National Playwrights Retreat

Carly Anna Billings (she/her) is an Italian and Ojibwe actor, playwright, singer, comedian and storyteller born and bred in her favourite city, Hamilton, ON. She is always grateful to live and create on the traditional lands of her people the Mississaugas of the Credit. Her performing career has brought her to live audiences from Prince Edward Island to Edmonton to New York City and back again. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa in Theatre (Acting) in French Immersion with a minor in Italian Language and Culture. Carly has studied comedy at he Second City Toronto and Caroline’s Comedy in NYC. She is also an alumna in producing and theatre-making as a part of the Nightwood Innovators Program in Toronto and a member of the inaugural Canadian Green Alliance Mentorship Program. In 2022, her critically acclaimed solo show exploring her cultural identities called Meat(less) Loaf (Afterlife Theatre) premiered at the Hamilton Fringe. She is a co-founder of the bi-city theatre company Afterlife Theatre whose latest work Uninvited Guests was presented as a work in progress at the 2023 Frost Bites Festival and in Toronto at Space Space Revolution through their scholarship program. Her work has been supported by the CCA, the OAC (through recommenders like Native Earth Performing Arts, Studio 180, Tottering Biped and Theatre Aquarius) and the Lighthouse Festival Theatre among others. She believes laughter and joy are the foundation for a healthy and creative arts practice, they’re the best medicine.

Louise Casemore is an artist advocate, prairie nuisance, and two-time Sterling Award winning playwright. Based in Alberta on Treaty 6 and 7 Territory, she is the recipient of the ATP/Enbridge Playwright’s Award, was shortlisted for the inaugural John Palmer Award from the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and is a 2023 Edmonton Artist Trust Fund honoree. Original plays include OCD (Canadian tour), Functional (Found Festival, IGNITE!), GEMINI (Chinook Series, High Performance Rodeo), and Undressed (Alberta Theatre Projects). Louise remains active in the wider community by way of dramaturgy, teaching, and sector research; and in 2021 she released the long-range national study on new play development, “Surveying The Landscape” (commissioned by Alberta Playwright’s Network). She is a member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, LMDA, the Citadel Theatre Dramaturgy Lab, and recently completed an MFA in Theatre Practice with a specialization in Playwriting for Immersive Theatre from the University of Alberta.

Meghan Gardiner is a Vancouver based actor and playwright. Her one-woman show Dissolve premiered at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in 2003 and continues to tour to this day. She was the playwright in residence at Green Thumb Theatre, penning Blind Spot and Role Call for their 2009 and 2011 seasons, the latter garnering her the Sydney Risk Award for Emerging Playwright at the 2012 Jessies. Meghan’s other plays include Love Bomb, To Perfection (shameless hussy productions), We Three (Carousel Theatre) and Gross Misconduct (SpeakEasy/Gateway Theatre). She wrote a short film called Stalled and created a documentary film with the CBC based on Dissolve, both leading to screenwriting nominations at the Leo Awards in Vancouver. Meghan is currently working on commissions for both Carousel Theatre and the Arts Club. Her recent acting credits include: The Cull, The Sound of Music (Arts Club), The Boy in the Moon (NeWorld Theatre), and How the World Began (Pacific Theatre). She is a very proud YWCA Woman of Distinction nominee, and lives in Vancouver with her husband and daughter.

I’m Njoki, though many know me as Kijo Gatama. I’m an emerging multidisciplinary performance-maker, delving into playwriting, movement, acting, artistic producing, and directing. My artistic journey is driven by a passion for exploring afro-queer identity and the intricate interplay of gender, race, ethnicity, and the diverse lived experiences of people from equity-seeking groups. Currently, I proudly serve as the Outreach coordinator for Azimuth Theatre and Program coordinator for YEP with Fringe theatre. I am the co-artistic Director of Here, for: Fear Collectives, a hybrid film/theatre company dedicated to pushing boundaries and challenging norms. In my work as a playwright, I delve into Folklore and Queer Afro-Canadian experiences, with notable pieces such as “Hyena’s Trail” at rEvolver Festival (2022) and “Mango of The Dead” at A Thousand Faces Festival (2022). Noteworthy premieres include “Hyena’s Trail” at Nextfest (June 2023) and “A Tale of Two Bundles” as part of Thou Art Here’s Immersive Program in 2023. Currently, I’m immersed in developing “The Forage” with Nightwood Theatre, a project that’s close to my heart. I’m so happy to be embrace nature and great company at the retreat!

