WrightSpace

The WrightSpace participants for 2019-20 were:

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  Tanya Marquardt

  TANYA MARQUARDT is a genderqueer writer and performer, whose book Stray: Memoir of a Runaway was published in 2018 and named a Best Queer History & Bio in LGBTQI2S+ Magazine The Advocate. The performance version, commissioned by Theatre Conspiracy and written with Tim Carlson, toured both Canada and the US. Their play Transmission was published in the Canadian Theatre Review, and Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, about Tanya’s life as a sleeptalker, was the subject of an NPR Invisibila podcast. Their essays have appeared in Medium, Huffpost, Howl Round, Grain, DanceGeist, and Plentitude Magazine. Tanya has performed with Jerome Bel, Mabou Mines, Jess Barbagallo, Ballez, the only animal, radix theatre, and the Leaky Heaven Circus. Their theatre works have been presented at Dixon Place, BAX, PuSh, VIDF, Dancing on the Edge, The Tank, Summerworks, foldA, PIVOT Festival, the Collapsable Hole and the Brooklyn Museum. They graduated with a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College and are grateful to live and dream on the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and Skwxwú7mesh Nations of the Coast Salish peoples, and in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenni-Lenape people. Currently, Tanya dances in their kitchen, writes memoir, and sends you all queer love during this strange, strange time.  IG: @tanya.marquardt

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  Anais West

  Anais is a queer writer, actor and producer of Polish descent, as well as a settler on occupied Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories (colonially called Vancouver). Anais’ work merges theatre with other art forms to examine the multiplicitous natures of desire, identity, and culture. Her projects include the video-play hybrid Kill Your Lovers, (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb Festival, Toronto, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC) and the slam poetry musical Poly Queer Love Ballad, co-written with Sara Vickruck. Poly Queer Love Ballad won PTC’s Fringe in Play Prize and the Georgia Straight Critics’ Choice Award, then went on to be nominated for two Jessie Richardson Awards including Outstanding Original Script and Outstanding Production in Musical Theatre. The show toured Turtle Island (Canada) in 2019, with presentations at the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver, the SkirtsAfire Festival in Edmonton, and Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. Anais is currently writing Underground Absolute Fiction (UAF), an interdisciplinary performance that combines monologues, music videos and queer ‘zines. UAF was presented as a reading at the Queer Arts Festival and as a short film at Rumble Theatre’s Tremors Festival in 2020. As an actor, Anais has worked with Theatre la Seizieme, the Only Animal, Rumble Theatre’s Tremors Festival, the Arts Club and more. She is the frank theatre company’s Operations Manager & Associate Producer, where she most recently produced She Mami Wata & The Pussy WitchHunt by d’bi young anitrafrika at the 2020 PuSh Festival. Photo by Kimberly Ho.

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  Lili Robinson

  Lili Robinson (she/they) is a theatre artist, poet and facilitator based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Lili is passionate about centring voices at the intersections of queerness, Black diaspora, socio-economic diversity and femme identity in their work. Since graduating Studio 58 in 2018, Lili has worked and trained with an array of theatre companies including Theatre Replacement, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Rumble Theatre, New Harlem Productions, the frank theatre, UpintheAir Theatre, Neworld Theatre, and the Arts Club. Lili’s debut play, Mx, was the winner of the 2019 Fringe New Play Prize and the 2019 Cultchivating the Fringe Award, and was subsequently presented as a digital production in the Cultch’s 2021/2022 season. Currently, Lili is the Resident Curator at rEvolver Festival; she is also developing two new plays, “Infest” and “Maroon”. While theatre is Lili’s primary practice, poetry and spoken word are her first loves. Lili has been featured as a part of the Vancouver Writer’s Festival, Queer Arts Festival’s “Queerotica” and “Futurosity in the Midst of History” events, and online as part of Brick Books’ Brickyard online platform. In their spare time Lili loves napping, geeking out on Afrofuturism, and cooking food that connects them to their Black Southern roots.

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  Scott Button

  Scott (he/his) is a creator working in film, television and theatre. His TV pilot script NIGHT PASSING is a semi-finalist in the Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship (2020) and the Diverse Voices Competition (2020), it is also a “Second-Rounder” in the prestigious Austin Film Festival. Recently, his quarantine-themed film/theatre hybrid DESIREE AMA was commissioned by Upintheair Theatre. Scott is the lead writer at the Research-Based Theatre Collaborative at the University of British Columbia. With the Collaborative, he is currently writing and producing ROCK THE BOAT, a series of films that explore fraught student and faculty relationships. His plays VIVA (Theatre BC Playwriting Award-Best One Act), THE HUNGER ROOM & DESIRE(E) have received local production, and DESIRE(E) has been published in an anthology of new work. He is an inaugural member of the Arts Club Theatre Company’s Emerging Playwrights Unit. Scott’s writing often features multi-faceted LGBTQIA2S+ lead characters. Upcoming: Night Passing podcast (Arts Club Theatre), and a play for youth with Green Thumb Theatre. These days, he is grateful to be spending the pandemic with his wonderful husband, Chris.

