CREATORS
JOHN MILLARD
COMPOSER
John Millard has composed and music directed for Theatre Columbus, National Film Board, Soulpepper Theatre, Volcano Theatre, National Arts Centre, Alberta Theatre Productions, Shaw Festival and many other Canadian cultural organizations. He has recorded six albums and toured Canada and Europe with his bands The Polka Dogs and John Millard & Happy Day. John was a resident artist at Soulpepper for six years. He teaches at Humber College and has been a resident artist at Banff Centre for the Arts. Current productions include a remount of John and Waleed at Theatre Passe Muraille, “I Am Puff”, an animated series with IS1 Theatre, The Cave with Tomson Highway and Martha Ross and an animated version of The Cave for the CBC with Vancouver animator Bruce Alcock.
TOMSON HIGHWAY
LYRICIST
Tomson Highway was born in a snow bank on the Manitoba/Nunavut border to a family of nomadic caribou hunters. He had the great privilege of growing up in two languages, neither of which was French or English; they were Cree, his mother tongue, and Dene, the language of the neighbouring “nation,” a people with whom they roamed and hunted.
Today, he enjoys an international career as playwright, novelist, and pianist/songwriter. His best known works are the plays, “THE REZ SISTERS,” “DRY LIPS OUGHTA MOVE TO KAPUSKASING,” “ROSE,” “ERNESTINE SHUSWAP GETS HER TROUT,” the best-selling novel, “KISS OF THE FUR QUEEN,” and the musical “THE POST MISTRESS”. For many years, he ran Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts(based in Toronto), out of which has emerged an entire generation of professional Native playwrights, actors and, more indirectly, the many other Native theatre companies that now dot the country.
MARTHA ROSS
DRAMATURGE
Martha Ross graduated from the physical theatre school, L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Upon her return to Canada she joined creative forces with another Lecoq graduate, Leah Cherniak, at which point they founded the Toronto-based theatre company, Theatre Columbus. Their distinctive theatre style, which was physical, funny, serious, and always identifiable to the human story, quickly earned them a national reputation. For her company Martha created numerous award-winning plays collectively and collaboratively: The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine (Dora Award); Paranoia (Dora award); The Betrayal (Chalmers Award for Best New Play); The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls (Dora Award); to name just a few. As a solo writer for Theatre Columbus Martha wrote Porch People; Dr.Dapertutto (Chalmers nomination); Ratbag; (with John Millard); And Up They Flew and The Story. (Directed by Jennifer Brewin at the Brickworks.) Most recently Martha worked with Coleen MacPherson of Open Heart Surgery Theatre on the Wild Women podcasts. After the success of their cabaret show, The Cave, she is thrilled to be teamed up with John Millard in their new company, JMar Electric.
THE TEAM
ADAM PAOLOZZA
DIRECTOR
Adam Paolozza is an award winning performer, director, writer, arts educator and producer.
Adam is Artistic Director of Bad New Days, an independent theatre company he runs together with Creative Producer Victor Pokinko. Adam’s work explores the intersection of contemporary performance, music and traditional ‘popular’ theatrical forms, guided by the belief that the experience of live performance has the potential to open up unique ways of thinking and deep feelings of empathy in the public.
Bad New Days highlights include: Spent (with Why Not Theatre and Theatre Smith-Gilmour), The Double (co-created with Arif Mirabdolbaghi and Viktor Lukawski), Flashing Lights (co-produced with Ahuri Theatre) and Melancholiac: The Music of Scott Walker (co-created with Greg Oh and co-produced with the Music Gallery), Italian Mime Suicide (co-directed with Kari Pederson at The Theatre Centre).
Other highlights: Prototype (Zou Theatre, Nordland Visual Theatre, Eesti Noorsooteater, dir. Viktor Lukawski. ), Besbouss (Pleiades Theatre, dir. Majdi Bou-Matar), Tale Of A Town (Fixt Point Theatre, dir. Lisa DiLiberto), Amorous Adventures of Anatol (Tarragon, dir. Morris Panych).
He is a dedicated teacher leading workshops in performance and creation all over the world. He has been a sessional instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University (Ryerson), University of Toronto, Humber College and Brock University. Adam trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, studied Decroux mime technique with company Intrepido and learned leather mask making from the Sartori family in Padova, Italy.
GREGORY OH
MUSIC DIRECTOR
Gregory Oh gained his notoriety as a “new music revolutionary” but he has wandered the genres in places from the legendary techno club Berghain to the Beijing Modern Music Festival, and the Classical:NEXT opening night gala in Rotterdam to the Lincoln Centre in New York City. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Marietta Orlov, and the University of Michigan, where he worked with Martin Katz.
As a music director, his credits include Bearing with director Michael Greyeyes, Ride the Wind with Roscoe Mitchell and A Torrent of Light (Nicole Lizée/Nic Billon) . He was music director of the San Diego Opera Ensemble, and has also worked at the Canadian Opera Company, Soulpepper, the Banff Centre, Canadian Stage, Volcano Theatre, Florida State Opera and Tapestry New Opera. Currently he programs at Harbourfront, and teaches at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
VICTOR POKINKO
PRODUCER
Victor is a Dora Award-winning producer, actor, and theatre-creator based in Toronto who has entertained audiences on stages ranging from parks to museums, from stone amphitheatres to the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, India. As an artist, he is best known for his work with Bad Hats Theatre’s flagship Peter Pan, as part of Soulpepper’s 2017 and 2018 Family Festival, and in Pea Green Theatre’s internationally acclaimed Three Men in a Boat, which continues to tour to sold-out houses around the world since 2014.
As a producer, Victor is committed to carving out space for new, imaginative, interdisciplinary art. As an Artistic Producer of Bad Hats Theatre and Producer of Bad New Days and of the Three Men Collective, he is dedicated to the development of original work, championing the collective voices of artists to let them influence and shape the creative process.
Learn more about his upcoming projects at www.badhatstheatre.com