Joey Tremblay

Joey Tremblay

Jury Member, 2018

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Biography

Joey grew up in a very small hamlet called Ste. Marthe in Southeast Saskatchewan. He received a B.F.A. in Drama from the University of Regina (1987) and a diploma from the Vancouver Playhouse Acting School (1989). After working several years as a freelance actor, Joey co-founded Noises in the Attic, a theatre company mandated to produce and create new Canadian plays on the fringe festival circuit across Canada. From 1996 to 2002, Joey became Artistic Co-director of Catalyst Theatre in Edmonton where he wrote, directed and produced (and sometimes performed in) the following plays: Electra, The Abundance Trilogy, My Perfect Heaven, Elephant Wake, Songs for Sinners, The House of Pootsie Plunket, The Blue Orphan and Carmen Angel, which, combined, have garnered over 30 awards and nominations for outstanding work: including two Scotsman Fringe First awards for outstanding writing. Currently Joey is living in Regina and is the Artistic Director of Curtain Razors, a company dedicated to incubating and nurturing a theatrical ecology of new work that expresses the experiences of living in Saskatchewan.

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Anita Rochon

Anita Rochon

Jury Member, 2018

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Biography

Anita Rochon is a director and theatre maker. Since 2006, she’s been the artistic director of The Chop with Emelia Symington Fedy. The Chop is an award winning Vancouver-based company whose work is known for its sophisticated experimentation with authenticity and involves non-traditional collaborators and some of the finest artists working in Canada. The Chop tours nationally and internationally with past presentation in Toronto (Factory Theatre), Victoria (Belfry) Burnaby (Shadbold Centre for the Arts), Richmond (Gateway Theatre), Whitehorse (Pivot Festival), Ottawa (Magnetic North), Halifax (2b Theatre), Stratford (Stratford Festival), Montreal (Usine C and Segal Centre), Portland (TBA Festival), Seattle (On the Boards), Edinburgh (Edinburgh Fringe), Dublin (Abbey Theatre, Dublin Fringe), Brighton (SICK Festival) and London, England (Battersea Arts Centre).

As a director, Anita has worked at The Shaw Festival, Electric Company Theatre, Bard on the Beach, Theatre Replacement, Belfry Theatre, Théâtre la Seizième, Globe Theatre and Vancouver Opera. She is a graduate of Studio 58 (Acting) and the National Theatre School of Canada (Directing). She is the recipient of the Ray Michal Prize for an Outstanding Body of Work by a New Director, a Mayor’s Arts Award (awarded by Donna Spencer) and the Siminovitch Protégé prize (awarded by Kim Collier).

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Jessie Mill

Jessie Mill

Jury Member, 2017

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Biography

Jessie Mill is a dramaturg, a critic and an editor. Since 2014, she has worked as an artistic advisor at the Festival TransAmeriques for its programming in theatre and dance. She is also responsible for organizing the festival’s artistic encounters and outreach activities, such as the “FTA Clinics”. She provides guidance and support to stage productions, conducts interviews with artists and teaches on occasion. She is also part of the editorial board of Liberté, a cultural magazine in Quebec. Jessie writes about performances and critical issues in the performing arts. Between 2010 and 2014, she was the international projects advisor at the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD), namely in charge of translation activities and the international program for the centre’s yearly festival Dramaturgies en dialogue. At the CEAD, she also initiated collaborations with authors and artists from Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She is invited to give talks on Quebec’s theatre in Germany, Belgium, France and Morocco, and sat on the national selection committee supporting French-speaking playwrights at the Centre national du théâtre in Paris. 

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Carmen Alatorre

Carmen Alatorre

Jury Member, 2018

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Biography

Originally from Mexico City, Carmen earned her MFA degree in Theatre Design at the University of British Columbia and has been a Vancouver based designer with more than 80 production credits since 2006. Some of her recent ones include: Stickboy (Vancouver Opera); Crazy For You, The Wizard of Oz and The Music Man (Gateway Theatre); Good People, Peter and the Starcatcher, Bittergirl and Topdog/Underdog (Arts Club Theatre Company); Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and As You Like it (Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival). Carmen is the recipient of three Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards (Outstanding Costume Design in the Large Theatre Category in 2015 and 2017 and Small Theatre Category in 2017) as well an Applause Musical Ovation Award for Outstanding Costume Design in 2013.

