poetry and Environmentalism zine and The Tank NYC's_ Rule of 7x7_. Breanna is a co-founder of Skipping Stones Theatre, a Toronto-based, independent collective whose mandate is to explore stories through the lens of mental health and neurodiversity. Breanna is a graduate of East 15 Acting School (MFA) and the University of Windsor (BFA). Recent credits include: Imposter's Sin Room (Hamilton Fringe, 2021), A Christmas Carol (White Mills Theatre), Hamlet(s) (Skipping Stones Theatre) and Crave (Pure Carbon Theatre).****

www.breanna-maloney.com

Sarah Marchand is an award-winning performer, producer, and founder of Alma Matters Productions. She has worked in television (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Umbrella Academy), and theatre extensively. Select awards include: The Hnatyshyn Foundation's Emerging Artist Grant (Best Actress in English Theatre), The Second City’s Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award (nominated), and the Carolyn and Richard Renaud Grant for Acting. She received her BFA in Acting at Concordia University and her MA in Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Sarah recently completed Nightwood Theatre's 19-20 Young Innovators Program and is currently a participant in the Women in Film and Television (WIFTV) Actor Career Mentorship program under the guidance of Carly Pope.

Select Recent Credits: Winter of ‘88 (NNNNN) Nowadays Theatre, 2020 Next Stage Festival (Performer/Co-Producer), Swim Team (NNNN) Nowadays Theatre, SummerWorks Performance Festival (Producer/Assistant Director), Drink of Choice (Toronto Fringe Patron’s Pick) Produced by Alma Matters Productions.

In keeping with her creative mandate, Sarah’s work continues to produce and create works that explore mental health, intersectional feminism, queerness, and body image.

www.sarahmarchand.com

www.almamattersproductions.com

Transcript at https://stageworthypodcast.com/289-sarah-marchand-and-breanna-maloney/