Canada's contemporary theatre reflects a rich diversity of regional and cultural identities. Since the late 1960s, there has been a concerted effort to develop the voice of the 'Canadian playwright', which is reflected in the nationally focused programming of many of the country's theatres. Within this 'Canadian voice' are a plurality of perspectives - that of the First Nations, new immigrants, French Canadians, sexual minorities, etc. - and a multitude of theatre companies have been created to specifically service and support these voices.
MirrorMask is a 2005 British-American dark fantasy film designed and directed by Dave McKean, and written by Neil Gaiman from a story they developed together. Produced by The Jim Henson Company, the film stars Stephanie Leonidas, Jason Barry, Rob Brydon, and Gina McKee.
Judith Clare Thompson, OC is a Canadian playwright. She has twice been awarded the Governor General's Award for drama, and is the recipient of many other awards including the Order of Canada, the Walter Carsen Performing Arts Award, the Toronto Arts Award, The Epilepsy Ontario Award, The B'nai B'rith Award, the Dora, the Chalmers, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, both for Palace of the End, which premiered at Canadian Stage, and has been produced all over the world in many languages. She has received honorary doctorates from Thorneloe University and, in November 2016, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
Patti Schmidt is a Canadian radio personality, curator, creative producer, musician and DJ from Montreal, Quebec. She is best known for her tenure as host and executive producer of CBC Radio 2's long-running alternative music program Brave New Waves from 1995 to 2007.
Guardians is an Off-Broadway play written by Peter Morris. It debuted at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the "Fringe First Award" and made its New York debut on April 11, 2006 at The Culture Project.
The infringement Festival is an international, interdisciplinary critical arts festival that features theatre, music, film, culture jamming, street performance and visual arts, with an emphasis on activist art and work that challenges the commodification of culture.
Carlos Bulosan Theatre (CBT) is the only long-standing professional Filipino-Canadian theatre company in Canada and is based in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded in 1982 by activists Fely Villasin, Martha Ocampo, Voltaire de Leon, Ging Hernandez and Bernie Consul under the name Carlos Bulosan Cultural Workshop (as a cultural wing of the North American-based Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship). Now in its 37th year, CBT continues to celebrate its history of artistic activity and service to Filipino-Canadians and their broader community.
Montreal was referred to as "Canada's Cultural Capital" by Monocle Magazine. The city is Canada's centre for French-language television productions, radio, theatre, film, multimedia, and print publishing. The Quartier Latin is a neighbourhood crowded with cafés animated by this literary and musical activity. Montreal's many cultural communities have given it a distinct local culture.
Collective:Unconscious is a non-profit corporation, founded in New York City in 1993, and incorporated in 1995. Originally based on Avenue B in Alphabet City, it moved to 145 Ludlow Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side; in 2004 it relocated to Tribeca until July 2008.
WEFUNK is a weekly radio show held on Montreal's CKUT 90.3, McGill University's radio station since 1996 and online since 1999. The show is usually very light on talk as both DJs Professor Groove and DJ Static play a symbiotic mix of Funk, Soul, R&B and Rap, both old and new. The name of the radio show comes from the Parliament song "P. Funk ", in which WEFUNK is a fictional radio station broadcasting "directly from the Mothership, top of the Chocolate Milky Way, 500,000 kilowatts of P Funk-power."
Donovan King is a professional actor, teacher, historian, and tour guide from Montreal, Quebec. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, a company that researches ghost stories and offers haunted tours, King hires professional actors to lead the tours and publishes a new ghost story every month on the Haunted Montreal Blog. King is also a performance activist and experimental theatre artist who juggles acting, teaching, directing, dramaturgy, and theory to create dramatic projects that challenge systemic oppression. Known for his commitment to education and community, King assisted with the establishment of the Montreal Fringe Festival in 1991, is the author of Doing Theatre in Montreal and he set up the Montreal Infringement Festival in 2004.
Seth Numrich is an American stage, television, and film actor.
Théâtre de Neptune was performed at Port Royal as the first theatrical production in North America. Marc Lescarbot wrote the play and is best known for his Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (1609), based on his expedition to Acadia (1606–1607) and research into French exploration.
Anna Friz is a Canadian artist and musician whose work often pertains to, and utilizes the medium of, sound and radio. Starting in 1993, Friz has been involved with campus-community radio stations across Canada, and also works as a sound designer for film and stage performance. She has contributed original programming to numerous Canadian campus-community stations such as CITR-FM, CKUT-FM and CKUW, as well as for the CBC and Kunstradio, Austria.
Michael McQuilken is an American, New York-based theater and opera director, filmmaker, and musician.
Benjamin Hart is an English magician. In 2007, he was awarded the "Young Magician of the Year" award by The Magic Circle. Hart has worked on British television and is an inventor and designer of magic tricks and stage illusions. In 2014, he starred in Killer Magic on BBC Three. Hart was a finalist on Britain's Got Talent in 2019. He is a member of The Magic Circle (organisation)
Jill Daum is a Canadian actress and playwright from Vancouver, British Columbia. She is most noted for her theatrical play Forget About Tomorrow, about a woman struggling to cope with her husband's diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's and based in part on her own marriage to musician and actor John Mann, and as a member of the "Mom's the Word" collective, who created several touring theatrical shows about women's experience of motherhood.
Fortner Anderson is an American-born poet, performance artist, and visual artist who has lived in Montreal, Quebec, since 1976. He is the author of several volumes of poetry and has published many audio recordings of his spoken word performances, and is known for innovative use of technology to present poetry readings.
Carolyn Fe is a Filipino actress based in Montreal. She has released three full-length albums and an EP with the Carolyn Fe Blues Collective. Fe is also the recipient of 2018 Toronto Theatre Critics' Awards for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Calpurnia.
