John Murrell, was an American-born Canadian playwright. Born in Lubbock, Texas, Murrell moved to Alberta after graduating from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas with a BFA in 1968. He moved to Canada to avoid the draft, studying at the University of Calgary. In 2002 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and awarded the Alberta Order of Excellence. In 2008, he received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts for which he was the subject of a National Film Board of Canada animated short by Cam Christiansen entitled The Real Place.

Nicola Lipman is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, Banff Centre for the Arts, and the National Theatre School of Canada. In 1969, shortly after her graduation from NTS, she played the role of Susan in the Vancouver PlayhouseGeorge Ryga’s controversial counter-culture play, Grass and Wild Strawberries.

Since then, Nicola Lipman has performed a wide range of plays in theatres across Canada, including: Rabbit Hole at Alberta Theatre Projects; Hecuba at Blackbird Theatre; December Man by Colleen Murphy, at Canadian Stage and Citadel Theatre; Scorched and Humble Boy for Tarragon Theatre; and Shirley Valentine for the Atlantic Theatre Festival. She is the recipient of four Jessie Richardson Awards for outstanding performance. In 2012, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. 

Denise is a choreographer/theatre artist working in Calgary and is the Associate Artist and a permanent member of the One Yellow Rabbit Theatre Ensemble where several of her plays have been produced.

Clarke is the recipient of numerous awards including local theatre awards in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. Along with the OYR Ensemble she was awarded the Alberta Lieutenant Governor General Distinguished Artist Award and The Calgary Mayor’s Distinguished Artist Award.

She was appointed as a Member to the Order of Canada and also recognized by the University of Calgary with an Honorary Doctorate in 2013. 

One of Canada’s top designers, Michael Eagan was born in 1940 in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. He studied Liberal Arts at the University of New Brunswick, where he began designing for the UNB Drama Society without any previous experience, and was inspired to pursue a career in the theatre.

Michael Eagan designed sets and costumes for many of the major English and French theatres, dance and opera companies in Canada, including the Stratford Festival, the Shaw Festival, Canadian Stage, Theatre Calgary, Theatre Lac-Brome, and Theatre Plus.

Michael Eagan died on August 5, 2022 at the age of 82. 

Mary Cynthia Walsh is a Canadian actress, comedian, and writer. She is known for her work on CODCO and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. 

She has won 18 Gemini Awards. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021, for the film Happy Place.

Walsh received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2012.

Marie-Hélène Falcon is a former artistic director for theatre and dance in Quebec.

She was born in Montreal and studied philosophy and theatre at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She was artistic director for the Festival du théâtre étudiant du Québec and co-director for the Association québécoise du jeune théâtre. Falcon was co-founder of the Festival de théâtre des Amériques which later evolved into the Festival TransAmériques and served as its director and artistic director until her departure in June 2014. She also founded Théâtres du monde in 1996 and Nouvelles Scènes in 1997.

Jerry Wasserman is Professor of English and Theatre, specializing in modern drama and theatre history with particular interests in Canadian theatre and popular entertainments. His books include Modern Canadian Plays (2 vols.), now in its 5th edition, Twenty Years at Play: A New Play Centre Anthology, Theatre and Autobiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice, co-edited with Sherrill Grace, and Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France. He also wrote and hosted Modern Canadian Theatre, a 12-hour telecourse for BC’s Knowledge Network. Wasserman has published widely on modern drama, modern fiction, and blues literature. He reviewed theatre for CBC radio for 17 years and is currently theatre critic for The Province newspaper in Vancouver. He has sat on the board of Playwrights Theatre Centre and the Canadian Theatre Critics Association, and has more than 200 professional acting credits for stage and screen. 

Member of the First Siminovitch Jury for Design in 2003. Convenor of “Theatre by Design” (Toronto, 2003). Author of Scenography in Canada: Selected Designers (2004), co-curator of the Canadian delegation to Prague Quadrennial 2007, and co-editor of Imprints of Process (2008), editor of Design and Scenography (2009) guest editor of the special issue: “Costumes and Costuming” of Canadian Theatre Review 152 (2013). Her research has appeared in Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (2020), Performing Architectures: Projects, Practices, Pedagogies (2018) and in journals Theatre and Performance Design, Canadian Theatre Review, Theatre Research in Canada, Australasian Studies, Theatre Journal, Studies in Costume and Performance and Scene. She is Professor Emerita of Drama in the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Astrid Janson is a Canadian set designer and costume designer. Best known for her work in theatre, she has also designed for television, opera, dance, film and exhibitions. She is the winner of several Dora Mavor Moore Awards, as well as the first Toronto Drama Bench Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Canadian Theatre (now The Herbert Whittaker/CTCA Award).