Jessica is a queer film and theatre actor based in Toronto and Montreal. Selected theatre credits include: The Secret Garden of An Sìthean (Festival Antigonish), Trojan Kids, Macbeth, Antigonick, As You Like It, 365 Days/365 Plays (NTS), Art Ambulance (Clay and Paper Theatre) and The Stranger 2.0 (DopoLavoro Teatrale). On screen she has appeared in the series Hotel Paranormal and Haunted Hospitals. She is a recent graduate of the National Theatre School in acting and is grateful to be able to discover and play in beautiful Banff with this incredible group of artists. When she’s not acting, you can find her stilt walking in a park or bothering her cat, Gus. Thank you to her family and friends who always cheer her on, even from a distance.

Rick is very grateful to be here, on stage, as Kohkom’s Babushka comes to life before an audience. He last appeared at the Banff Centre twenty eight years ago as Will Donnelly in James Reaney’s St. Nicholas Hotel. Selected credits include: Man of La Mancha (Magnus Theatre); Fiddler on the Roof (Persephone); Hamlet (Manitoba Theatre Centre); Christmas Carol, Real Estate, How It Works, Tuesdays With Morrie, When the Reaper Calls (Sudbury Theatre Centre); Full Monty, Buddy Holly Story, Sound of Music, Anne of Green Gables (Charlottetown Festival); Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Fire, Black Bonspiel (Globe Theatre); the Foursome (Foster Festival); Film/Television: Law and Order Toronto (Lark Productions and Cameron Pictures); Murdoch Mysteries, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (Shaftesbury); Hemlock Grove (Netflix). Rick lives in Toronto with his delightful wife, Donna Garner (Actor/Singer/Multi-Instrumentalist/Artistic Director, Garner Theatre Productions) and Gustav Mahler (Gus), a stoic Mini-Schnauzer.

Jeff Dingle is a New Brunswick born actor who currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is very excited to be in Banff for the first time and to be working with Punctuate! Theatre. Recent theatre credits include Those Movies (Orillia Opera House/Upper Canada Playhouse), Give ‘em Hell (Prairie Fire, Please/Theatre Direct), Wrong for Each Other, Giving Up the Ghost (Port Stanley Festival Theatre), The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, 1979 (Theatre New Brunswick), The Real Sherlock Holmes (Lighthouse Festival), and No Man is an Island (Atlantic Repertory Company). TV appearances include Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent (CityTV), and Murdoch Mysteries (Shaftesbury/CBC). Love as always to Torey and Whitney.

Cassandra (she/her) is a performer, producer, stage manager, and arts administrator of mixed Métis-Settler heritage, whose work has enabled her to engage with audiences across Turtle Island from coast to coast. Her current artistic practice is guided by her affinities for physical theatre, music, puppetry, and education. She has worked with Axis Theatre, Savage Society, Firehall Arts Centre, and Shameless Hussy Productions. She holds a BFA in Acting from UBC, minoring in Visual Arts. Originally from Treaty 6 and 7 territory, she is currently based on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

Michelle Jacques is a curator whose work bridges art history and contemporary practice through critical engagements with race, feminism, and modernism. Currently the Director of Exhibitions & Collections/Chief Curator at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, she has previously held curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (1995–2002; 2004–12), served as Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax (2002–04), and was Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2012–21).

Her recent projects include Dawit L. Petros: At the Edge of the Horizon I (Remai Modern, 2025); Land.Sea.Sugar.Salt.: Terrestrial and Aquatic Contemplations of the Caribbean (co-curated with Sally Frater, Remai Modern, 2025); and Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (co-curated with Renée van der Avoird and Sally Frater, AGO/Remai Modern, 2022–23, traveling). Recent recognition includes a Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence (2022) and a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2024).

