Presenters and Artists
Click on their photo to link to their website.
More presenters will be added as they are confirmed!
Amanda Smith
Amanda (she/her) is a Toronto-based stage director and Founding Artistic Director of FAWN Chamber Creative, with whom she commissions, produces and directs experimental operas and concerts. In 2020, she was a Dora Award Nominee for Outstanding Direction on FAWN’s opera-ballet Pandora, which was also nominated for Outstanding Production. Described as a “visionary” by LUDVIG VAN, Amanda’s passions are hinged on heightening the audience experience while exploring the potential of the operatic creative process through inter-disciplinary collaborations.
Andrea Lundy
Andrea (she/her) is an award-winning Lighting Designer and Production Manager who has worked professionally across Canada and internationally for 35 years. She is the recipient of 9 Dora Mavor Moore Awards and 2 Montreal English Theatre Awards for Outstanding Lighting Design. She has worked extensively with the National Arts Centre, Shaw Festival, Tarragon Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, Necessary Angel Theatre, Centaur Theatre, Geordie Theatre among others. Andrea is proud to have been Director of the Production Design and Technical Arts Program at the National Theatre School of Canada for the last 10 years.
Andy Moro
Andy (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist and co-founding Artistic Director of ARTICLE 11 with 2020 Siminovitch Laureate Tara Beagan. Their work embodies ARTICLE 11 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. ARTICLE 11’s most recent work Deer Woman has met critical acclaim at the Edinburgh and Sydney Festivals, Kia Mau Aotearoa, and Arts Centre Melbourne. Recently Deer Woman was transcribed to digital media for a lockdown audience, and presented widely with Calgary’s Downstage Theatre. Up next, Secret Room for Making Treaty 7 at the Grand Theatre this March. In addition to his work with ARTICLE 11, Moro has collaborated and toured extensively across Turtle Island and overseas.
Beth Kates
Beth (she/her) is an award-winning lighting, set, video/mixed reality designer, whose work has moved across disciplines over the last 30 years. She is the creative director of both Playground Studios, Digital Alchemy Creation Lab, and has collaborated on hundreds of shows and installations. She is leaders in the emerging art form of VR Theatre, and her work explores the intersections of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and live performance—investigating the possibilities of design, performance, creation and audience experience in this new territory.
Brittany Bland
Brittany Bland is a storyteller who has dedicated her life to the proliferation of empathy. As a projection designer for the stage, she has designed for theater, dance, and opera. Her work as a video artist often explores the ideas of legacy, memory, and empathy. Brittany is interested in how emerging media and technology can elevate those concepts and experiences. Originally from Atlanta GA, she holds a BA in Technical Theater and Production from Catawba College and an MFA in Design from the Yale School of Drama. Her recent design credits include Cuttin Up (Classical Theater of Harlem), Rage (Quinnipiac University), Florencia en el Amazonas (Shubert Theater), Alice (Yale University Theater), Black History Museum (Here Arts Center), Twelfth Night (Yale Repertory Theater).
Dakota Alcantara-Camacho
Dakota (guiya/yo’ña) believes in creativity as a record of interaction with the spirit realm. Exploring the overlap between integrity, ancestral life ways, true love, and accountability, guiya (they) activate inafa’maolek (Unity with Creation). Weaving through languages of altar-making, movement, film, music, and prayer, guiya generate moments of encounter with the universe. Yo’ña (their) work enacts spaces where multiple worldviews speak to each other to unearth embodied pathways towards collective liberation.
Elijah Lindenberger
Elijah (he/him) is a theatre and entertainment technologist specializing in lighting, video and multimedia systems. His work places an emphasis on integrating new technology and practices into existing theatrical production frameworks. Elijah's professional career spans head of department positions at both the Citadel Theatre and Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity as well as freelance technical work for large scale theatrical tours, televised events, permanent multimedia entertainment and theme park attraction systems throughout Canada, USA, southeast Asia and Europe. He is also a lecturer at the University of Alberta. He is committed to disseminating up to date industry knowledge and fostering a thorough and inclusive educational environment.
Emma Tibaldo
Emma (she/her) has been directing new Canadian plays since graduating from the National Theatre School directing program. In 2008 she became Artistic and Executive director of the national new creation centre Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal (PWM), where she has dramaturgically collaborated on numerous award winning plays. Emma was awarded the Elliott Hayes Award for outstanding achievement in Dramaturgy. She has just “finished” working on SKIN, a new performance piece with the interdisciplinary company The Bakery. She feeds her inner rock star by playing in the family band The Tibaldos.
