Keynote Speaker: Bob White

Bob White is in his 14^th season as a dramaturg at The Stratford Festival. This season sees him as production dramaturg on Jordi Mand’s adaptation of Little Women, Sunny Drake’s Every Little Nookie and Anne-Marie Macdonald’s Hamlet-911. He just recently stepped down from his position as Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program.  Among the more prominent plays he has helped shepherd to production at the Festival are Erin Shield’s Paradise Lost, Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole and the Kate Hennig Queenmaker Trilogy: The Last Wife, The Virgin Trial and Mother’s Daughter. Prior engagements include Artistic Director at Alberta Theatre Projects (Calgary), Co-director of the Banff Playwrights Lab, Artistic Director, Factory Theatre, (Toronto) and Artistic Director, Playwrights Workshop Montreal.  Bob’s fifty years of service to the Canadian Theatre has been celebrated with numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from The University of Calgary. Bob is also a Member of the Order of Canada.

Playwright: Jovanni Sy

Jovanni Sy is a Calgary-based playwright, director, and performer. He served as Artistic Director of Gateway Theatre (Vancouver) and of Cahoots Theatre (Toronto). He has collaborated with theatre companies across Canada and abroad.  Jovanni’s one-man play, A Taste of Empire, was nominated for two Dora Awards. It was subsequently translated into Cantonese and performed by Derek Chan. A Tagalog version (Lasa ng Imperyo) is being developed by Carmela Sison. Along with The Tao of the World, Jovanni is currently developing Kowloon Bay, a detective story set in 1911 Hong Kong with Vertigo Theatre. Jovanni is also developing Salesman in China (with co-writer Leanna Brodie) with the Stratford Festival.  Coming next: In May, Jovanni will play Mr. Miyagi in the pre-Broadway tryout of The Karate Kid, the Musical (book by Robert Mark Kamen; music and lyrics by Drew Gasparini; directed by Amon Miyamoto) in St. Louis. Next, Jovanni will direct the premiere of his play The Five Vengeances—a kung fu adaptation of The Revengers Tragedy—in Vancouver. Finally, Jovanni returns to Calgary to direct Murder on the Orient Express for Vertigo Theatre.

Writer/Composer: Joe Slabe

Joe Slabe is a writer and composer with a Masters Degree in musical theatre composition from Goldsmiths College of the University of London. He’s written seven book musicals, most notably Crossing Swords, which won five awards at the New York Musical Festival, including Best Book and the Theatre for the American Musical Prize, and The Urban Jungle Book, which was shortlisted for the Tom Hendry Awards and won the Calgary Critics’ Award in 2018.

Joe also works with other writers to create original musical theatre revues, including Alberta Kitchen Party, Touch Me: Songs for a (dis)Connected Age, (Calgary Critics’ Award for Best Musical), and eight editions of Naughty… but Nice! revues (Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding Musical). In addition to writing, Joe works extensively as a musical director, musical theatre dramaturg, and is the founding artistic director of Forte Musical Theatre. His last name rhymes with “The Bay”.

Playwright: Arun Lakra

Arun Lakra has three jobs. Writer. Doctor. Dad. He hoped one of them would be easy. (He was wrong.) His play Sequence won the Betty Mitchell Award, the Calgary Theatre Critics Award, the Joanne Woodward/Paul Newman Award, the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Drama Prize, and the Alberta Playwriting Competition Grand Prize. In addition to his work as a playwright, Arun has written a book on laser eye surgery, a supernatural thriller screenplay, a song to protest the demotion of Pluto (unsuccessful), and his share of illegible prescriptions. He has also written and directed an award-winning short film, Probability. Arun’s new play, Fortunato Heist, will have its World Premiere in Indiana in May. Clearly going through a Heisty phase (his therapist says it will pass), Arun is thrilled to be back at the Citadel working on Broadway Heist. Arun lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife and two kids.

Playwright: Amiel Gladstone

As a West Coast playwright and director, Amiel Gladstone has worked all over the place in theatre and opera with companies such as Against the Grain, Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Club, Banff Centre, Caravan Farm, the Cultch, Factory, Firehall, Musical Stage Co, the National Arts Centre, Pacific Opera Victoria, Rumble, Theatre SKAM, Solo Collective, Tarragon, Theatre Conspiracy, Theatre Replacement, Touchstone, Western Canada Theatre, Vancouver Opera, and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.

Playwright: Rosanna Deerchild

Rosanna Deerchild (she/her) is Cree, from the community of O-Pipon-Na-Piwan Cree Nation. She is a storyteller with more than 20 years experiences as a journalist, broadcaster and a poet. Most recently, she has been heard as the host of CBC Radio One’s Unreserved for six seasons. Currently, she is creating a podcast called This Place, which will focus on Indigenous history in Canada.  Her debut poetry collection, this is a small northern town, shared her reflections of growing up in a racially-divided place. It won the 2009 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Her second book, calling down the sky is a collaborative work with her mother who was forced to attend Indian Residential School. She also wrote her first play, The Secret to Good Tea, with Royal MTC’s Pimootayowin Creators Circle and is writing her third collection of poetry. The Secret to Good Tea will premiere at Royal MTC in March 2023.

Playwright: Lianna Makuch

Lianna Makuch (she/her) is a second-generation Ukrainian Canadian theatre artist. She is a performer, playwright, emerging director, and a graduate of the BFA Acting Program at the University of Alberta. Lianna is a producer with Punctuate! Theatre and the co-Artistic Producer of Pyretic Productions. She is the playwright and principal performer in Barvinok (Pyretic Productions in association with Punctuate! Theatre), which has garnered her awards and recognition from across the country and in Ukraine. The show will be touring Alberta in Fall 2022. She is also the 2020 REACH Grant recipient from the Shevchenko Foundation/Ihnatowycz Family Foundation, which is supporting her as she develops this story into a feature length screenplay. Through her artistic work, Lianna has found passion for activism. She believes that, especially in light of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, it is more important to be an artist and to use the artistic voice to evoke and encapsulate an empathetic human experience. Lianna is a founding member of Canadians in Support of Ukrainian Political Prisoners (CSUPP), and was an integral part of creating and circulating a petition calling upon the House of Commons to demand the release of Ukrainian political prisoners.  Lianna was the first Canadian artist-in-residence with the IZOLYATSIA Cultural Institute in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2020, where she began the development of Alina. She has continued developing the play as part of the Punctuate! Playwrights’ Unit. Alina will premiere in Edmonton May 26 – June 5, 2022 at the Studio Theatre at the Fringe Theatre Adventures, produced by Pyretic Productions in association with Punctuate! Theatre. www.pyreticproductions.ca

Playwright: Yvette Nolan

Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Recent works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, the short play-for-film Katharsis, and the audio plays Lâche Pas la Patate and You Can’t Get There From Here. She was one of the ten writers on Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show. She co-created, with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight, the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt, about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan. Currently, she is working on Namwayut with Marion Newman and Ian Cusson and Parmela Attariwala, and on Sophia with Tim Brady. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.