Photo by Carey Shaw

Sally Frater is the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean. Curatorially she is interested in decolonial praxis, space and place, Black and Caribbean diasporas, photography, art of the everyday, and issues of equity and representation in museological spaces. She has curated solo and group exhibitions for institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, the Ulrich Museum of Art, Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, Project Row Houses, and Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice. The recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts she is a member of the Association of Art Museum Curators and is an alumna of Independent Curators International. Recently a shortlisted candidate for The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence she is the senior curator and curatorial manager at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon.

Michael Hidetoshi Mori is an artist and opera director known for genre-defying work. His bold productions include RUR: A Torrent of Light (MCANA 2023 Best New Opera), Forbidden with Persian classical and hip hop artists, and Shanawdithit, a landmark Indigenous-led opera. He has collaborated with punk band Fucked Up and led tech-driven innovations like cue-able wearable-tech. A two-time recipient of Canada’s highest award for opera direction, he also co-founded the Women in Musical Leadership program. Michael is General Director of Tapestry Opera, a board director of Opera America and the past chair of the Association for Opera in Canada

After her studies of literature and art history at the École Normale Supérieure in her hometown Paris, Mariame Clément lived in the U.S.A. and in Berlin, where she did her first internships at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

She made her directing debut in 2004 with Rossini's Il Signor Bruschino and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi in Lausanne. She has worked in Athens (Le Comte Ory), Tel Aviv (Il Viaggio a Reims), Santiago de Chile (Lulu), Oviedo (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Sevilla (Agrippina), Nuremberg (Le Nozze di Figaro), Essen (Le Grand Macabre, Salome), Strasbourg (La Belle Hélène, Werther, Platée, Der Rosenkavalier, La Calisto), Antwerp/Ghent (Giasone, Agrippina, Armida), Graz (Faust, Die Zauberflöte), at the Theater an der Wien (Castor et Pollux, The Fairy Queen), in Glyndebourne (Don Pasquale, Poliuto, Il Turco in Italia, Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro), at the Opéra national de Paris (Hänsel und Gretel, Cendrillon), at the Royal Opera House (L'Étoile), at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria), at the Semperoper Dresden (Die verkaufte Braut), at the Bregenz Festival (Don Quichotte), at the Santa Fe Opera (Carmen), at the Volksoper in Vienna (Die Lustige Witwe), and at the Staatsoper Berlin (Roméo et Juliette).

In 2014 she created Philippe Hurel's opera, Les Pigeons d'argile, at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. In 2016, she staged the French premiere of Wagner's second opera, Das Liebesverbot, at the Opéra national du Rhin. Her production of Barkouf in the same theatre in 2018 was the first performance since 1860 of this newly rediscovered major piece by Offenbach.

With Roberto Devereux in June 2024, she completed a Donizetti trilogy at the Grand Théâtre de Genève which began with Anna Bolena in 2021 and continued with Maria Stuarda in 2022.

She made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2024 with Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

Further projects will take her, among other places, to Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Paris, Chicago and Bregenz.

Banff Centre 2026 Spring/Summer Hèctor Parra is a Catalan composer living in Paris since 2002. Member of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis in 2021-22, he has premiered a hundred works around the world, commissioned by institutions such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Louvre Museum, the Munich Biennale, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, The Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Elbphilharmonie, the Cologne Philharmonie or the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From 2013 to 2023 he was composer-in-residence at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Barcelona Auditorium, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Staatstheater Stuttgart. He has premiered eight operas with great public and critical success and which have had librettos by the writers Marie NDiaye, Händl Klaus, Fiston Mwanza Mujilla or Pier Paolo Pasolini/Calixto Bieito. The staging has been carried out by Bieito himself, by Milo Rau or Mariame Clément among others. He has been awarded the Grand Prix de l’Academie Charles Cros 2024, the Opera XXI Award 2023, the National Culture Award of Catalonia 2017, the Ernst von Siemens Composition Prize 2011, the 2007 Donald Aird Memorial Award of San Francisco and the 2005 Tremplin Prize of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and IRCAM, among others. His works are published by Durand/Universal Music Publishing Classical and by Editorial Tritó. Official website: hectorparra.netrts Program Info Session