HEIST
HEIST is a live art company committed to creating, producing and presenting innovative, genre-bending and queerly playful performances in Halifax and beyond. An important element to our organization is having a clear and strong commitment to diversity within culture, abilities and gender. Heist is comprised of Artistic Director Richie Wilcox, Managing Director Sylvia Bell and Technical Director Aaron Collier.
Hugh Conacher
Hugh (he/him) is a Treaty 1 based lighting and multi-media designer, and a photographer. He has collaborated with choreographers, directors, visual artists, and dance and theatre companies throughout Canada and around the world, in venues large and small. He approaches each project as an individual work of art. His photographic work resides in private collections and has been published worldwide.
Jaclyn Turner
Jaclyn (she/her) is a graduate of the architecture department of Kansas State University. Specializing in architectural visualization, she has worked for architecture firms across the continent. She has notably led teams in blending architectural design with gaming technology. In 2019, she shifted gears to theatre design, designing the set for Encore and projections for Blackout and Winter’s Daughter, all for Tableau D’Hôte Theatre in Montreal. Also with Tableau D'Hôte, she is currently adapting En Pointe, a series of short street plays, into a graphic novel.
Joel Grinke
Joel (he/him) is an award winning designer and performer. He designs experiences ranging from live theatre, interactive installations, variety shows, audio programs and high tech spectacles. Across all of these projects, his focus is the same: creating an uplifting, affecting, and immersive experience that reaches beyond the conventional theatrical settings and forms. Joel holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts, is a graduate of Studio 58, is a display fireworks assistant and a member of the Themed Entertainment Association.
Kimberly Purtell
Kim is the Vice President of the Associated Designers of Canada, and a member of the board of directors since 2012. She is a Toronto based lighting designer for theatre, opera and dance. Her designs have been critically acclaimed across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Prague, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Moscow and Mongolia.
Kim Senklip Harvey
Kim (she/her) is a proud Syilx and Tsilhqot’in with Ancestral ties to the Dakelh, Secwepemc and Ktunaxa communities. She is a Indigenous Theorist, Cultural Evolutionist and storyteller whose work focuses on the ignition of Indigenous power and innovating methodological processes with artistic sovereignty to create joy centered narratives that nourish the spirits of peoples oppressed by the imperial state. Kim creates artistic ceremonies to protect and evolve Indigenous cultures and believes that stories are the most powerful tool we have to provide every organism the opportunity to live peacefully.
Mark Coniglio
Media artist and composer Mark Coniglio (he/him) is widely recognized as a pioneering force in the integration of dance and media. He co-directed the media-intensive dance company Troika Ranch in New York City for fifteen years, and is also the creator of Isadora, a software tool used by thousands of artists worldwide to realize their interactive performances. As an artist, Coniglio has received a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a prize from Prix Ars Electronica, and the World Technology Award, which recognized his long-term legacy in art and technology.
Matthew Ragan
Matthew (he/him) has worked as an Educational Outreach Counselor, as a Faculty Developer, as technology director, and a studio cofounder. His MFA work focused on the intersection of traditional tools for live production, and new approaches for breaking boundaries between performers and media systems. He specializes in creating interactive systems for digital environments. His personal work continues to explore the intersection of digital media, live performance, and interactive installations.
Maziar Ghaderi
Maziar (he/him) is a Toronto-based multimedia artist, educator and director that works with film interactive multimedia. With the direction of Marina Abramovic, he was the media producer and on-site technical assistant for the 2013 Luminato Festival's MAI Prototype, and has directed his original work, Dissolving Self for ISEA held in Dubai. Maziar has also taught media production and conceptual development at Artscape, OCADU and Ryerson University, and holds a Bachelors in Media Studies and a Masters in Design.
Natjelly Lozada
Natjelly (she/her) is from Mexico city. She has a Bachelor in Dramatic Literature and Theatre (UNAM, Mexico) and a DEC in Theatre Production (JAC, Montreal). In Mexico, she worked as an actress for theatre and as artistic coordinator and performer at Six Flags and Kidzania. She has worked as Stage Manager , VSM, Sound Designer, Lighting Designer and Assistant for various companies such as the Segal Centre, QDF and creature/creature, among others. In 2020, she did an artistic internship for creature/creature as part of the demART Program financed by CAM.
