1 BRIAN BATCHELOR is a third-year PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and holds an MA in Drama from the University of Alberta. His research investigates touristic performances in Chiapas, Mexico and the possibilities for de-tours within these encounters: decolonial co-performances that problematize dominant and unidirectional touristic relations and offer alternative political imaginings. He has produced and directed two shows at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival and has also worked as a Fringe beer tent manager on six occasions.

2 STEVEN BUSH got imprinted by George Luscombe while working as an actor on five TWP productions in 1969-70. He has never “recovered” and taught a Luscombe-inflected Stanislavski curriculum at University of Toronto from 1993 to 2013 when he retired as Senior Lecturer. Within half a century of professional theatre experience, Steven has written Beating the Bushes (Talonbooks) and co-authored Available Targets, Life on the Line, and Richard Thirdtime (all published by Playwrights Canada Press). Richard Thirdtime, directed by George Luscombe, premiered at Toronto Workshop Productions. His most recent book, Conversations with George Luscombe: Steven Bush in conversation with the Canadian theatre visionary is available from Mosaic Press.

3 Dr. NÚRIA CASADO GUAL lectures in Comparative Literature, Literature for Education and Theatre in English at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). She is the author of a PhD thesis on the dramatization of racism in Edgar Nkosi White’s plays, and has published numerous articles on this Afro-Caribbean author and other contemporary playwrights. As a member of the research group “Grup Dedal-Lit,” which conducts research on aging and literature, she has co-edited the volume of essays The Polemics of Ageing as Reflected in Literatures in English, and she currently leads the competitive project “Ageing and Gender in Contemporary Literary Creation in English” (2013-2015), through which she studies Joanna McClelland Glass’s dramaturgical creativity. Her most recent articles have been published in reputed journals, such as New Theatre Quarterly, Ageing and Society, and International Journal of Aging & Human Development, as well as in international collections of essays. Even though her current research interests include the interaction between age and theatrical and cinematic creativity, theatre studies remain her main field of expertise, which she explores from both a theoretical and practical point of view as an academic, actress, director, and playwright. Five of her playtexts have been published to date.

4 T. NIKKI CESARE SCHOTZKO is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. In 2010, she coedited TDR’s special issue “Caught Off-Garde: New Theatre Ensembles in NYC (mostly)” with Mariellen R. Sandford, and she is currently guest editing, with Isabel Stowell-Kaplan and Didier Morelli, a special issue of Canadian Theatre Review entitled “Performing Products: When Acting Up Is Selling Out,” forthcoming in spring 2015. Cesare Schotzko is also an occasional dramaturge, having collaborated on productions in New York, Toronto, Chicago, and Morelia, Mexico. Her first book, Learning How to Fall: Art and Culture after September 11, is available from Routledge.

5 HENRY CHAN has been documenting performance art in Toronto since 2006, including the activities of FADO Performance Art Centre, the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, various performance artists, and the 2013-14 season of LINK & PIN. He has also photographed events, exhibitions and performances at various venues including the Images Festival and The Power Plant. When he is not using a camera, Henry is crunching numbers and pushing paper as an accountant.

6 NIOMI ANNA CHERNEY is a Toronto-based mover, maker, and thinker. In her practice she seeks to create a third person window into perceptual experience by setting up heightened conditions for seeing, sensing, and recording. Niomi is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and is the recipient of a SSHRC CGS doctoral fellowship. She holds a BFA in Dance from York University and an MA from Concordia University. Niomi has pursued scholarly research in cultural theory and philosophy as extensions of her dance training. Her academic work is deeply grounded by physical exploration and a strong background in practice-based modes of engagement. Most recently she has collaborated on choreographer Ame Henderson’s residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) as a performer and a research assistant for rehearsal/ performance, an ongoing investigation of the collision between rehearsal and archival research into the history of performance at the AGO: http://www.ago.net/ame-henderson.

7 SPY DÉNOMMÉ-WELCH, PhD, writes, composes, performs, and produces work in theatre, opera, and video. He wrote and co-composed the Dora-nominated opera Giiwedin, as well as shorter works for chamber ensembles, including Deux Poèmes Sur La Formation Des Glaces (2011/2012), Bike Rage (winner of the 2013 Baroque Idol composer competition), and Spin Doctors for clarinet, violin, and piano (2015). He is currently completing his second full-length opera. Spy is on faculty at the University of Regina.

8 ADRIANA DISMAN is a performance artist, scholar, and curator based in Toronto and Montreal. Her performance art work has been shown across Canada and the US in gallery and festival contexts. Disman holds an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University and is a graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre conservatory in Manhattan. She is the curator of LINK & PIN performance art series, coordinator of RATS 9 Gallery in Montreal, and sits on the board of directors of the School of Making Thinking in New York. She is co-founder of Lines of Flight Institute for Performance, Spirituality, and Politics. She has recently published in Canadian Theatre Review, ETC Contemporary Art Magazine, and has a (forthcoming, fall 2016) text in TouVA’s book, Le 7e Sens. www.adrianadisman.com