Kevin Kerr is a playwright and founding member of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre. Produced plays of his include Studies in Motion (Electric Company Theatre/national tour), Skydive (Realwheels Theatre national tour), The Remittance Man (Sunshine Theatre), an adaptation of Pierre Berton’s Secret World of Og (Carousel Theatre) and the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning Unity (1918) which was premiered by Touchstone Theatre and has been produced across Canada, the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Malaysia. Much of his theatre work has been developed in a highly collaborative process and he has been a co-creator on numerous projects, most regularly with the artists of Electric Company. His collaboratively created plays include Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla (co- writer, actor), The Score (co-writer, actor), The Fall (co-writer, actor), Palace Grand (director, dramaturge), Tear the Curtain! (co-writer), You Are Very Star (co-writer, assistant director), and The Full Light of Day (dramaturge). In 2015 he wrote The Nights Mare for the Caravan Farm Theatre’s summer production, (directed by Courtenay Dobbie.) He has also written for screen (The Score, CBC/Screen Siren) and immersive media projects including Stan Douglas’ Circa 1948 and Electric Company’s The Virtual Light of Day, a suite of virtual reality installaions that he wrote and directed, which premiered in 2019. Since 2012, he’s been teaching playwri(ng at the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing.

Cole Lewis – I am  a theatre artist who has written, devised, and directed award-winning and Dora-nominated performance through Guilty by Association and Suitcase in Point. My adaptation of Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf was produced by Geordie Theatre. I recently completed a seed commission, entitled Grief Redux for Stratford, and I developed 2021: Mechanisms to Hold for Tarragon Theatre’s 2024 Greenhouse Residency. I am also exploring bias in coding for Unreal Engine through Nightswimming’s Pure Research and teaching a robot to play pinata for a community installation at Niagara Artist Centre for a main space exhibition in 2025. But I doubt that tells you who I am. So a wee bit more: I am a white, mad, cis-gendered woman with an ivy league education, raised by a single-parent in subsidised housing on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Mississauga People, where I was named a Canadian citizen to my immigrant Mother. I bring a conscious recognition of my positionality—and the privileges inherent within it—to all of my artistry. Alongside this learning/unlearning of self, I bring—as both human and artist—a firm dedication to building space for awe in theatre.

Clem Martini is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter with over thirty plays, and thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction to his credit, including the W.O. Mitchell Award-winning Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, The Unravelling, and The Comedian. His most recently premiered plays, Cantata (Rumours of My Crazy, Useless Life) and The Extinction Therapist were published together in a book in 2023. He’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and teaches in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.

Luke Reece is an award-winning poet, playwright and producer who strives to share authentic and engaging stories with audiences through his work. Luke is the Associate Artistic Director at Soulpepper Theatre, one of Canada’s leading non-profit theatre companies.Through his work as an artistic leader within the national arts community, he advocates for entertaining and nuanced storytelling that challenges Canadian audiences. He is one of Toronto’s most decorated slam poets, and his body of work includes a radio play, animated short, and a praised short film featured on CBC titled ‘Notice’. Luke has represented Canada on the world stage of Slam Poetry, and was also featured by NBA Champion and former Toronto Raptor Serge Ibaka on his Instagram Talent Show, ‘How Talented Are You?’. His solo show “As I Must Live It” premiered February 2024 and has garnered praise and comparisons to Lin-Manuel Miranda in The Globe and Mail.

Michele Riml is a critically acclaimed playwright from Vancouver, British Columbia. Michele began writing at 17, when her first play Souvenirs won The BC Young Playwrights Search. Some of her plays include Under the Influence, Poster Boys, RAGE (winner 2005 Sydney Risk Award) produced in French, Polish and German; On the Edge, and The Amaryllis, which was produced by The Search Party and premiered at The Fire Hall Theatre in Vancouver in the fall of 2020 (shut down because of pandemic). Her plays Sexy Laundry and Henry and Alice: Into the Wild have become international hits with ongoing productions in Canada, the United States and Europe. Sexy Laundry will be remounted at The Granville Island stage in spring of 2023. Michele is also a writer of Theatre for Young Audiences, and her YPT plays, commissioned by Green Thumb Theatre, have been widely produced and translated. They include The Skinny Lie, The Invisible Girl and Tree Boy, published in 2017 by National Geographic and most recently produced in Athens, Greece. Misadventures at the Lighthouse, a zoom mystery play for Green Thumb Theatre and the BC Library Association was a pandemic adventure. Her most recent play The Cull, co-written with Mike St. John, premiered at The Arts Club Theatre in 2023. Michele is an FPA graduate from Simon Fraser University. In 2008, she was nominated for the Siminovitch prize.