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Olivier Kemeid

Olivier Kemeid

Jury Member, 2018

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Biography

Playwright and director Olivier Kemeid has written, among other plays, Five Kings (2015, Leméac), based on the historical saga of Shakepeare’s kings, a five-hours play created at Espace Go in Montreal and National Arts Center in Ottawa, Women On Top (2015), created at 7 Stages in Atlanta, Icare (2014), created at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal, Œdipe (2013), a personal take on Sophocles’play, created at the Théâtre du Parc in Brussels, Bacchanale (2008), created at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in Montreal, and The Aeneid (2007), his personal adaptation of Virgil’s epic poem, that he directed himself. The Aeneid is published in French by Lansman editor, and has been translated in English, German, Hungarian and Italian. He is a three-time nominee for the Governor General’s Award for French-language drama: The Aeneid in 2009; Me, in the red ruins of the century in 2013 and Five Kings in 2016. The production of the Red Ruins toured all across Canada in 2013 and 2014, and won the award for best production in Montreal by the AQCT – Quebec’s Theater Critics Association. The Aeneid has been produced or read in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hungary, United States and United Arab Emirates. In July 2008, the play was read at the celebrated Avignon Festival, and played at Stratford’s Festival in 2016. Olivier Kemeid was also guest professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) from autumn 2014 to spring 2015, and the artistic director of Théâtre Espace Libre in Montreal, from 2006 to 2010. Since October 2016, he is the artistic director of Théâtre du Quat’Sous in Montreal.

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Adrienne Wong

Adrienne Wong

Jury Member, 2019

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Biography

Adrienne Wong’s work straddles theatrical and digital space. She has performed in former morgues, current science centres, art galleries in the middle of the night, and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Web projects include The Apology Generator, which earned her the inaugural Artist in Residence position on CBC Radio’s Q, and SadSongs.ca, commissioned by Nightswimming Theatre in Toronto. Other radio work includes writing, performing in and directing plays, and contributing to North by Northwest and The Afternoon Show, all out of CBC Radio Vancouver. Landline (created with Dustin Harvey) is a performance for audio recording and SMS that toured nationally and internationally for five years. Me On The Map (created with JD (Jan) Derbyshire) is a kids show about urban planning and collective decision-making, received a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nomination in Vancouver and was selected for the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity 2017 Playwrights Colony. Adrienne’s writing has been published in Canadian Theatre Review, CdnTimes, and the anthology Asian Canadian Theatre. Adrienne was Artistic Producer at Neworld Theatre in Vancouver until 2013, where she commissioned and produced 11 “podplays” in partnership with Playwrights Theatre Centre and Martin King. Currently, she is Artistic Producer of SWS Performance, Festival Director of the Festival of Live Digital Art (foldA), and also co-edits the SWS online magazine CdnTimes. Now living in Banff, Alberta, Adrienne holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

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Emma Tibaldo

Emma Tibaldo

Jury Member, 2017

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Biography

Emma has been directing new Canadian plays from Whitehorse to St. John’s since graduating from the National Theatre School directing program-plays such as Refuge by Mary Vingoe, Falling Trees by Megan Coles, Model Wanted by Step Taylor. In 2005 she co-founded Talisman Theatre for whom she has directed award winning productions such as That Woman by Daniel Danis, Down Dangerous Passes Road by Michel Marc Bouchard, and The Medea Effect by Suzie Bastien. In 2008 she became Artistic and Executive director of the national new creation centre Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal (PWM), where she has been the dramaturg for award winning plays by Mary Vingoe, Megan Coles, Marcus Youssef, Lois Brown to name but some. She has been a dramaturg and director for numerous new play festivals across the country, and has been a guest artist at NTS for a decade. Emma is also a graduate of Concordia University’s Theatre Department. 

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Bobby Theodore

Bobby Theodore

Jury Member, 2019

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Biography

Bobby Theodore is a screenwriter, playwright, dramaturg, and translator. Bobby has worked on several TV series, including Murdoch Mysteries, Flashpoint, and Knuckleheads (an adaptation of the iconic Québecois cartoon, Têtes à claques). After graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada’s playwriting section in 1998, he was a Governor General Award finalist in 2000 for his translation of 15 Seconds by François Archambault. Since then, Bobby has gone on to translate over 25 plays from French to English. His most recent translations include The Just by Albert Camus (Talonbooks, 2017), An Accidental Death by François Archambault, and Public Enemy by Olivier Choinière. For the stage, Bobby co-created 300 Tapes (with Ame Henderson), a performance that premiered at the Theatre Centre in Toronto and at Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP) in Calgary. In 2014, his translation of François Archambault’s You Will Remember Me premiered at ATP, won a Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding New Play, and was produced across Canada and in the USA. Currently, Bobby is adapting a feature film script, writing a TYA play about a boy who’s hiding inside a man’s head, and collaborating (with director Viktor Lukawski) on Manipulator, a devised performance inspired by Jerzy Kosinski’s life and work. Bobby shoots right and is the translation dramaturg and host of the Glassco Translation Residency in Tadoussac.