Paul Cegys
Paul’s work merges multiple practices of performance creation and design, from theatre and opera to site-specific installation and intermedial mixed-reality scenographies. Upholding his commitment to ecological imperatives he merges his artistic work with his sustainability practice (MSc. in Sustainability Science and Environmental Studies, Lunds University, Sweden). He is the Co-Creator of Individuality and Interconnection, a 360o video project that maps the creative spaces of Canadian performance designers and he is the Digital Scenographer for The Home, a VR experience designed for the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation project funded by the SSHRC and in partnership with Oculus VR. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, and serves on the advisory board of the Toasterlab Mixed Reality Performance Atelier. He is currently a PhD. Candidate at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University in Finland.
Richard Lee
Richard (he/him) is a performer, creator, and educator based in Amiskwaciswâskahikan (Edmonton) working in contemporary dance and theatre. Recent online performance credits include Delay (Citadel Theatre); A Freckle for “Making Love with the Land” (Springboard Performance); The Disaster Show (Mile Zero Dance), and A Fun Night in with Lucy Darling, the Zoom-magic show that has garnered critical praise from theatre critics J. Kelly Nestruck and Liz Nicholls, as well as magicians Max Maven and David Copperfield himself.
Sadah Espii Proctor
Espii is a VR director and sound/media designer for theatre and immersive experiences. Named by American Theatre Magazine as one of “6 Theatre Artists to Know” for multimedia storytelling, her work encompasses global stories of women, social issues, and the African Diaspora, often with an Afrofuturist/Cyberpunk lens. Her original work is also influenced by gothic horror, anime, and visual kei. She received her M.F.A. in Performance and Interactive Arts from Brooklyn College and is a proud alumna of Virginia Tech.
Simon Garant
Multimedia Director at Moment Factory for over 10 years, Simon (he/him) brings experience envisioning new ways that immersive technologies can solicit public engagement, spark delight, and bring people together within cultural and narrative environments. His deep expertise in storytelling and new media allows him to ensure holistic artistic integrity and to lead creative and technical teams through all phases of conception through execution.
Wladimiro A. Woyno R.
Wladimiro (he/him) is a Colombian visual designer and technologist who aims to engage the sensory imagination through live performance. He is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, Canada.
Amelia Scott
Amelia (she/her) is a video designer, projection technologist, and new media artist working in theatre, opera, dance, and beyond. Based out of Montreal and working across Canada, she works in the intersection of animation, video, film, and live performance. She is also an instructor of Video Technology and Design at The National Theatre School of Canada.
Andrew Scriver
Andrew (he/him)is a digital artist, multi-disciplinary designer, and technical director. His work spans live performance, installation art, and digital worlds. Based out of Tiotia:ke, he is the co-creator of potatoCakes_digital, a production design company that focuses on the integration and interrelation of technology and traditional art forms. Currently potatoCakes_digital is a member of Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal’s team where their work as digital dramaturgs sees them helping new creators across the country in their work to realize their technological dreams.
Ann-Marie Kerr
Ann-Marie (she/her) is an award-winning theatre director, actor and teacher. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally. Most recently she directed: Concord Floral (Fountain School of Performing Arts Halifax); Secret Life of A Mother (Theatre Centre, Crow’s Theatre Toronto); One Discordant Violin (2b theatre company, Halifax, 59E59 St Theatre NYC). Upcoming: Frequencies (Heist, Halifax)
Brandon Crone
Brandon (he/they) is a queer, multidisciplinary artist and administrator based in Tkaronto. They are the author of five plays (Turtleneck, Donors, Maypole Rose, Nature of the Beast, Contempt) and have participated in residencies and readings with Stratford Festival, National Arts Centre and Urban Stages (NYC). Most recently, they directed and dramaturged the Canadian and Australian premiere of For Both Resting and Breeding. Brandon works for the Playwrights Guild of Canada and is Artistic Director of the theatre collective safeword.
