As we strove to make our storytelling of the Chinese immigrant experience authentic, we gathered a cast and creative team almost entirely comprised of East Asian artists to help shape the story. With a story that illuminates the inequities within our own community, we made the conscious choice to include artists of colour and minority voices both onstage and offstage.

"I believe it was the great Michael Scott who once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” To me, the development of Electric Innovations has been all about shooting shots, dreaming big, and saying “why not?”. And that’s really what being a theatre maker is all about, right? Risk-taking, being innovative, and thinking outside the box."

Mellissa Larivière graduated from the French Acting Program at the NTS in 2011. She is an actress, but also a playwright, a director, an artistic associate and the co-executive and artistic director of the //SAS// Laboratoire de création. 
It’s for her incredible artistic commitment to the Montréal arts community that the National Theatre School of Canada is presenting to Mellissa Larivière the 2021 Gascon-Thomas Award for Innovation. 

Yvette Nolan is an Algonquin playwright, director, and dramaturg from Saskatchewan. It is for her contribution to Canadian theatre that Yvette Nolan receives the Gascon-Thomas 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. Her compelling and profound works contribute to highlight the claims and issues of Indigenous communities in Canada and to denounce the social injustices they are still experiencing. 

"When I'm auditioning for a part or reading for a part, how does it factor into the whole piece? Am I there just to spout some exposition or am I there to get the hero get to? If it's not justifiable, then I'm not gonna do it."

Following the death of George Floyd, many institutions put out statements regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. Among these was a declaration released by NTS, Declaration to Fight Systemic Racism. This prompted a series of conversations (both public and private) between the NTS administration and a group of IBPoC students, who would later come to be known as the IBPoC ASC.