50 years of Disruption

Julia Gray is a postdoctoral fellow at Bloorview Research Institute which is embedded in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Hospital (and fully affiliated with University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine). She writes, directs and produces applied theatre/performance projects, including her most recent play ,Cracked: new light on dementia, which was a collaborative project among artists, health researchers, people living with dementia and their family members.

Owais Lightwala is a theatre producer, and also characterizes himself as “as occasional theatre artist and web/graphic designer”. He is the Managing Director of Why Not Theatre, an independent theatre company he helped build from the ground up into one of the country’s fastest growing companies. Additionally, he works as a strategic consultant for a diversity of arts and culture organizations in areas related to changing who’s in their audience demographic, innovating new models, and “anything to do with numbers”.

For nearly 40 years, Richard Rose (BFA, Drama Studies 1978) has been a distinguished director in the Canadian theatre community, as well as having directed internationally. Currently, he is Artistic Director of the Tarragon Theatre (since 2002) and was the Founding Artistic Director of the highly regarded Necessary Angel Theatre Company (1978 – 2002).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.