Joanna Garfinkel

Artistic Director & Dramaturg

Joanna (any) is the co-founder, with Yoshie Bancroft, of Universal Limited. Joanna sees dramaturgy as a practice of investigation, research, advice, and above all advocacy, for both a project, and for the artist behind it. Joanna is a frequent mentor, collaborator, and teacher, within PTC and outside of it; and would like their projects to speak for the practice. Joanna is humbled to have long and repeating working relationships with incredible artists, and looks to meet them continually with curiosity and rigour.

Current dramaturgy includes: UL’s To the Sea; Kamila Sediego’s Engkanto, José Teodoro’s Binary Star, Christina Cook’s Postcards to My Younger Transsexual Self, Tara Cheyenne’s Pants, and Anais West’s Tomboy. 

Co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and across BC. Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and commits to trouble those patterns through performance. Other recent credits: Head Dramaturg, National Queer & Trans playwriting Unit (Consortium of 9 Canadian Companies); Berlin: The Last Cabaret (PuSh), Poly Queer Love Ballad, (Passe Muraille, Toronto) 

Joanna has been nominated for three Jessie awards; the Pure Research grant (Nightswimming, Toronto), Sydney Risk award for directing. Joanna moved to Unceded Coast-Salish territory to get an MFA in directing at UBC, and focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. Joanna also trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York.