Aki Matsushita is a biracial Japanese-Canadian dramaturg and arts educator, raised in Ottawa and Tokyo. She holds a BA in Theatre and an MA in Theatre Theory and Dramaturgy, with a thesis on the intercultural adaptations of Japanese director Suzuki Tadashi. Aki’s theatre journey includes an international exchange at the University of Birmingham, UK, focusing on European theatre.

Currently a dramaturg at PWM, Aki spent the last decade at the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS), where she worked as a teacher and artistic administrator. Her work is driven by a passion for intercultural performance, exploring how theatre connects cultures and fosters shared humanity. As a mixed-identity artist, this approach resonates personally, guiding her dramaturgical practice. Aki is committed to continuously refining her craft through collaboration, using her perspective to explore and bridge cultural and personal boundaries.

Jovanni Sy is a Montreal-based director, performer, and playwright. He is the former Artistic Director of Gateway Theatre (Vancouver) and Cahoots Theatre (Toronto).

Directing credits include: Salesman in China (Stratford); Wildfire (Edmonton); The Weight of Ants (Victoria); The Five Vengeances, The Orchard (After Chekhov), Yoga Play (Vancouver); Murder on the Orient Express (Calgary); Stitch (Toronto); and Blackbird, Antigone, God of Carnage (Hong Kong).

Jovanni has performed across Canada and internationally. Recently, he played Mr. Miyagi in the pre-Broadway tryout of The Karate Kid, the Musical (Stages St Louis). Other acting credits include Forgiveness (Theatre Calgary) and Prison Dancer, the Musical (Citadel Theatre).

Jovanni’s plays include Salesman in China (co-written with Leanna Brodie; QWF Prize, Playwriting), The Five Vengeances, Nine Dragons (Jessie Richardson Award), The Tao of the World (PGC Comedy Award), and Kowloon Bay (PGC Drama Award). His play A Taste of Empire has been translated into Cantonese and Tagalog.

Christine Rodriguez is a writer from Montreal who creates from a mixed-race, Afro-Trinidadian perspective.  Her play, Dreaming in Autism, received third prize at Ottawa Little Theatre’s 72nd National One-Act Playwriting Competition.  Her TYA play, Simone, Half and Half, published by Playwrights Canada Press, earned her a nomination from Gala Dynastie for Author of the Year.  She was part of PWM’s 2023 Gros Morne Playwright Residence and continues to work on her next play entitled ORO, which received third place in Infinitheatre’s 2024 Write-on-Q playwriting competition.  An alumna of the Canadian Film Centre, Christine also has a Certificate of Professional Screenwriting from UCLA and is currently working on a bachelor’s in Hispanic studies from Université de Montréal. 

Maguy Métellus est une Haïtiano-québécoise, militante afroféministe, artiste de la parole, lectrice/diseuse, une passionnée du verbe, et une animatrice hors-pair très sollicitée. Au cours des vingt-cinq dernières années, elle a prêté sa voix comme animatrice, diseuse ou conférencière pour des événements/activités diverses.
Elle est reconnue pour son éloquence, son charisme, de même que sa capacité à s’exprimer avec un égal bonheur en français, en créole et en anglais, et à parler de sujets fondamentaux avec intelligence et sensibilité.
Depuis mai 2015, elle co-organise et co-anime les soirées Lectures Logos Readings, co-fondées avec les écrivains H. Nigel Thomas et Horace I. Goddard (RIP), une plateforme accueillant des écrivainEs anglophones et francophones d’origines diverses.
Elle est également une mère et une grand-mère bénie. Les nouvelles générations se tournent vers elle comme source d’inspiration, une aînée respectée et aimée, gardienne de la mémoire des luttes des communautés afro-descendantes de Montréal.

Christine Rodriguez is a writer from Montreal who creates from a mixed-race, Afro-Trinidadian perspective.  Her play, Dreaming in Autism, received third prize at Ottawa Little Theatre’s 72nd National One-Act Playwriting Competition.  Her TYA play, Simone, Half and Half, published by Playwrights Canada Press, earned her a nomination from Gala Dynastie for Author of the Year.  She was part of PWM’s 2023 Gros Morne Playwright Residence and continues to work on her next play entitled ORO, which received third place in Infinitheatre’s 2024 Write-on-Q playwriting competition.  An alumna of the Canadian Film Centre, Christine also has a Certificate of Professional Screenwriting from UCLA and is currently working on a bachelor’s in Hispanic studies from Université de Montréal. 

