Banff Playwrights Lab - Online 2021

Brian Quirt is the founder and Artistic Director of Nightswimming, a dramaturgical company based in Toronto, and has been Director of the Banff Centre Playwrights Lab since 2013. With Nightswimming he has commissioned and developed 35 new works, created eight of his own plays and performance projects, and directed the premieres and 10 national tours of many Nightswimming projects including, most recently, new works by Carmen Aguirre and Anita Majumdar. Nightswimming’s national initiatives include Pure Research, dedicated to innovative performance research, and 5x25, a commissioning project for artists born in 1995, the year of Nightswimming’s first production. www.nightswimming.ca

He’s held senior positions at Factory Theatre, The Theatre Centre, Canadian Stage Company, and the Great Canadian Theatre Company. His work as a dramaturg, director, and playwright has been seen at theatres and festivals across Canada. Brian is the past Board Chair and a past-President of the Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), and was the founding Board Chair of SpiderWebShow Performance. He is a two-time recipient of LMDA's Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy, and recently received LMDA's Lessing Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dramaturgy.

Jenna (she/her) is a mixed-race Director and Dramaturg who gratefully resides in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), on Treaty 7 Territory. She is the founding Artistic Director of Chromatic Theatre, the Dramaturg for the Playwrights Lab at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Board Co-Chair of LMDA, and the Director of Theatre Alberta’s Artstrek summer camp for teens. She is a passionate advocate for equity in the arts, a fierce supporter of new play development, and is learning how to juggle parenthood with a career in the arts. Jenna is a graduate of the NTS Artistic Leadership Residency (2020), the Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership Program (2019), and a member of the artEquity National Facilitator Training cohort (2018). She is a recipient of Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize and holds a MA in International Performance Research from the universities of Amsterdam and Tampere. Recent directing credits include Teenage Dick and Undressed at Alberta Theatre Projects, Little Women at Theatre Calgary, Hookman and The Green Line for Chromatic Theatre, Sherlock Holmes at the Vanishing Thimble at Vertigo Theatre, and Mary’s Wedding at the Citadel Theatre.

June Fukumura is a Japanese-Canadian, multi-disciplinary theatre artist with a BFA in Theatre Performance and a Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Simon Fraser University.  

June is the Co-Founder of New(to)Town Collective an artist collective with a mandate to create new experimental works; provide ongoing accessible physical theatre training and experimental research workshops called Training Jams. June is also the Co-Artistic Director of Popcorn Galaxies an experimental theatre company interested in re-enchanting the everyday through unconventional site-responsive and site-specific works. 

Additionally, she was the Assistant Dramaturg at the Banff Playwrights Lab in 2019 and 2020 and is currently the Associate Dramaturg. From 2019 - 2020 she was the Emerging Dramaturg/Producer for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG Lab, a new play development incubator. She is now the MSG Lab Curator, developing the 2021-2022 MSG Lab. 

Her artistic practice includes: experimental theatre creation, acting for theatre/film, performance, clown, dramaturgy, directing, producing, curating, Japanese language translation and language coaching, and cultural leadership. www.junefukumura.com 

Myekah Payne is a Developmental/Production Dramaturg based in the city of Toronto. Myekah has a diploma in Musical Theatre Performance. She also completed a 2 year new play dramaturgy program while working on her BA at York University. She currently collaborates as a production dramaturg with Driftwood Theatre, holds the position of associate Dramaturg with Nightswimming theatre and is company Dramaturg at Obsidian Theatre. Outside of dramaturgy, she enjoys hiking and camping during the spring and summer. Books and hot tea in the fall and winter.

Jovanni is a playwright, actor, and director. From 2012-2019, he was Artistic Director of Gateway Theatre in Richmond, BC. At Gateway, Jovanni directed Harvest, Closer Than Ever, Valley Song, and Yoga Play; he acted in King of the Yees (later remounted at the National Arts Centre); and he wrote Nine Dragons which won a Jessie Award for Outstanding New Play, and was also presented by Vertigo Theatre in Calgary and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg. Nine Dragons was developed in part at the 2013 Playwrights Lab.

From 2004-2009, Jovanni was Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre in Toronto. Under his tenure, Cahoots produced new works by Anosh Irani; Ahmed Ghazali and Bobby Theodore; Marjorie Chan; and Guillermo Verdecchia, Marcus Youssef, and Camyar Chai.

Jovanni has performed with theatre companies across Canada as well as overseas. In 2010, his play A Taste of Empire was nominated for two Dora Awards including Outstanding New Play. 

Jovanni’s directing credits include The Orchard (After Chekhov) for Arts Club Theatre; God of Carnage, Antigone, and Blackbird (Theatre du Pif in Hong Kong); and Stitch for Native Earth.

At the Lab, Jovanni will be working on Salesman in China, the new play he is co-writing with Leanna Brodie. Salesman in China tells the story of Arthur Miller’s landmark 1983 visit to China to direct Ying Ruocheng’s Mandarin translation of Death of a Salesman for the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. Jovanni will also be updating his play The Five Vengeances, a comic kung-fu adaptation of The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Kenneth T. Williams calls his professional path a “guidance counselor’s nightmare.” He’s been a soldier, bartender, rock musician, and door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.

He took a playwriting class in university and immediately dropped his plans to go to law school. As a journalist, he was a member of the very first news team for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. He also managed to write a few plays. In Care, Café Daughter, Gordon Winter, Thunderstick, Bannock Republic, Street Corner Playwright, Suicide Notes and Three Little Birds have been produced across Canada. Paris SK was streamed live by the Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre. The Herd was recently presented as part of Tarragon Theatre's Acoustic series.

He lives in Edmonton with his partner, Dr. Melissa Stoops, with their cats, Augustus and Drusilla, and is an assistant professor in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. He is a member of the George Gordon First Nation in the Treaty 4 territory.