Christine Lee
Based out of Tiotia:ke (Montreal), Christine ML Lee is a composer, playwright and poet interested in the intersection between music, movement and storytelling. Working with dance and spoken word, her music has been performed at Festival Quartiers Danses and in Montreal Botanical Gardens. Christine is currently part of Nightwood Theatre’s Young Innovators Unit 2020-2021 and is working on a musical theatre piece, Just a Note, following development with the CMTWC with Jonathan Monro and with Playwright’s Workshop Montreal’s YCU with Jesse Stong.
Daniel Thau-Eleff
Daniel (he/him) is a Winnipeg-based playwright, performer, director, workshop leader and artistic producer of the Moving Target Theatre Company. He describes his plays as “personal-political” - they start with an issue, an idea, a big, haunting contradiction, and explore it through individual characters' struggles, mixing documentary and autobiographical elements into fiction. Daniel has performed his solo-shows across Canada, including at SummerWorks, Impact and Prismatic. He has also led over 30 community-based Theatre for Living workshops.
Emily Soussana
Emily (she/they) is an award winning video and production designer based out of Tiotia:ke (Montreal). They are a graduate of The National Theatre School of Canada's scenography program, the University of Ottawa's Theatre program and spent time as a projection technologist at The Banff Centre. They are the co-founder of potatoCakes_Digital, a production design and digital arts collective which officially coalesced in 2018.
Frank Donato
Frank (he/him) is a video designer currently residing in Kingston, ON. He is a frequent collaborator with live digital performance company SpiderWebShow Performance, having got his start with them in 2017 as the video designer for their first live production, The Revolutions. The production featured a combination of live and digital actors performing together while located in four different cities around the country. Recently, Frank worked as a live stream technician for their Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA) and now leads the beta testing for their custom browser based performance/rehearsal tool cdnstudio. Currently, Frank is the video and stream designer for Orestes presented by Tarragon Theatre. The ambitious project includes 10 actors performing together live from their homes delivering an immersive, online, theatrical experience.
HRH Anand Rajaram
Anand is an improviser, actor, playwright, director, musician, teacher & puppeteer. Most recently, he was in Buffoon by Anosh Irani and Mustard by Kat Sandler (Dora award for best performance in each), adapted/performed in Rohinton Mistry’s The Scream, at SummerWorks (Winner Best Production), and has performed at Second City, Stratford, CanStage, VideoCabaret, and others. He is an accomplished film and tv performer as well as voiceover artist for video games and cartoons. You may sometimes hear him as a panelist on CBC Radio’s Because News. He is artistic director of @N@f@N@, currently creating AR digital content for live streams under the banner of his company, Cardboard Dreams.
Ian Garrett
Ian (he/him) is a 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, a Mixed Reality Performance Production Company. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada IATSE ADC 659.
Joel Adria
Joel (he/him) is a multimedia integrator and designer based in Montreal, Canada who works in live entertainment, installation and theatre. He is also a Senior AV Designer and Team Lead at Moment Factory
Kate De Lorme
Kate is a Sound Artist whose work integrates immersive spatial sound landscapes and technology. She graduated from UBC in 2015 with a BFA, majoring in Theatre Design and Production and has a certification in Audio Engineering. Kate has been working in sound design for 14 years, highly involved and interested in sound’s effect on an audience. Her work has been primarily in live performance with a large focus on contemporary dance. Kate is the Co-founder of Lobe Spatial Sound Studio in Vancouver, BC. Select design credits include: Graveyards and Gardens (Action at a Distance | Caroline Shaw); Bygones, Major Motion Picture (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre); Epilogos, Telemetry, Feasting on Famine (Radical Systems Art); Sta/g-mos (Kate De Lorme Design).
Ken Mackenzie
Ken (He/ Him) is a multi-award winning set, lighting and costume designer who has worked across Canada and the United States. Ken is the President of the Board of Directors of the Associated Designers of Canada where on Jan 1st 2021 they have been granted a Local Charter as a part of IATSE. Ken’s most recent credits include the set and costume designs for Sherlock Holmes and the Raven’s Curse at the Shaw Festival, The Events with Necessary Angel Theatre, and Casimir and Caroline with The Howland Company. Ken was also the set designer for Jesus Hopped the A-Train at Soulpepper Theatre Company where Ken was a resident artist for almost 10 years. Ken is a graduate of the Soulpepper Academy.
