Sketch Comedy in the Community is a free class in sketch comedy creation offered by actor, director and sketch comedian Allison Moira Kelly. The class will offer participants an understanding of how to dissect jokes, focus on the responsibility of the comedian, explore what we mean by “sketch comedy,” write sketch in various forms, and act in sketch comedy. At the class’s culmination, participants will write and act in a small showcase of sketch comedy!

Allison Moira Kelly (they/them) is an actor, director, sketch comedian and acting teacher from Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. Allison has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Master of Fine Arts from York University (acting), and is now studying directing at the National Theatre School of Canada. Allison has worked as an actor with companies such as Riding Tide, Perchance Theatre, Two Planks and a Passion, and Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. Allison is one-fourth of the sketch comedy troupe Mom’s Girls, who were the top-selling show at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival in March of 2023.

Wanna be on a first-name basis with the Bard? Call Me Billy is a comprehensive, practical, inclusive and fun video series detailing how to approach and perform a Shakespeare monologue. The series breaks it down into easy-to-remember steps with helpful exercises folks can do at home. This series will culminate by inviting the audience to participate by filming their own monologue with the help of the tools they learned to use along the way. The project will evolve into a collection of work from people of all levels, experiences and ages engaging in the epic storytelling of Shakespeare!

Leanna Williams is a South-African-Canadian actor, writer and musician from Regina, Saskatchewan. As a graduate from the National Theatre School’s acting program, she is most excited to delve into the world of Canadian theatre, film and television. She’s also interested in connecting people of all ages to the storyteller within themselves and empowering them to speak their imagination into existence.

Witty Fools is an acting podcast created by Megan Murphy for endlessly curious artists with an intellectual bent. Through monologue and interviews, Megan explores a variety of theatre-related topics, varying from a SparkNotes history of theatre, to science and art, to what they’ve learned at theatre school. They’ll ask the big dumb questions so you don’t have to.

Megan Murphy is a 20-year-old non-binary Canadian actor, writer, singer and artist from Fredericton, New Brunswick (with proud family ties to Newfoundland). Megan hopes to act in television, film, voice-over and theatre. They are passionate about vibrant new work as well as timeless classical tales. A lover of history, comedy, film and art, it is her dream to inhabit characters of all types—all genders, backgrounds and stories. Megan is a curious, ambitious, and dedicated young artist, with a bright & brilliant future. also dreams of writing, producing and directing their own work in the company of fellow artists and the friends they make along the way. Find them online at meganlilianmurphy.com and on Instagram at @meganmurphz and @meganmurphyart.

In this drag cabaret, Jizz-Elle, a Métis Two-Spirit drag performer, performs songs by Métis artists from around Turtle Island—including Twin Flames, Ceileigh Cardinal, Iskwe and others—and shares cultural intricacies through storytelling. Beyond educating and sharing stories about Indigenous ancestry, the Cabaret will be an opportunity to promote the rich musical culture of Indigenous people of our land, which is too often undermined. And let’s be real, who doesn’t like a drag performance?

PAPEÇA

Papeça is a solo created and performed by Cha Raoutenfeld and designed with Mathilde Boudreau, Ophélie Lacasse, Margot Lacoste, Annie Préfontaine, Morena Prats, Flavie Lemée and other collaborators to be confirmed.

Papeça follows the hurried evolution of the Créature character in the discovery of their femininity, their sexuality and their double identity. Over a period of about ten years, between Russia and Quebec, in front of the mirror in their classical ballet class, always between dream and reality, Créature delivers a fight that’s already lost. Créature is at the mercy of the outside world and is quickly overcome by other bodies and voices. To survive, Créature transforms and, through performative and physical moments of trance, tries to expulse what overwhelms and constrains them.

Cha Raoutenfeld biography (Ontario)

Cha Raoutenfeld (they) is a queer transdisciplinary artist. As a performer, creator and interpreter, they flourish in the margins, while deconstructing and reconsidering dominant frameworks.
Cha is of Slavic and Quebecois origin. Their process and trajectory are anchored in their double identity and in their avid interest in a diverse range of influences and practices. In 2016, they undertook a nine-month multidisciplinary internship in Minsk, Belarus. Then, in 2019, they took part as a performer in the dance-theatre show Sept (directed by Sergei Zemlyansky) presented in Moscow. In summer 2022, they undertook a performance internship organized by the Italian company OHT in the Alps.
As a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada in 2021 and passionate about interdisciplinary creation, Cha joined Brigitte Poupart’s company Transthéâtre as an intern. In 2023, they made their entrance with the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui as an artist in residence in order to present a performative trilogy.

Black box: new craft in set design

This project reconsiders the traditional form of the maquette in response to the iterative nature of design and prototyping. The black box will be explored as a modular kit – incorporating the traditional needs of this set design tool while also extending to different spaces, projects, materials, and configurations. In doing so, the black box is no longer secured to one play space or story inviting designers to revisit the same tool in different contexts. Through workshops and open-source design, this project acts as a prompt to collectively rethink the process of design exploration for performance space.

Biography

Augusta has an ongoing practice in textiles and apprenticed as a shoemaker in 2016. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design graduating in 2020 with a focus on design research and social practice. Her work in design aims to engage herself and others in a process of making that is situated and responsive.