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Émilie Monnet

Émilie Monnet

Jury Member, 2019

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Biography

Émilie Monnet’s theatre practice straddles performance and media arts, and revolves around questions of identity, memory, history and transformation. Her works favour the process of collaborative creation and are, more often than not, presented as interdisciplinary theatre or immersive shows. Artist in Residence, from 2018 à 2021, at le Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, she presented her latest creation, OKINUM in October, 2018. This Time Will Be Different, her new work, co-created with the choreographer Lara Kramer, will be presented at the FTA (Festival du théâtre des Amériques) in June and then in Scotland in August. Since 2016, Émilie has also presented Scène contemporaine autochtone, a platform for the diffusion of Live First Nations Arts. The next edition of Scène contemporaine autochtone will be presented at Edinburgh this summer in a partnership with The Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Émilie is both Anishnaabe and Française, and she grew up in the Outaouais and in Brittany. She currently lives in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyaang/Montréal. onishka.org

Émilie Monnet Artistic Director of ONISHKA & Scène contemporaine autochtone / Indigenous Contemporary Scene.

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Marie Farsi

Marie Farsi

Jury Member, 2019

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Biography

Marie is a director and theatre maker, who has trained and worked across Canada and internationally. She is also the founder and the Co-Artistic Director of the formal experimental company Babelle Theatre in Vancouver. Her work with Babelle has been described as trippy, intelligent and wildly inventive. As a director, her professional experience is varied, from staging classical texts, new Canadian plays, sketch comedy and theatre for young audiences, to developing new works with writers and devising contemporary puppetry. Marie is not afraid of risk, of bending physical space and theatrical conventions to offer a different point of entry into the arts for younger and more adventurous audiences. She is an artist with very playful conceptions of dramatic convention – her shows operate under one set of rules and then they subvert those rules ever so slightly, again and again.

She has directed for and collaborated with companies such as Rumble Theatre, Théâtre La Seizième, and Porte-Parole. For the 2018/19 season, she worked as the Associate Artistic Director at Crow’s Theatre with Chris Abraham. She was also an Assistant Director at the Stratford Festival, Bard on the Beach, and the ArtsClub. Favourite and noticeable directing credits include: GHOST QUARTET (Crow’s Theatre); THE HUNS (Toronto Fringe 2019); SURVEIL (Hip. Bang! – Artistic Risk Award at the Vancouver Fringe 2018); ALL MY FRIENDS ARE ANIMALS (a co-production with Axis Theatre); MOVEMENTS 1&2; RIVULETS (seven Jessie Richardson Award nominations including Outstanding Direction and Production in Small Theatre); SEABIRD IS IN A HAPPY PLACE (2015 winner of the OOB Short Play Festival/NYC) and THE 4th GRADERS PRESENT AN UNNAMED LOVE-SUICIDE (Rumble Theatre). More at mariefarsi.com.

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Linda Gaboriau

Linda Gaboriau

Jury Member, 2016

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Biography

Linda Gaboriau has translated over 125 plays and novels from the French. Her translations of plays by Michel Marc Bouchard, Normand Chaurette, Daniel Danis, Wajdi Mouawad and Michel Tremblay have been published and widely produced in Canada and abroad. Her long collaboration with Michel Marc Bouchard has included the film adaptations of Lilies (1996 Genie Award, Best Motion Picture), The Tale of Teeka and The Girl King, directed by Mika Kaurismaki. Her other literary translations include fiction and essays by Marie-Claire Blais, Jean Marc Dalpé, Wajdi Mouawad, Pierre Morency, Lise Tremblay and Michel Tremblay. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Translation six times and she won this award in 1996 for Stone and Ashes (Daniel Danis), in 2010 for Forests (Wajdi Mouawad) and in 2019 for Birds of a Kind (Wajdi Mouawad). She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (2002 – 2007) and she was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015 and an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec in 2023.

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Jessica Carmichael

Jessica Carmichael

Jury Member, 2020

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Biography

Jessica is an artist of mixed Abénaki/Euro heritage. She specializes in theatre directing, acting, dramaturgy and creation. She currently holds a tenure-track assistant professor position with Concordia University’s Theatre Department in Montréal. For three seasons Jessica was Artistic Director of Carousel Players, and is a past artistic associate with Native Earth Performing Arts. She is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada (Acting), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art/Kings College London (MA Text & Performance Studies) the University of Alberta (MFA Directing). She currently serves as dramaturg for Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan’s 1939 commissioned by the Stratford Festival.

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