Sylvia Cloutier is an actor, musician, playwright, television and theatre producer, director, motivational speaker and mother from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), currently residing in Montreal. During her more than twenty-five year career in the performing arts, she has shared the stage with musicians and ensembles such as Tafelmusik, the National Art Center Symphony Orchestra; co-founded Aqsarniit, the Inuit performing arts company promoting Inuit culture; and was Artistic Director of Qaggiq theatre company (2004-2009), among other accolades. A highly sought after director and producer for both stage and screen, Cloutier has produced six Inuktitut television shows, and numerous high-level events and concerts; in 2009 she was named “Woman of the Year” by Pauktutiit, the national Inuit women’s organization, and in 2013 she received an award for “Outstanding young woman of the year” from Qullit Nunavut women’s organization.

Poonam Dhir (they/she) is a queer playwright, poet, Punjabi descendent, and settler currently based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal), on the traditional, unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka people. Poonam’s work explores identity, trauma, memory and the relationship between belief and belonging. They contemplate themes of migration, displacement and loss. They are the recipient of a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellowship in Playwriting and a finalist for the 2021 PEN Canada New Voices Award, Poetry. Poonam was selected to participate in Nightwood Theatre’s 2022-23 Write From the Hip Program led by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. They are on the editorial teams of The Puritan & carte blanche literary magazines. You can read her latest pieces in Vallum, Contemporary Verse 2, PRISM International and forthcoming in The Capilano Review.
Find Poonam on twitter @pnmdhir.

An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, Drew Hayden Taylor has worn many hats in his literary career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., to being Artistic Director of Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. He has been an award-winning playwright, a journalist/columnist (appearing regularly in several Canadian newspapers and magazines), short-story writer, novelist, television scriptwriter, and has worked on numerous documentaries exploring the Native experience. An author of more than 20 plays, his popular plays such as Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, The Berlin Blues, and Cottagers and Indians have left their mark on the Canadian theatre scene. In the world of prose, he enjoys spreading the boundaries of what is considered Indigenous literature.

Masha Bashmakova is a Montreal-based theatre artist from Russia and the UAE, navigating the ways in which creative expression serves as a deep and necessary language in expressing interpersonal and social challenges. A graduate of Concordia’s Performance Creation program, her current practice spans visual and performing arts, with a specific focus in performance, theatre directing, and interdisciplinary creation. Masha’s recent work explores fragmentation in forms of episodic storytelling, diving into the points of encounter between image-based, audio and text-based storytelling languages.

Jeremy is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Tio’tià:ke (Montreal). As far as acting goes, they have played a tree (Chant de l'arbre, Toxique Trottoir), just finished their first season at Bard on the Beach(Antipholus twins in Comedy of Errors & Claudio and Pompey in Measure for Measure), and took part in the world premiere of a play adaptation of the book Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough, put on by Infinithéâtre. As for the other disciplinary stuff, Jeremy is an improviser, a musician, a lyricist, and a pleasure to have in class.