1 ALAN FILEWOD is Professor of Theatre Studies and Director of the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. His books include Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada (2011), Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (2002), Collective Encounters: Documentary Theatre in English Canada (1987), and (with David Watt) Workers’ Playtime: Theatre and the Labour Movement since 1970 (2001). His critical edition of the banned communist play Eight Men Speak is forthcoming from University of Ottawa Press. He has also edited the anthologies New Canadian Drama 5: Political Drama (1991); New Canadian Drama 7: West Coast Comedies (1999); The CTR Anthology: 15 Plays from Canadian Theatre Review (1993) and Theatre Histories: Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, vol. 13 (2009). He was Editor of Canadian Theatre Review from 1988 to 1995, and Co-Editor from 1995 to 2002. In professional activities he has served as president of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research (1992-4) and of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures/ Association des littératures canadienne et québécoise (2004-7).

2 JUDITH HALEBSKY is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Language at Dominican University of California. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. from Mount Allison University. On a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT), she researched Noh theatre at Hosei University in Tokyo for three years. Her article on June Watanabe’s Noh-based collaboration won the Emerging Scholar Award from the Association for Asian Performance and was published in the Asian Theatre Journal. Her collection of poems, Sky=Empty, won the New Issues Poetry Prize.

3 ALEX LAZARIDIS FERGUSON is a PhD student in Theatre at the University of British Columbia. He is also a veteran theatre artist based in Vancouver. Recent work includes directing Nanay: A Testimonial Play at PuSh and at the HAU in Berlin, performing the role of Winston in the Virtual Stage production of 1984 (at The Cultch in Vancouver), and providing scenographic and dramaturgical support for the contemporary dance work Karoshi by Shay Kuebler (at the Scotiabank Dance Centre). Alex writes on performance for several journals, blogs, and magazines. He is a recipient of a SSHRC fellowship and has won several Jessie Awards for acting.

4 REID GILBERT is Adjunct Professor of Theatre, University of British Columbia, and Faculty Emeritus, Capilano University. He held an International Chair at L’Université Libre, Brussels in 2011. He is Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review and a member of the editorial board of Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada. He is the author of A Short Guide to Writing about Literature, now in its second Canadian edition, and a play; he is widely published in journals and collections.

5 JEAN-MARC LARRUE est professeur de théâtre au Département des littératures de langue française de l’Université de Montréal. Ses principaux travaux portent sur le théâtre au Québec de la modernité à la postmodernité. Il a notamment écrit, le Théâtre yiddish à Montréal (JEU); les Nuits de la « Main » (en collaboration avec André-G. Bourassa, VLB); le Monument inattendu (HMH-Hurtubise); le Théâtre à Montréal à la fin du XIX e siècle (Fides) et le Théâtre au Québec 1825-1980 (avec André-G. Bourassa, Gilbert David et Renée Legris, VLB). Il codirige un groupe international de recherche sur le son au théâtre avec MarieMadeleine Mervant-Roux du CNRS.

6 LEANORE LIEBLEIN is the Editor of A Certain William: Adapting Shakespeare in Francophone Canada (Playwrights Canada Press, 2009). In 2007 she was Curator of the “Pourquoi Shakespeare?” section of the “Shakespeare—Made in Canada” exhibition at the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario. A former professor of English, now retired from McGill University, her research has focused on early modern and contemporary theatre, and especially on the staging of plays with a long stage history. 

7 DIANA MANOLE (PhD, University of Toronto) is an Assistant Professor at Trent University (Canada), a professional theatre and TV director, and an award-winning writer. She has published eight collections of poems and plays, and several academic articles and book chapters on postcolonial and post-communist theatre, exilic drama, and transcultural adaptation. She is currently co-editing a collection of articles, Performing Freedom: Alternative Theatre in Eastern Europe after the Fall of Communism, with Vessela Warner.

8 MARC MAUFORT is Professor of English-language literature and drama at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He is the current European Secretary of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA). Maufort has authored three monographs: Songs of American Experience: The Vision of O’Neill and Melville (1990); Transgressive Itineraries. Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism (a comparative study of selected contemporary Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dramatists; 2003); and, Labyrinth of Hybridities. Avatars of O’Neillian Realism in Multi-ethnic American Drama (1972-2003) (2010). In addition, Maufort has published numerous essays in the field of Canadian and postcolonial drama.

9 YANA MEERZON is an Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa. Her research interests are in theatre and drama theory, theatre of exile, and Russian theatre and drama. Her articles appeared in New England Theatre Journal, Slavic and East European Journal, Semiotica, Modern Drama, Theatre Research in Canada, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Canadian Theatre Review, and L’Annuaire théâtral. She published The Path of a Character: Michael Chekhov’s Inspired Acting and Theatre Semiotics in 2005; and Performing Exile - Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film in 2012 (Palgrave). She is a co-editor of Performance, Exile and ‘America’ (with Dr. Silvija Jestrovic, Warwick University) (Palgrave 2009); and Adapting Chekhov: The Text and Its Mutations (with Dr. J. Douglas Clayton, University of Ottawa) (Routledge 2012).

10 GINNY RATSOY, an Associate Professor of English at Thompson Rivers University, edited Theatre in British Columbia, in addition to co- editing, with James Hoffman, Playing the Pacific Province: An Anthology of British Columbia Plays, 1967-2000. She has also written articles and co-edited books on culture in Western Canadian small cities, contributed chapters on Canadian drama to European collections, and published articles on university teaching. Most recently, she edited and contributed several articles to the Professional Theatres issue of The Small Cities Imprint. Her interest in Theatrefront began when Daryl Cloran became artistic director of Kamloops’ Western Canada Theatre.

11 BRITTANY ROSS-FICHTNER holds a Master of Arts degree in Theatre Studies from York University. Her primary research interests include the intersections of performance with activism, public participation, and law.

12 ZAREN HEALEY WHITE holds a Master of Arts in English from McGill University (2012) and a BA (Honours) from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her SSHRC-funded master’s research examined criminal female sexuality and the porno-gothic genre in nineteenth-century American city mysteries fiction. Zaren’s research interests are in nineteenth-century British and American literature, particularly around gender, sexuality, and transgression.