Byron Laviolette is the resident director of U.N.I.T. Productions, home of the Morro and Jasp clown duo. With U.N.I.T., he has helped create and stage twelve original works that have won various awards including a Dora Award, a Canadian Comedy Award and over fifteen Outstanding mentions in NOW Magazine. Outside of Morro and Jasp, Byron also works with acclaimed puppeteer Adam Francis Proulx, and star drag performer Pearle Harbour.
Author Archives: earmstro
Spotlight on Faculty: James McKernan
Professor James McKernan, is a scenic carpenter and a professor at York University. He’sbuilt over 200 hundred shows which include: films, live theatre and dance, trade show displays and custom items for performance pieces. Along with his BFA in Theatre Production from York, James received a B.Ed. from OISE at U of T and started teaching at an arts high school in the GTA; from there he got my job at York. He still builds shows to support research, dabbles in sound design and production manages the odd show. Really, he just likes solving problems.
4 Questions: Lynn Slotkin
Lynn Slotkin is a theatre writer and the founding editor of the widely read Slotkin Letter, an online source of critical writing about live performance. Her reviews and articles have been published in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Performance Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, Eye Weekly, How Theatre Educates, Orbit, Mystery Scene Magazine, The Canadian Jewish News, the London Free Press and The Hollywood Reporter.
4 Questions: Elissa Horscroft
Elissa Horscroft has been the Technical Director at the Avon Theatre at the Stratford Festival for the past eleven years. She began her work at the Festival in 2003, where she started in the small Studio Theatre and has subsequently worked in all four theatres.
4 Questions: Mitchell Marcus
Mitchell Marcus, Artistic and Managing Director of the multi-award-winning Musical Stage Company, is an actor turned theatre producer with a strong commitment to the development and production of live music theatre in Canada. He is the founder of this largest and leading not-for-profit musical theatre company in Canada.
4 Questions: Sarah Thorpe
Sarah Thorpe has worked since graduating in a costume house, at box office jobs, in performance-based contracts for interactive exhibits and escape games, standardized patient work, and modeling for life-drawing and other art classes. In 2009, with a desire to direct and create, she co-founded the Toronto-based indie company Soup Can Theatre to explore contemporary issues and societal challenges, offering audiences theatrical experiences that are both entertaining and enriching.
4 Questions: Patrick Galligan
Patrick Galligan (MFA Acting 1988) is a long-standing member of the performing ensemble of the Shaw Festival where he continues to garner accolades for his performances. This article is part of our series 50 Years of Disruption, in celebration of the Department of Theatre’s 50th Anniversary. In it, we’ll ask each participant four questions about themselves …
4 Questions: Sara Meurling
Sara Meurling (BA Theatre 1985) has had a long and distinguished career in arts administration. Her accomplishments include serving as General Manager of the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Managing Director of the Factory Theatre, President of the Board of STAF and for Theatre Gargantua, and a member of the Board of the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and the Toronto Arts Council Theatre Committee. She was appointed Executive Director of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) in the fall of 2014.
Spotlight on Faculty: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
1) Who are you? My name is Heather Fitzsimmons Frey and I am a Banting Post-Doctoral Fellow at York. I’m working with Marlis Schweitzer in Theatre Studies in Art, Media, Performance and Design. One of the reasons she is a great mentor for me is that we are both interested in performance-based historiography—that is, the …
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4 Questions: Luke Reece
Luke Reece is a producer, playwright, poet and educator. He is the Producer for Canada’s leading culturally specific theatre company, Obsidian Theatre, and also works to offer opportunities to empower and support young-in-craft artists with his collective, Little Black Afro Theatre, creating spaces for artists to develop work with and for the communities they come from. In addition to his accomplishments in theatre, in 2017, Luke was the Toronto Poetry Slam (TPS) Grand Champion.
