Stageworthy

Joella Crichton

Joella Crichton is an actor for stage and screen. She holds a BFA in Acting from York University. Joella is passionate about her Caribbean heritage and is the nine time Queen of Carnival here in Toronto. She has been nominated for her work on stage and loves the theatre!

Alongside her many years experience in theatre, film and television, Joella also works to develop equality, diversity and inclusivity in these fields. She has created and worked on initiatives such as the Bechdel Bill and Share The Screen.

Twitter: @joellacrichton

Sedina Fiati

Sedina Fiati is a Toronto based performer, producer, director, creator and activist for stage and screen. Proudly Black and queer, Sedina is deeply invested in artistic work that explores the intersection between art and activism, either in form or structure or ideally both.

Upcoming projects: Switching Queen(s) (devised street performance), Last Dance (a web series).

Sedina is also a Principal with BIPOC Executive Search, working on equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives and the current Artist-Activist at Nightwood Theatre. Sedina was the co-chair of ACTRA Toronto’s Diversity Committee and 2nd VP of council for Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

Twitter: @bwheelsheels

The Black Pledge

The Black Pledge is an open call for positive, lasting change in live arts spaces across Canada, so that they truly reflect the beautiful mosaic tapestry of our nation. Our mission is to foster greater inclusion and awareness surrounding the needs of underserved communities in the Arts, especially the Black community. We stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and other communities of colour seeking equity, while retaining our Black-centric advocacy.

www.theblackpledge.ca

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Kendra Jones

A director, creator, and dramaturg, Kendra Jones graduated with Distinction from the MA Text & Performance at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), London, and holds a BA(Hons) in Theatre Performance from the University of Winnipeg where she has also been guest faculty. Favourite directing credits include Simon Stephens’ Sea Wall, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (Theatre By the River), a site-specific interpretation of Tim Crouch’s I, Malvolio (impel theatre), Watching Glory Die (Love2 Theatre), Drunk Enough To Say I Love You, Seagulls (selardi theatre), Clever Little Lies (Assistant director to Steven Schipper, RMTC,) and Richard II (workshop Assistant Director to Christopher Brauer, Zone41). Kendra is also a creator of original work, including Dear Mama, Tonight at Eight, Autel, and her adaptation of Marlowe’s Edward II. She writes about contemporary performance from an academic perspective on her blog; this writing focuses on the performer-audience relationship and the ethics of performance, and has been published by CBC Manitoba, Common Ground Publishing, Brunel University, and the Humanities Education Research Association. In 2020, Kendra’s site-specific production of Tim Crouch’s I, Malvolio toured to ShakespeareFest in Winnipeg to critical acclaim, and her direction of Love2 Theatre’s production of Judith Thompson’s Watching Glory Die ran in February 2020 at the Grand Canyon in Toronto, receiving accolades from audiences and critics alike for its inventive staging and visceral interpretation of the script.

www.kendrajones.net

Twitter: @impeltheatre

Blythe Haynes

BLYTHE HAYNES (she/her) has had a varied career with many stops along the way. From her first gig at ten months old in a LOTTO 64 commercial, she went on to obtain her BFA in Acting from the University of Alberta. Blythe has called Toronto home for some time, where she is an actor, award winning voice artist and producer. She is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Gangway! Theatre Co., a Toronto-based collective focused on exploring feminism, Canadian history, and mental health through an intersectional lens. She is also a co-founder of the History Actor Department at Black Creek Pioneer Village, where her interest in site-specific theatre was born. Blythe regularly lends her voice to podcasts, including the award winning Six Stories, Told At Night and Campfire Radio Theatre’s Woods Ferry, and has received two PARSEC awards for her voice work. She was recently on the producing team of the Judith Thompson lead Watching Glory Die at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she created and hosted a podcast to accompany the production.

Twitter: @**HaynesBlythe

An Acorn:

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Cassie Davidson is an emerging actor, indie producer, playwright, and theatre educator from the beautiful small town of Walkerton, Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies from The University of Guelph and is a graduate from George Brown Theatre School’s acting conservatory. Cassie is also a certified basic actor combatant with FDC, and will be continuing to advance her certifications when restrictions are lifted. Recently, Cassie has begun teaching youth acting classes with Stagecoach Oakville and on Outschool. She comes from a long line of teachers in her family, and is not at all surprised that she ended up in the world of education. As a founding member of Theatre Foolscap (a new Toronto-based indie theatre company), she is very passionate about helping other emerging theatre artists showcase their work and find opportunities to further their craft. Cassie is passionate about heart racing, heightened, highly physical theatre that features powerful women in powerful positions. Currently, she is producing a series of horror, radio plays called “The Chilling Anthologies of Theatre Foolscap” alongside her partner Ryan Maxwell and collaborator Duncan Gibson-Lockhart.

Instagram: @theatrefoolscap

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Keith Tomasek is an award-winning arts marketing consultant whose Facebook campaign for the Grand Theatre won the International Association of Business Communicators' Virtuoso Award.

Recently, Keith's campaigns have sold over $400,000 worth of tickets to virtual events.