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  Derek Chan

  Derek Chan (陳嘉昊) grew up in colonial Hong Kong, studied in Norway, and currently lives in Vancouver. He received his BFA in theatre performance from Simon Fraser University. A playwright, director, performer, translator, and producer, Derek has been co-artistic director of rice & beans theatre since 2010. He has also worked with Playwrights Theatre Centre (artistic director apprentice), Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (associate artistic producer), and the rEvolver Festival (guest curator).

  In 2015, Derek was awarded the Vancouver Fringe New Play Prize with Starstuff: per aspera ad astra. At the 2016 Glassco Translation Residency hosted by Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal, Derek translated Jovanni Sy’s A Taste of Empire (Cantonese title: 食盡天下/Sik Zeon Tin Haa). The play was subsequently nominated for a Dora Award (Best Touring Production) in 2018. His play, Chicken Girl (2019/20), won the Sydney Risk Award for Outstanding Original Play by an Emerging Playwright, and was nominated for Outstanding Original Script at the Jessies. Derek was part of the 2020 Banff Playwrights Lab, and has been a National Arts Centre English Theatre Artist in Residence (19/20) with yellow objects, a new play about the ongoing pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

  Derek has also worked on: tonight, just the two of us (writer, fu-GEN/The Transformation Project); Carried Away on the Crest of a Wave (assistant director, Arts Club); No Foreigners (performer/translator, Hong Kong Exile/fu-GEN); Pick a Number (co-writer/performer, Boca del Lupo/FUSE). With rice & beans: Loomings; or The Whale (playwright/director), Mis Papás (performer), Last Train In (director); and Sik Zeon Tin Haa/A Taste of Empire (translator/performer, with Gateway Theatre’s Pacific Festival (2016) and Cahoots Theatre (2018).

   

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  Keely O’Brien

  Keely O’Brien is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her art practice incorporates intricately handmade objects with immersive, innovative theatre creation. Devoted to a thoroughly handmade, DIY process, Keely’s work includes puppetry in miniature and enormous scales, immersive installations, imaginative ephemera, and interactive experiences. As a community engaged arts educator Keely creates and facilitates participatory and collaborative artwork with community members and organizations. Deeply site-responsive and engaged with questions of place, home, and belonging, Keely’s work aims to celebrate the potential for creativity and community in the place and people around her. Keely is Co-Artistic Director of experimental theatre company Popcorn Galaxies. She holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University.

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  June Fukumura

  June is a Japanese-Canadian inter-disciplinary theatre artist with a BFA in Theatre Performance and a Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Simon Fraser University. June is the Co-Founder of New(to)Town Collective, an artist collective with a mandate to create new experimental works, provide ongoing accessible physical theatre training and experimental research workshops called Training Jams. June is also the Co-Artistic Director of Popcorn Galaxies, an experimental theatre company interested in re-enchanting the everyday through unconventional site-responsive and site-specific works. Popcorn Galaxies has produced over eleven independent productions in seven years and has been presented at Centre A Gallery, Vancouver Fringe Festival, BC Culture Days, rEvolver Festival, The Array: First Contact, and will be presenting a new work at PuShOFF 2021.

  Additionally, she was the Assistant Dramaturg at the Playwrights Lab at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2019 – 2020 and the Emerging Dramaturg for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG program in 2019. She independently produces the Nikkei Artist Mixer, the Emerging Dramaturg Mixer, and is the founder of Dyslexic Players Canada. Her artistic practice includes: experimental theatre creation, acting for theatre/film, performance, clown, dramaturgy, directing, producing, curating, Japanese language translation and language coaching, and cultural leadership.

The WrightSpace participants for 2019-20 were:

2020

• Scott Button
• Derek Chan
• June Fukumura
• Tanya Marquardt
• Keely O’Brien
• Lili Robinson
• Anais West

2018

• Barbara Adler
• Tai Amy Grauman

2017

• Taran Kootenhayo

2014

• Leanna Brodie
• Tim Carlson

2009

• Dave Deveau