Marcia Johnson is an actor/writer/dramaturg based in T’karonto.
Her play Serving Elizabeth premiered at Western Canada Theatre (co-produced with Thousand Islands Playhouse) in February 2020. The TIP production was pandemic-delayed by a full year. Other productions played at the Stratford Festival, Belfry Theatre and Theatre Aquarius and Peterborough Players in New Hampshire. The podcast version is available on CBC Radio and PlayMe.
Other plays include Binti’s Journey based on The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis and Say Ginger Ale which began as a radio drama and adapted for the stage for SummerWorks Festival.
Marcia has performed in theatres including YES/Sudbury Theatre Centre (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time); Blyth Festival (New Canadian Curling Club, 1837: The Farmers’ Revolt) and Factory Theatre/GCTC (The Real McCoy). She also makes brief appearances in TV and Film (American Gods, American Gothic, Diggstown) and two shorts making the festival circuit (Comics, Memento Mori).

potatoCakes_digital is the award winning production design, digital arts, and technical services company of Emily Soussana and Andrew Scriver. Formed as named collective in 2018, and legally incorporated in 2021, the pair have been working together for almost a decade as an all-encompassing artistic and technical team offering digital dramaturgical support, production management, and technical direction–as well as designing video, lighting, sound, set, and costumes for live performance, installation, and digital art in Tiohtià:ke and across Canada.

The company’s mandate is to technically helm and realise cohesive, digitally enhanced, character driven designs for productions from conception to performance. As digital dramaturgs, Emily and Andrew have helped push the boundaries of the Canadian performance digital landscape, through their work with Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal leading digital creation residencies, and the Associated Designers of Canada as co-curators of the Level UP online symposium in 2021 and Live Virtual Experiments in 2021-22.

potatocakesdigital.ca

Djanet Sears is a playwright, director, and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Her work has graced such stages as the National Arts Centre, Mirvish Productions, Tarragon Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, Obsidian Theatre, Black Theatre Workshop, Centaur Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre, the Public Theatre, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Crossroads Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Grand Theatre, St. Louis Black Repertory, Canadian Stage, and Factory Theatre. Her best known plays, Harlem Duet and The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, have been widely published. She has been awarded several honours including a Governor General’s Literary Award, an Honorary Doctorate, a Canadian Screenwriting Award, the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, Dora Mavor Moore Awards, a Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, Golden & Ruth Harris Prize, and a Gold Prize at the International Radio Festival of New York. She is a founding member of the Obsidian Theatre Company, and the editor of two anthologies: Testifyin’: Contemporary African Canadian Drama, Vols. I & II.

Rachel Mutombo is an award-winning actor and writer. An acting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, she has had the great pleasure of acting on screen and stages across the country. As a freelance writer, Rachel has had essays and articles published including by CBC and Intermission Magazine.

Her debut play, Vierge, was recently produced by Black Theatre Workshop and GCTC.  Vierge was awarded first prize in Infinitheatre’s Write-On-Q playwriting competition in 2020 and was shortlisted for the 2024 QWF Prize for Playwriting. The play is set to be published in the fall of 2025. Rachel has various other projects in development including a theatre for young audience play called Homeroom. Homeroom was the 2021 winner of Playwright’s Guild of Canada Tom Hendry award. Most recently, Rachel was awarded the Canadian playwright prize from the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund.

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, a.k.a. Belladonna the Blest, is an emcee, playwright, and agitator. Her main body of work, the 54ology, includes Cake, Sound of the Beast, A Man A Fish, Salome’s Clothes, Gas Girls, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses, and The First Stone. Works for young audiences include the META-nominated Reaching For Starlight, The Chariot, and Rabbit King of Kenya. Opera libretti include Forbidden (Afarin Mansouri/Tapestry Opera) and Oubliette (Ivan Barbotin/Tapestry Opera). She is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of the Playwrights Canada Press Refractions anthologies, and editor of Indian Act: Residential School Plays.

d’bi.young is an internationally acclaimed visionary dub poet, playwright-performer, director-dramaturge, and activist-scholar, who creates, embodies, and teaches critical dub pedagogy. Culminating their PhD in Black womyn’s theatre at London South Bank University, their research centers on the epistemological, ontological, cosmological, ethical, aesthetic, and somatic emancipation of the oppressed self through storytelling. d’bi.young developed the Anitafrika Method—a nurturant Black-queer-feminist pedagogy of transformation—offering arts practitioners globally, an intersectional framework of knowing, doing, and being. A widely anthologized Siminovitch Playwright Prize finalist, three-time Dora award winner, and founding Artistic Director of Watah Theatre, Spolrusie Press, and Ubuntu Decolonial Arts Centre in Costa Rica, d’bi.young has authored twelve plays, seven albums, and four poetry collections. They currently serve as lead faculty in the training programs of Soulpepper and Obsidian theatre companies. The 2025 Lehan Arts & Activism Lecturer recently completed a term in UVic’s theatre department centering decolonial performance praxis. d’bi.young’s present initiatives include leading the Canada Council-funded national Black Womyn in Theatre Digital Archive project, establishing Watah Theatre’s new Black Theatre School which offers professional training in both performance and non-performance disciplines of theatre, and preparing for the 20th-anniversary staging and book launch of their multi-ward-winning classic—The Sankofa Trilogy—at the Theatre Centre.