Industry Showcase

Charity Adzie is an Afro-Carribean actor and creator born and raised in Montreal,Quebec. She is passionate about participating in art that is accessible, challenging, joyful and vulnerable.

She strongly believes in giving back, and being an influence in the black community. Volunteering taught her a lot about the world she lives in, and how she can positively impact the people around her. Her own personal goals include ; being a voice for the community, promoting BIPOC content and speaking truthfully through art.

Her theatre school experience allowed her to come out of her shell. It also allowed her to explore many styles of dramaturgy from Shakespeare to Anton Chevok, to modern day playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Djanet Sears.

She hopes to work on new artistic projects in the near future, and she is excited to continue growing and challenging herself. 

Sue was born and raised in a small town on the west coast before moving to Tio’tia:ke. While there completing their bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Communications, Sue co-founded Sort Of Productions. Through this collective they’ve produced three new works, marking a milestone in 2020 with the production of award-winning Turkish playwright Deniz Basar’s Wine & Halva, funded by the Conseil des Arts de Montreal. The collective’s approach is based on making every attempt to work outside of and against harmful norms of Western theatre making in content, form and process. 

As a playwright, Sue is excited by experimental and postdramatic theatre. For them, this work has the potential to go beyond representation in challenging oppression. In their writing, Sue centers Black queer and trans life in the diaspora, Africa and the Carribean. They’re eager to keep playwriting and engaging with theatre as a producer, director, performer, stagemanger, technician or something new on works that they can stand with.

Anaïs Damphousse Joly is a Haitian-born actress and activist, adopted and raised in Quebec. She’s also a geek, an anime lover, a makeup addict, and a writer. 

Anaïs spent all of her primary and high school years in music programs playing clarinet and singing while staying active with athleticism, dance, basketball, and rugby. She graduated college in 2013 and in 2014, she made her TV debut in the popular french Canadian TV Show Toute la vérité. To this day, she’s active and recognized in the local artistic community through the versatility of the roles she can and has played.

In 2020, quarantine gave Anaïs the time and space needed for her writing to flourish. In February 2021, she received an artistic grant for the pitch of her first series “Hoe’s Mad”. This groundbreaking TV Show tackles the reality of sex workers from a real-life perspective. 

Anaïs is extremely grateful for all the people who saw the potential in her storytelling in both acting and writing. Her ultimate goal is to show the world the humanity in the things and experiences that society loves to demonize out of fear and/or ignorance.

Right after receiving they B.A in Theatre (2019), Chadia began they professional career and
debut by embarking on the 2PlayTour with Geordie Productions in 2019. They toured the shows
FOMO (2019-2020) as “Olive” and The Water Chronicles (2019-2020) as “Nix/Water”. They
also played “Vanessa/Balkonae” in White (2019) which they also co-directed. Other notable
performances include, “Aunt Polly/Mrs. Staunton” in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: The
Musical (2018), “Nearly Wild” in Concord Floral (2017), “Max Balas” in The Memorandum
(2017), “Tituba” in The Crucible (2016). Their most recent work was “Mother Moon” in Black
Balloon (2020) with the Centaur Theatre’s: The Portico Project and “Water/Angel 4” in the
bilingual play: Habib’s Angel’s et La Mission Impossible produced by Talisman Theatre. As well
as an actor, Chadia is also a singer/songwriter and their most notable appearance was on La Voix
6 in 2018. They are currently part of the 2020-2021 group with the Black Theatre Workshop:
Artist Mentorship Program. Chadia strives to create and support works that instigate
conversations and challenges societal norms.

Andre Morris-Mowatt is an Actor and Voice Actor, situated in Montreal. His strong base in Theatre training gives him the ability to play characters that oppose his personality and with these skills decided to pursue his childhood dream to be an on-screen actor. Morris graduated from Dawson’s 3 year Professional Theatre Program, where he learned Stage Combat, Sword Fighting, Singing Techniques, and voice acting technics. He then decided to explore the industry by getting on Hollywood Sets and analyzing the production. Watching carefully, he managed to pick up certain tricks from Hollywood Stars Luke Evans and Ed Skrein from director Roland Emmerich’s Midway.  He is a flexible artist with his voice, showing a wide range of characters he can display, from old to young, commercial to action, aggressive to creepy, Morris has the capacity to play them all. When it comes to challenges, he merges the discipline he has in the gym to his career; he is always ready and willing to surpass the new plateau over his head, looking for ways to get better and pushing himself, going deeper emotionally into his performances and it show’s in his Demo Reels, his QDF audition and the plays he’s worked in.

