Ashleigh Giffen (Galaxie) is a 27 year old mixed Oji-Cree multi-disciplinary artist. She is a recipient of a silver commission and an artist residency at the Arts Club Theatre Company. Her theatre pieces and poetry have been featured in Briarpatch Magazine, Canadian Arts and Stories, and Room Magazine. She has been in several cohorts and theatre programs including Green Thumb Playwrights Gym, Momentum 180 Parallel Project, and Block A with PTC theatre. Her filmwork and collages have been shown in the Polygon Gallery, as well as both the Kelowna and Lake Country Art Gallery. Ashleigh is also a co-creator of the Moody Garden Collective. She currently lives in the stolen and occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations with her two kitties.

Research Question

What forms, aesthetics, and processes might Indigenous theatre take on in the next decade as storytelling shifts away from educating settlers and toward strengthening Indigenous futurities? How can our spaces support the creation of new stories that reflect current realities—grief, resistance, truth, resurgence—without being constrained by post -TRC-era narratives of trauma and “reconciliation theatre?

Shiann Croft is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator based in Brampton. Her practice engages storytelling, memory, and Black diasporic identity through performance, digital media, and community-based work. She is the founder and Artistic Director of The Coven, an interdisciplinary collective grounded in Black and Indigenous knowledge systems, centering Black and Afro-Indigenous women and femmes through storytelling, embodiment, and collective practice. Croft is currently TD Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, where she supports exhibitions and public programming that foreground emerging and underrepresented voices while expanding curatorial practice as a site of care, collaboration, and cultural exploration.

Research Question

How do Black and Indigenous knowledge systems, storytelling, and embodied practices shape alternative ways of producing in the performing arts that center care, memory, and collective ways of working?

Stephen is a multidisciplinary artist and wandering poet. They act in plays, make paintings, write songs and most recently have been self producing their own DIY performances . This past year they performed Untitled Poem for the End, a year long epic poetic odyssey exploring immense grief and city imagining. They are currently on a citywide tour of their new poem, Downtown Girl. Stephen is a Pisces.

Research Question

How vivid and enticing can an invitation to an art piece be? and can that prompt a deeper connection to the work itself?

Roya DelSol is a Black lens-based artist, filmmaker and photographer of Caribbean heritage currently living & working in T’karonto. She is drawn to the sharp, chaotic and disruptive nature of Black (femme) rage, rebellion and retribution; along with expressions of Black queer eroticisms. Her films have screened at film festivals such as Breakthroughs Film Festival, F-O-R-M, Images Festival, LUMINATO and more.

Sara Constant is a musician and artist working in various forms of contemporary/experimental music and sound.

Trained as a flute player and active as a soloist, improviser, and ensemble musician, Sara’s work involves composed music, improvisations with instruments and electronics, and sound installation, to explore ideas around listening, resonance, and place.

Sara has released music on People Places Records and Age of Leisure, has performed on releases from Centrediscs and Sawyer Editions, and has presented installations and live sets across Canada, Europe, and the United States.

Sara is currently based in Tkarón:to/Toronto, working as a musician, artist, writer (Musicworks), and curator (Music Gallery).

Dasha Plett is a Winnipeg-based artist working with performance, sound, and video. Alongside her own projects and work as a freelance composer/sound desgner one half of We Quit Theatre, a nationally touring performance project with Gislina Patterson. Despite living in Manitoba, she was dubbed one of “10 Toronto theatre artists to watch” by Next Magazine in 2024. She is a proud member of IATSE ADC659, and a professional audio describer. Visit Dasha online at www.princessdasha.com.

Research Question

What barriers do transfeminine people face as aspiring, current, or former workers in Canada's performing arts sector, and how are we responding to those challenges?

Jenn Boulay is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar with a passion for working at the intersections of theatre and performance and disability. Her research project with the Thought Network Exploration Lab explores and strives to situate the D/deaf and disability arts landscape across Eastern Canada. Beyond her research, Jenn is a playwright, performer, and musician, and dabbles in multiple art forms. Alongside her research, she is writing her play, I am “Magnificently Ugly,” which integrates audio description into the script. You can find her published art and scholarly work in Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review and Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies.

Research Question

How do cultural, physical/environmental, and linguistic factors shape artistic practices and accessibility of the D/deaf and disability arts scene in Eastern Canada compared to Western Canada, and what can these differences reveal about regional inequities in the sector?

Krystal Kavita Jagoo holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a Master of Social Work degree. Jagoo is a fat queer disabled Indo-Trinidadian immigrant/settler woman, who remains intent on anti-oppressive practice despite no longer being a registered social worker after witnessing her regulatory body fail to even call for a ceasefire to Palestinian genocide throughout 2024. Jagoo first taught "Justice and the Poor: Issues of Race, Class, and Gender" at Nipissing University in 2012, but most enjoys facilitating virtual Disability Justice programming. She has worked for SummerWorks as an Accessibility Coordinator for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

Research Question

How to operationalize the Disability Justice framework in the performing arts sector to make it more welcoming to BIPOC LGBTQIA+ disabled folx, whose access needs are rarely taken into consideration?

Mateusz (they/he) is a Jessie-nominated trans playwright, actor and creative producer, and a Polish settler on MST Territories. Their work is text-based, collaborative and interdisciplinary, disrupting boundaries within form, gender, sexuality, and language. Their plays have been presented by the Cultch, the National Arts Centre, PuSh Festival, Rumble Theatre, Queer Arts Festival, Zee Zee Theatre, ITSAZOO, Theatre Passe Muraille and more. His writing has been published in Nuits Claires (Éditions Prise de parole) and This is Beyond: A Time Capsule of Queer Experience (Playwrights Canada Press.) Mateusz is the frank theatre’s Artistic Producer and a graduate of Studio 58.

Research Question

What can queer counterculture artists and arts spaces teach us about solidarity, experimentation and belonging? Can consensual, collaborative analysis of queer subcultures in so-called Vancouver inspire vital innovations in theatre?

Mark Hopkins is Co-Artistic Director of Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre, which generates productive discomfort through art-making, and an Associate with Human Venture Leadership, which seeks to build our collective capacities to reduce ignorance, error, waste, suffering and injustice. Mark volunteers on the board of Kawalease Arab Canadian Theatre and founded We Should Know Each Other, a community-bridging initiative. He’s a Fellow with the Energy Futures Lab, and proud to be a contributing writer for the Energy Futures Print Portfolio and accompanying anthology, "Reimagining Fire: The Future of Energy", conceived and edited by Eveline Kolijn.

Research Question

Do arts organisations founded soon after the Massey Report (1951) receive disproportionately more government funding than younger organisations? If so, is this detrimental to EDIA- and justice-oriented organisations?

Committed to storytelling that bridges borders and nurtures a more empathetic global culture, Michelle Mohammed is a Toronto-based artist working nationally and internationally as an actor, director, and arts leader.

Recently, she joined the Theatertreffen International Forum (Berlin, Germany), a prestigious program for the world’s most exciting emerging theatre-makers, and worked with Katie Mitchell at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, UK).

Recent acting work includes What You Won’t Do For Love (Why Not Theatre), Trident Moon (Crow’s Theatre/NAC), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, A Very Jonas Christmas.

Recent directing work includes workshops for The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter, and Machinal by Sophie Treadwell.

To learn more about Michelle, visit www.michellemohammed.com

Research Question

What alternative conflict-resolution and accountability systems, beyond traditional HR, can be developed and implemented in theatre companies to address harm, power imbalances, and misconduct while protecting artists and prioritizing repair, equity, and sustainability?