Nikki Shaffeeullah (she/her) is a theatre & film artist, facilitator, producer, equity worker, and community organizer. She has a rich background in community-engaged arts, which she weaves into her creative practice as a director, writer, and performer. Nikki’s work has included serving as Artistic Director of The AMY Project; Editor-in-Chief of alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage; and Assistant Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre. Nikki visioned, curated, and produced Stages of Transformation with National Arts Centre – English Theatre: a three-year artistic research project exploring what theatre can learn from abolition movements. Nikki leads sector-change research and training projects through her organization Undercurrent Creations. She is a founding member of Confluence Arts Collective, a group of artists-activists who believe in transformative justice and a world without prisons. Nikki’s first playwriting project A Poem for Rabia, a finalist for both the PGC’s Emerging Playwright Award and the international Nancy Dean Playwriting Award, premiered in October 2023 at Tarragon Theatre in association with Nightwood Theatre and Undercurrent Creations. Other writing highlights include her poem Spirits winning first place in Briarpatch Magazine’s national contest, and her screenplay Purgatory landing a finalist spot in Reel Asian Film Festival’s pitch competition. Nikki has held artistic residencies with organizations including Canadian Stage, Why Not Theatre, The Theatre Centre, and SummerWorks. Nikki holds an MFA in Community-Engaged Theatre from the University of Alberta, where her thesis won the Canadian Association for Theatre Research award for Intercultural Theatre. She has taught and directed in several university performance departments. Nikki’s work has been recognized many times, including with the Patrick Connor Award, and nominations for the Pauline Gibbon Award and the Ontario Arts Foundation Artist-Educator Award. A queer Indo-Caribbean artist born and living on Dish With One Spoon territory, Nikki believes that art should disrupt the status quo, centre the margins, engage with the ancient, dream of the future, and be for everyone.

Makambe K Simamba is a multiple award-winning playwright and actor. Select stage acting credits include The First Stone (New Harlem Productions), Serving Elizabeth (Thousand Islands Playhouse), GIANT (Ghost River Theatre), Winners and Losers (Chromatic Theatre), Bea (Sage Theatre), inVISIBLE (Handsome Alice Theatre) and SIA (Pyretic Productions). On screen, she can be seen in projects such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Titans, True Dating Stories, Grand Army and more. As a playwright, her solo work includes the multiple Dora Award-Winning Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, A Chitenge Story and Makambe Speaks. Her works in progress have been supported by The Stratford Festival, Banff Playwright’s Lab, Downstage Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, b current performing arts, Citadel theatre, Obsidian Theatre, and Green Thumb Theatre. Makambe was the 2020/21 Urjo Kareda Artist in Residence at the Tarragon theatre, and the co-host of Cahoots Theatre’s Blackstage Pass Podcast. Makambe’s intention is to be of service through her ability to tell stories.

Diana Tso is a theatre artist, playwright, storyteller and Dora award winning actor. She’s a graduate of the University of Toronto in English Literature and of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre de Jacques Lecoq in France. She’s worked with diverse theatres internationally for over 25 years. Most recently she performed in Modern Times Stage Company’s The Cherry Orchard, Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s Les Misérables and at the 2017 Stratford Festival in Bakkhai and The Komagata Maru Incident. As artistic director of Red Snow Collective, www.redsnowcollective.ca Diana’s plays focus on empowering women, Red Snow (2012) brings to light global peace and reconciliation; Comfort (2016) brings to light the resilience of women in war, Monkey Queen is a re-imagining of Wu Cheng’en 16th century epic from the female perspective. Her first production, Red Snow, in association with Aluna Theatre & Toronto ALPHA was directed by Beatriz Pizano and was remounted at the Shanghai International Contemporary Theatre Festival 2012. Her theatre co-creations/performances include Dante’s Inferno and Chekhov Shorts, both with Theatre Smith-Gilmour; and by the way, Miss… with Urge/Theatre Direct, from which she shares the Dora Mavor Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. She played Jade in the 2010 premiere production of Paul Yee’s play, Jade in Coal, inspired by the Chinese coal mining community in British Columbia, directed by Heidi Specht. Recent creations include: unwavering, commissioned by Convergence Theatre under their 2020 COVID Confessions series.