Joanna Garfinkel

Dramaturg, Creative Engagement

Joanna Garfinkel  (she/any) is the Dramaturg, Creative Engagement at Playwrights Theatre Centre and co-founder, with Yoshie Bancroft, of Universal Limited. Joanna’s focus is in collaborative approaches to new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work; upcoming projects include dramaturgy with ZeeZee Theatre/VACT on My Little Tomato, and the Queer & Trans playwriting unit; UL’s development on To the Sea; PTC Associates Kamila Sediego’s Engkanto and José Teodoro’s Binary Star. She is also working on ongoing dance collaborations, including TCP’s Pants. She is the co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, which has been performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and in several locations in between. Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and commits to trouble those patterns through performance. Other notable credits include Berlin: The Last Cabaret at PuSh 2020, and the multi-award-winning Poly Queer Love Ballad, which toured to Theatre Passe Murailles in 2019. She has been nominated for three Jessie awards, winning one (Critics Choice for Innovation); was awarded the Pure Research grant from Nightswimming Theatre (Toronto), and has received the Sydney Risk award for directing. She moved to Vancouver to get her MFA in directing at UBC, and her focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York.