Marcus Youssef has written and co-written some of Canada’s best-known theatrical investigations of otherness and difference, including Winners and Losers, King Arthur’s Night (which recently played at the NAC as part of the Canada Scene Festival), Leftovers, How Has My Love Affected You?, Ali & Ali, Chloe’s Choice, Everyone, Adrift, Peter Panties, Jabber and A Line in the Sand. His works have been performed across North America, Australia and Europe, and published by Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. Awards: Canada Council Lynch-Staunton Award, Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, Chalmers Award, Arts Club Silver Commission, Vancouver Critics’ Choice (three times), a Governor General’s Literary nomination, and numerous Jessie Richardson Awards, Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Montreal English Theatre Awards and nominations. Marcus is Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre, and co-founder of the artist-run production centre, PL1422. In 2016 and 2017 he was Senior Playwright-in-Residence at the Banff Playwrights Colony. Marcus is Editorial Advisor to Canadian Theatre Review, Canadian Fellow to the International Society for Performing Arts and Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. 

Rosa Laborde is a critically acclaimed Chilean Canadian Playwright, Screenwriter, Director, and Actor. As a playwright she’s been produced across Canada at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, The Great Canadian Theatre Company, Neptune Theatre, Touchstone Firehall Theatre and The Belfry Theatre as well as performances at Playwright’s Horizons and the Arthur Seelen Theatre in New York City. She’s been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, been nominated twice for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new play and received the KM Hunter Artist’s Award for Theatre. Currently she’s commissioned by the Factory Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, and The Stratford Festival of Canada. Rosa is a graduate of The Oxford School of Drama in Oxford, England, and The Canadian Film Centre’s Primetime Television Writing Program and moves seamlessly between theatre and film. Most recently she co-created, wrote, and stars in the upcoming Crave Original series Nesting.

Geneviève Billette is a writer living in Montreal. With a degree in French Studies from the University of Montreal and playwriting from the National Theatre School, she devoted herself to writing, translation and is a professor at the School of Theatre at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). 

Jessica is a bilingual actor, playwright and teacher. She spent seven seasons at the Stratford Festival, climbing the ranks to starring roles in All’s Well that Ends Well and Richard III in 2022. Originally from Montreal, she has performed in both English and French on stage and on screen. Her work has reached Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Stratford, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Calgary. Her first two plays, Pandora and The Dark Lady, both had their world premiere productions in 2023 with Prairie Theatre Exchange, Shakespeare in the Ruins and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. Both plays are slated to be published in 2024. A subsequent production of The Dark Lady is programmed this fall in Calgary, a copro between Lunchbox Theatre and The Shakespeare Company. Jessica is a graduate from Dawson College, McGill University and the Birmingham Conservatory. She’s a visiting instructor and coach at the National Theatre School of Canada, teaching Chekhov and Shakespeare.

Since his graduation from the National Theatre School of Canada in 2008, Mani Soleymanlou is a prolific and recognized actor on the Montreal scene. He is the founder of Orange Noyée (2011), his creative company with which he writes, directs, and performs. His triptic on identity: UN, DEUX, TROIS tours Canada and is praised in a New York Times profile. Mani shines in multiple feature films such as Monia Chokri’s La femme de mon frère, Matthew Rankin’s Une language universelle. He takes on memorable roles on the small screen in C’est comme ça que je t’aime, La faille, Lâcher prise. He defends the role of Patrick, one of the lead characters in Radio-Canada new series, Avant le crash. In 2021, he became the artistic director of the French Theatre of Ottawa’s National Centre of Arts.

Maryse Warda was born and raised in Egypt. She landed in Montreal at age nine where she learned English watching Happy Days. In 1991, Pierre Bernard, artistic director of the Théâtre de Quat’Sous, hired her as his assistant, and gave her a first shot at translation – Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces – thus changing the course of her life. 

She has since translated more than 70 plays. She was instrumental in bringing the works of Canadian writers such as Daniel Brooks, John Mighton, Morris Panych, Erin Shields and George F. Walker to francophone audiences. She has also translated works from American, British, Irish and Scottish playwrights such as Christopher Durang, Margaret Edson, David Greig, David Hare, David Mamet, Douglas Maxwell, Harold Pinter, Philip Ridley and Simon Stephens. Her translations are celebrated for being faithful to the original, while making effective yet unostentatious use of the Quebec idiom.

Her translation of George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel series earned her an award in 2000 from the Académie québécoise du théâtre, and was shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General’s Literary Award. But it’s her translation of Greg MacArthur’s The Toxic Bus Incident which received the GG in 2011.

Linda Gaboriau has been active in Canadian and Quebec theatre as a consultant, dramaturg and translator. She has translated some 60 plays, including the works of some of Quebec’s most prominent playwrights: Rene-Daniel Dubois, Michel Marc Bouchard, Normand Chaurette, Daniel Danis, and Michel Tremblay. Her other acclaimed translations include works by Marie-Claire Blais and Pierre Morency. She worked at Montreal’s Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD), taught at the National Theatre School, was theatre critic for the Montreal Gazette, and hosted and produced radio shows for the CBC. She has won three Chalmers Awards, three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and a Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation. 

Mary Vingoe is a Canadian playwright, actor, and theatre director. Vingoe was one of the co-founders of Canadian feminist theatre company Nightwood Theatre and later co-founded Ship’s Company Theatre in Parrsboro and Eastern Front Theatre in Halifax. From 2002 to 2007, Vingoe was artistic director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. Vingoe is an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the Portia White Prize. Her play Refuge was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General’s Award for English-language drama at the 2016 Governor General’s Awards. 

Kathryn Shaw is a Canadian director, actor, and writer living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. From 1985 to 2020 she was the Artistic Director of Studio 58. 

Shaw graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in dramatic art from Whitman College and a Master of Fine Arts in acting from the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City. Following graduation, she lived in Victoria, British Columbia for a short while before eventually moving to Vancouver.

Over the past few decades, she has directed some of Canada’s most prestigious theatre companies. She has taught acting for professional and community groups across British Columbia, Winnipeg, Halifax, and has also been a guest instructor for the National Theatre School in Montreal, Quebec. Shaw has been on the Theatre BC committee, a parent organization to approximately 80 community theatre groups across British Columbia, as an adjudicator and dramaturge.

Christopher Newton was a Canadian director and actor, who served as artistic director of the Shaw Festival from 1980 to 2002.

Newton performed with the Canadian Players, at the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Vancouver Playhouse and the Stratford Festival. At Stratford, he played such roles as ‘Oberon’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ‘Aramis’ in The Three Musketeers. He also appeared on Broadway in Peter Shaffer’s The Private Ear.

In 1968, Newton founded Theatre Calgary where he served as artistic director until 1971. In 1973, he was appointed artistic director of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company. There, he founded the Playhouse Acting School with his friend and mentor Powys Thomas.