Discipline: theatre

amir sám nakhjavani

Amir Sám Nakhjavani (he, him) is a META-Award nominated multilingual and multidisciplinary Montrealer of Azerbaijani-Iranian origin. As a theatre artist he has worked with the Segal Centre, Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal, Black Theatre Workshop, Tableau d’Hôte Theatre, Teesri Dunya Theatre and Infinithéâtre. He was a member of Black Theatre Workshop’s 2016-2017 Artist Mentorship Program ensemble; and participated in the DémART-MTL program through the Conseil des arts de Montréal, in collaboration with Centaur Theatre. He is currently working on a French-language translation of the Farsi-language classic, Aurash, by Bahram Beyza’ie, in collaboration with Modern Times Stage Company, in Toronto. His participation in the 2020-2021 MAI Alliance program is oriented towards an exploration of human-specific performance.

ahmad hamdan

Ahmad Hamdan is a Montreal-based actor who graduated from UQAM’s École supérieure de théâtre in 2017. He has performed his texts on several stages including La Licorne in the show Foirée Montréalaise. Parallel to his acting career, a storytelling and creation desire leads him to write short theatrical content. Within Alliance, he will tackle the long form to create a show that will explore, among other things, social mobility, the relationship to culture (in all senses of the word) and the conception of identity.

 

sophie el assaad

Sophie El Assaad is an award winning interdisciplinary artist, with Lebanese and British roots. After spending over a decade in Bahrain, she is based in Montreal, working in theatre as a designer, creator and aspiring director. She founded her theatre company Theatre Nuaj in 2015 and produced and directed her first show entitled VANITAS. Today she is working on writing and developing her next piece, Black Balloon.

Sophie’s individual practice is inspired by artists like Ali Chahrour, Wajdi Mouawad, Dave St Pierre and Sarah Kane; their rawness and relationship in their work to Life and Death evokes what it means to be human and the struggle that it demands. As a creator with a background in visual art, the visual impact of her work is very important; it plays with the juxtaposition of performance and artistic styles from various disciplines, heavily based in movement and imperfections. Currently, her work is focused on the increased level of hopelessness prevalent in young adults facing today’s world and the risks of a Godless generation seeking purpose. Using the current political climate in the Arab peninsula, she seeks to question perspectives from East and West, investigate the person behind the ‘terrorist’ and query the meaning of humanity.

Sophie was part of Black Theatre Workshop’s Artist Mentorship Program in 2017 and has worked as a designer for various professional theatre companies, including Repercussion Theatre, Cabal Theatre, Talisman Theatre, Tableau d’Hôte Theatre, Geordie Theatre, Yonder Window Theatre Co and The Segal Centre of Performing Arts.

 

andy sawyer

Andy Sawyer is a performer based in Tio’tia’ke (Montreal). She writes and tells stories, sings songs, and listens to her body. Her practice evolves around world-building, drawing from personal experience, science-fiction, gender theory, and psychology. As an adoptee, she is interested in redefining notions of family and kinship through articulating new language around belonging, emotional responsibility (radical honesty), boundaries, and what we owe to ourselves and to each other. As a trans artist, she approaches creation through a spiritual, pleasure-filled, joy-seeking embodiment practice.

She is committed to the inner journeys of unlearning white supremacy and patriarchy while seeking out new (and old) forms of living in relationship with the land and with each other.

gabe maharjan

Gabe Maharjan is a Montreal-based actor and creator. They first caught the performance bug in their Elementary school drama class. As a child, Gabe did workshops at The Black Theatre Workshop and the MSOPA and developed a love for play and storytelling. 

Gabe is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Quebec Drama Federation. They recently completed The Black Theatre Workshop’s Artist Mentorship Program in the actor’s stream. They participated in Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal’s Young Creators Unit, where they started writing called Eva in Rio, a new play they are developing. Gabe graduated from the Dome in 2017.

A selection of Gabe’s performance credits include Haemon in Raise the Stakes’ Antigone, Eddie in The Last Wife as part of Imago’s “Her Side” festival,  and Tripp in Sermo Scomber’s Don’t Read the Comments—which won the Franky Award for Most Promising English Company for the 2018 Montreal Fringe. Gabe voices Hayao in Epsilon Games’ Primus Vita. They made their directorial debut last year, when they produced Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries (Playground Productions).

lydie dubuisson

Born and based in Montreal, Lydie Dubuisson is a theatre creator, playwright, director, and storyteller.  She performed in musicals, sang in choirs, directed choirs, sang in a jazz band and graduated with distinction in Theatre from Concordia University.

Her art explores intersectionality, dystopian reality, collective memory, and ritualistic moods.  Gospel music permeates her work. Dubuisson’s plays give voice to women living in conservative communities by questioning destiny within fundamentalist environments.

Her play Quiet had a staged reading for the Black Theatre Workshop’s 2018 Discovery Series.  She is part of the writing team of Blackout, a Tableau d’Hôte production, which will be presented in January 2019. Dubuisson is currently writing her second play, Sanctuary.

kyungseo min

Kyungseo Min is a Korean-Canadian playwright and performer currently based in Montreal. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre at the University of Southern California, she pursued her passion for physical theatre and Japanese traditional theatre by training in Body Weather Laboratory in Venice and Nihonbuyo with the Kyoto Arts Centre. As a writer and Third Culture Kid, her goal is to create a distinctive style of theatre blending Western and Eastern philosophies, weaving text, movement, and symbolism into a cohesive whole. She strives to tell stories that break linear structure and find drama not only in action and dialogue, but also in stasis. She dares to write plays that remove the audience from reality and transport them into a metaphysical realm where a single gesture can slow down their heartbeat and a symbol can make them stop in their seats and feel what is underneath the banalities of the everyday.

kym dominique-ferguson

Kym Dominique–Ferguson is a poet by birth, a theatre performer by training, and a producer by nurture. For over a decade he has serenaded Montreal and international audiences with his blending of spoken word poetry and theatre. He successfully produced and performed his first one man show to a sold-out audience back in August of 2015: The Born Jamhaitianadian. Ferguson is also a radio show host on Soul Perspectives for the past 6 years which talks about the issues affecting the Black community here in Montreal, across Canada and internationally.   He is currently in development his first theatre play: The #DearBlackMan Project, officially commissioned by Black Theatre Workshop.

ligia borges

Ligia Borges is a director, actor, teacher, and researcher as well as co-founder of the Brazilian collective Teatro da Travessia, with which she has been involved as an actor, assistant director, and/or dramaturge since 2006. Universal subjects, such as family relationships, love, sickness, and the obstacles of daily living are recurrent themes in her work. Fragments d’Ana, Borges’ current theatre project, is centred on the social effects of Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to bridging the worlds of storytelling and theatre, Fragments d’Ana adopts a dramaturgical approach that integrates the stories of people living with Alzheimers and those of their caregivers. Fragments d’Ana is conceived for a non-conventional venue and will emphasize the encounter between the public and actors.