Keith studied theatre in Montreal and is the founder of the website Stratford Festival Reviews and The Performers Podcast.

Twitter: @FestivalReviews

Arts Marketing Mastermind Group: https://keithtomasek.com/arts-marketing-mastermind/

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Lauren Allen is a theatre artist originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since graduating from Grant MacEwan University in 2013, she has worked across Canada and Europe as an actor, producer, burlesque instructor, stage manager, and director. She has settled in Toronto, for the moment. Most recently she has taken courses to become a script supervisor and will soon be seen again in Saskatchewan for Burn Rubber, Dolly at The Lyric Theatre in Swift Current.

lauren-allen.net

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Lili Robinson (she/they) is a playwright, poet, actor and community organizer based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Lili is passionate about centring voices at the intersections of queerness, Black diaspora, socio-economic diversity and femme identity in her work. Having completed a year as the Artistic Producing Intern at Theatre Replacement in 2019, Lili is currently the Emerging Playwright in Residence at Rumble Theatre, and recently completed the Emerging Playwrights’ Unit at the Arts Club. Beyond playwriting, their most recent projects include: the role of Alejandra in Rumble’s online production of B by Guillermo Calderón; writing for Theatre Replacement’s sound installation project Speaker A; and co-organizing Rest and Resilience, a series of events creating space for the Black Queer community to connect this past summer. Mx, Lili’s debut play, was the recipient of the Fringe New Play Prize in 2019. Mx went on to win the Cultchivating the Fringe Award, earning the show a spot in the Cultch’s upcoming 2021 spring season.

Instagram: @lilrobmakesthings

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A multifaceted artist currently based in Toronto. A South African Transgender man born in the midst of apartheid and witnessed the fall of an era while assimilating to life in Canada. The last born in a Methodist house hold, growing up on the westernmost prairie provinces of Canada where he began his lifelong pursuit of learning the art of theatre and film. An Actor, director and a self-taught film editor/ photographer, his art practices aims to enhance the Black and Transgender voice(s) showing the many different diverse intersectionality of blackness. 

www.tsholovisions.com

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Kyungseo Min is a storyteller, no matter the medium. Her journey began in theatre, riveted by the power of live performances. With her stories and performances, she challenge her audience to re-think Western standards of storytelling, and strives for experiences that weave Oriental and Occidental philosophies, breaking linear structure and finding drama not only in action, but stillness as well.

Kyungseo writes and performs stories that remove her audience from reality, transporting them into a realm where a single word or gesture can slow down the heartbeat, making the audience stop in their seat and feel what is underneath the banalities of the everyday. 

www.kyungseomin.com

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Jasmine Chen is a Chinese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto and Vancouver.

Jasmine was born in T’karonto (the place in the water where the trees are standing), where from an early age she was immersed in arts based education. An alumni of the Claude Watson Arts Program, Jasmine studied Music, Art, Dance and Theatre for nine years. She majored as a dancer for four years, training and competing in ballet, jazz and modern. In high school she majored in Theatre, where she was president of the Arts Council. Her time spent in extracurricular shows and performances led her to continue her post-secondary training in the Theatre Performance: Acting Program at Ryerson University, graduating with a BFA. Jasmine has worked extensively as a performer in Theatre and Film/TV. She is a director, performer, educator, movement coach, community facilitator, and producer. Jasmine has engaged with audiences across Canada in repertory festivals, independent theatres, site-specific spaces, regional theatres and outdoor venues. She has worked with leaders in film, opera, music, theatre, and media, such as: Atom Egoyan, Aria Umezawa, Lido Pimienta, Hawksley Workman, Ins Choi, and Amanda Parris. She has taught at Studio 58 Langara College, McGill Schulich School of Music, the Paprika Festival, Festival Players Academy, Canadian Stage, Cahoots Theatre, and the Children’s Peace Theatre. Jasmine is the recipient of the Gina Wilkinson Award for Female Directors, the Stratford Festival Jean Gascon Award, a Toronto Harold Award, and is a Dora Mavor Moore Award nominee.

www.msjasminechen.com

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Brenda Kamino is an actor, artist, teacher, and cultural activist. Brenda has been seen as a performer on many of Canada's best known stages for over 40 years. A veteran performer of the Shaw Festival, she has created many roles in new plays at such theatres as Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre and Young Peoples' Theatre in Toronto as well as the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg and Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary. Her theatrical career has taken her from the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to the Citadel in Edmonton in shows as varied as the Dora Award Nominated "Naomi's Road" to "M. Butterfly", working with such directors as Canadians Douglas Campbell, Peter Hinton, Jackie Maxwell, Neil Munro, Dennis Foon, Sue Miner, Ed Roy, Sally Han, Vinetta Strombergs, Ron Jenkins, Nina Aquino and Guillermo Verdecchia, as well as British Director Tudor Davies and American Directors Lane Nishikawa, David Levine and Raul Aranas. Her performance in "suicide notes" by Kenneth Williams for Toronto's Summerworks Festival, garnered her recognition for Outstanding Performance by Now Magazine. Her television and film career includes over 100 guest and lead performances and many years as host, narrator, radio artist and improviser.

www.brendakamino.com

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