Morris has played quite a few interesting roles, from Romeo (Romeo And Juliet) to Wickham (Pride and Prejudice) to Edward Carmichael (You Can’t Take it With you). His most recent credit comes from his role in Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman and now, with the new skills he has acquired over his time at black theatre workshop, Morris is ready to tackle industry from a better angle.

Joy Mwandemange, AKA Thandizo, is a Malawian actress and musical artist working in Ottawa Ontario. She graduated from Carleton University with a B.Mus (Hons) with a specialization in Musical Theatre Voice and also honed her other passions of rapping, choreographing, directing and writing. 

MwandemJoy is a board member of Lost Baggage Musical Theatre (LBMT), in Ottawa, and has directed, musical directed and choreographed a number of their productions. She has a passion for creating and participating in theatre and art that speaks to her experiences, culture and principles and so she gravitates to art that portrays and celebrates the black experience.

Joy is currently working on a musical project entitled ‘The Blacker The Berry’ that she hopes to be able to release this coming fall and is also in the process of completing an internship through MASC Ottawa to assist in teaching a class that explores Afro-Caribean dance to students from grades 3-6. She hopes to one day be able to open a school for the arts in her home country of Malawi to nurture the abundant natural creativity of her people and in the meantime, she aims to celebrate blackness through her art.

Duy Nguyen is an immigrant actor and storyteller, born and raised in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. Duy has been living and working in Montreal for the past 5 years and has appeared in more than a dozen independent and community theatre productions around the city.

Growing up, Duy was a shy, quiet, and ordinary kid. He moved to Canada when he was 17 in pursuit of a higher education in business, following his parents’ wishes. But unbeknownst to his parents, instead of business school, he was accepted into Algonquin’s Theatre Art program in Ottawa in 2014 (Sorry mom and dad). And it was during his final year production of “Twilight of the Living Dead”, stepping out on stage for the first time, that he finally found his voice, his spark, and his undying passion for Acting. He brings a deep sensitivity, relatability and a sense of humor to every character he plays. Off Stage, he tirelessly working on his craft with classes and workshops in both Theatre and Film. 

Duy hopes to one day bring his work onto the big screen, and through it, inspire other shy and quiet kids like him to dream bigger, beyond their nationalities and countries, to be extraordinary, because dream doesn’t require a visa.

Born in Munich Germany and raised in Nelson BC in the magnificent mountains of the West Kootenay Region, Espoir is an Afro-Canadian trilingual, actor, storyteller, and performer of music across many mediums. She is a black woman who’s pronouns are she and her. Espoir is a classically trained singer. She seeks to stretch the perimetres of her definition of theatre daily and is currently expanding her practice to include voice over/narration and puppetry. She is a recent grad of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Acting program. In 2019-2020 at NTS, she performed in Burning Vision- directed by Mike Payette and played the titular role in Nell Gwynn directed by Krista Jackson. She is also featured in The Rest is Electric podcast.

Arun’s love of acting goes way back to when he would perform William Wallace narration pieces from Age of Empires II to amuse his family at parties. The love affair truly took hold in his last year of high school when he performed in his first play, The Importance of Being Earnest, and he vowed then and there to follow his dreams no matter what.

Of course, he then spent the next four years studying neuroscience at the University of Toronto, so that didn’t exactly go according to plan. However, in his spare time, he went out for every audition he could and had the opportunity to live out his passion in no less than thirteen campus productions. Upon graduating, he vowed to follow his dreams no matter what (for real this time). 

It’s been an incredible journey since that fateful decision, bringing him onto historic Toronto stages like Theatre Passe Muraille and Alumnae Theatre, through the gateway of indie Montreal theatre at the Mainline, on to the Conservatory and most recently the Segal Centre. Since coming to Montréal two years ago, he has diversified his performance media, gaining the opportunity to be a part of three TV shows. Most recently, he has opened his eyes to the immensely exciting world of voice performance, and he hopes that in the next two years he might have the opportunity to wade deeper into this rich and exciting field.

Arun cannot thank the Black Theatre Workshop enough for the once in a lifetime chance to be a part of their Artist Mentorship Program. In a year as stormy as 2020, the AMP program was one of few, vital guiding lights that kept him afloat. He would like to sincerely thank the mentors and his fellow colleagues in this renowned program for a fantastic year, and he hopes to stay strongly connected to this beautiful and diverse group of people for a long time to come!