Kimira Reddy
Kimira is a Set and Props Designer based in BC. She uses virtual reality as a concept tool for set design and creates an immersive VR walk-through of the final product. Originally from South Africa, she holds an MFA in Design from UBC and a Bachelor’s in Performing Arts Technology. Credits: Set design for Zoning Out (Blackout Theater), No Child (The Arts Club);The Turn of the Screw (Aenigma Theatre); Romance, Relationships, Rights (UBC Centre for Inclusion & Citizenship partnering with Community Living Society); Burqa Boutique, The Way You Carry On, Fireflies (Killjoy Theatre); The Crucible (UBC Theatre). Assistant Set Design for Birds and The Bees (The Arts Club); The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare in Love, All’s Well That Ends Well, Coriolanus (Bard on the Beach). Prop design for Foolish Operations; Seussical JR., The Time Machine (Gateway); The Suppliant Women (United Players)
Logan Raju Cracknell
Logan (he/they) is a Toronto based lighting designer and live stream artist who has found his pre-pandemic hobby of live streaming has transitioned into a useful skill as we continue to create theatre in the restraints.
Mathilda Colins
Mathilda (she/her) recently graduated from the University of Guelph with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Theatre studies. She looks forward to exploring technology in theatre and how her programming knowledge can help develop software that artists can use in the future.
Matthew Waddell
Matthew (he/him) is a Calgary-based artist and educator who has spent the last 15 years exploring relationships between humans and technology. His work spans 3D animation, projection mapping, interactive installations and audiovisual design for live performance. Driven by a desire to better understand the inner workings of the machine, Waddell builds custom software solutions that facilitate provocative, inspiring and entertaining art experiences that reflect the dichotomy of attraction and repulsion he feels each time he engages with his computer.
Milton Lim
Milton (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. He works with Hong Kong Exile, Theatre Conspiracy, videocan, and The Cultch.
Nicole Eun-Ju Bell
Nicole (she/her) is a Toronto based mixed-race multidisciplinary artist who is fascinated with cyborgs and Loïe Fuller. She is an actor, projection designer, technician, writer, and musician. More recently, she has branched out into producing podcasts and delving into the live-stream medium.
Ray Moschuk
Ray (he/him) is a Production Designer with ADC 659. He completed his MFA in 2014 from the University of Hawaii. His recent designs include, Frozen Jr. and The Great Gatsby, which was featured in the USITT Designer's series. In 2013 He won The Hawaii State Theatre Council’s PO’OKELA Award for his lighting design on The Giver. Currently residing in Fort McMurray Ray plans to design in Nova Scotia after Covid lets up.
Ryan Webber
Ryan (he/him) loves the intersection. Bringing light, sound and story together in unexpected ways. With more than 20 years of experience in interactive media and streaming technologies, he designs for both on-stage and off-stage, with a love for site-specific works. Building in the flexibility for improvisation is one of his favourite technical changes. Something he believes makes technology more transparent.
Sammy Chien
Sammy Chien 簡上翔 is a Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant and queer artist-of-colour, who’s an interdisciplinary artist, director, designer, performer, researcher and mentor in film, sound art, new media, performance, movement and spiritual practice. His work has been exhibited across Canada, Western Europe, and Asia including Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), worked with pioneers of digital performance: Troika Ranch and Wong Kar Wai’s Cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and active in projects engaging various underrepresented communities. Sammy has been featured on magazines, TV and commercials such as Discorder, Keedan, CBC Arts and BenQ. Sammy is the official instructor of Isadora and Artistic Director of Chimerik似不像 collective.
Teiya Kasahara 笠原 貞野
First-generation Nikkei-Canadian settler Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them) is a queer, gender non-binary, interdisciplinary performer-creator based in Tkarón:to. Teiya comes from a background of over a decade of singing both traditional and contemporary operatic roles across North America and Europe and explores the intersections of identity through opera, theatre, electronics, and taiko within their artistic practice.
zoe sandoval
Zoe (she/they) is a Mexican-Venezuelan new media artist, filmmaker and producer who specializes in interactive storytelling experiences. Their work spans live entertainment, performance, immersive installations, mixed reality and emerging technologies. Zoe’s practice is influenced by themes of diaspora, nostalgia, ritual and magical realism. Zoe received an MFA from UC Santa Cruz in Digital Arts + New Media, and is currently lecturing at UCSC’s Arts, Games and Playable Media program.