9 NATALIE DOONAN is a multimedia and performance artist, writer, and educator, currently pursuing a PhD Humanities in the areas of Sensory Studies, Performance and Cultural Geography at Concordia University. Natalie is founder of the SensoriuM, a collaborative performance art project based in Montreal. The SensoriuM uses artist-led tours and tastings to engage conversation. In these performances, food is used in provocative ways to elicit visceral reactions and incite participation. Natalie’s work has been shown in the Cultural Olympiad for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the LIVE Performance Art Biennale, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Montreal’s Elektra Festival and BIAN, Nuit Blanche, and Art Souterrain. She holds a diploma in Art and Art History from Sheridan College, an Honours BA in Fine Arts with a Major in English from the University of Toronto, and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Natalie’s research interests include pedagogy, public art, and collaboration. www.lesensorium.com

10 LAUREN JERKE is a PhD student in Applied Theatre at the University of Victoria. She practices and studies applied theatre, which she defines as theatre that intends to educate, build community, and address social justice issues. As a theatre practitioner, she has worked in diverse settings, such as primary schools in Malawi, university classes, a psychiatric hospital, medical student exams, social worker cultural training, and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO AGM. Her research questions the implicit limits on the contexts in which applied theatre work traditionally occurs. In practice, she aims to use theatre to illuminate personal connections to wider international contexts, and engage participants in critical reflection and dialogue, bringing new perspectives to seemingly static concepts and situations. Her doctoral research will study the use of applied theatre to examine social justice issues with, by, and for those who are privileged and can make immediate, impactful change in Canada: our gatekeepers.

11 Dr. NAILA KELETA-MAE is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama and Speech Communication at the University of Waterloo. Her dissertation on female blackness in Canada won the Mary McEwan Award from the Centre for Feminist Research (York University). Her doctoral research won a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the Abella Scholarship for Studies in Equity (York University), and the Susan Mann Dissertation Scholarship (York University). Her articles have won the New Scholars Prize (International Federation of Theatre Research) and have been published in Theatre Research in Canada, the Canadian Theatre Review, CanPlay and atl.theatre. Dr. Keleta-Mae is also a poet, recording artist, playwright, and director who has released two full-length albums, been produced by bcurrent, Black Theatre Workshop, and published by Playwrights Canada Press, Fernwood Publishing, and Frontenac House Publishing Ltd. She has performed her award-winning art and scholarship in Canada, France, Jamaica, Japan, Portugal, South Africa, and the United States of America.

12 PETER KULING is a sessional lecturer of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University where he teaches courses on visual culture, media theory, and performance studies. He received his PhD in English from the University of New Brunswick for new research on queer adaptations of Shakespearean drama in Canada. His current research explores intersections of queerness, cultural identities, and performance studies across contemporary theatre, film, video games, and digital media environments. He has recently co-edited a special issue of Canadian Theatre Review on digital performance and currently sits as the membership coordinator for the Canadian Association for Theatre Research as well as a past organizational chair for several of CATR’s annual conferences.

13 The recent recipient of a PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of London, Royal Holloway, MELISSA POLL has a BFA in Acting and an MA in Theatre from UBC. She has worked as a professional actor, adjunct professor, theatre critic and, most recently, as a dramaturg for Vancouver’s Shameless Hussy Productions and Solo Collective. Melissa’s publications include articles in Body, Space & Technology Journal, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and a forthcoming chapter in Palgrave’s Approaches to Adaptation series. Since 2013, she has worked as a Research Associate for Helen Gilbert’s ERC-funded Indigeneity in the Contemporary World Project and was awarded a Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the Autry National Center of the American West in 2015.

14 KELSY VIVASH holds a BA from Brock University and an MA from the University of Toronto, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Her doctoral research focuses on the secretions and excretions of the body, the long lineage of their relationship with understandings of subjectivity, and the ways in which this relationship has been aestheticized both on historical stages and within the contemporary performative frame. She has presented at TaPRA (University of Kent, 2012), PSi (Stanford University, 2013), and CATR (Brock University, 2014), and has recently published work in alt.theatre, Performance Research, and Canadian Theatre Review. She also works as a Senior Editorial Assistant for Theatre Research in Canada.

15 HELENE VOSTERS is an artist, activist, and scholar. A PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University, Helene’s performance and research focus is on the role of public commemoration practices in constructing narratives related to nationalism, militarism, and violence. She has published articles on the performance and politics of memory in Performance Research, Canadian Theatre Review, Canadian Journal of Practice-Based Research in Theatre, and Frakicija; book sections in Theatre of Affect (Playwright Canada Press 2014), and Performing Objects and Theatrical Things (Palgrave 2014); and has performed her memorial meditations Impact Afghanistan War; Unravel: A meditation on the warp and weft of militarism, and Haunting the Past’s Present throughout Canada, the US and Europe. Helene presented Shot at Dawn, her most recent memorial performance, in Toronto on Remembrance Day, 2014.

16 JENNIFER WISE is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria. Her books include Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece (Cornell 1998), The Broadview Anthology of Drama (as co-editor), Hudson’s Bay Journals (as illustrator), and the new Methuen The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Brecht (as translator). Her essays are published in such venues as Theater der Zeit Recherchen, Reader’s Digest, Theatre Survey, Arethusa, and Theatre Research International. Her historical comedy The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West won the 2013 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition, and her play about Galileo’s children, Orbit, written for the International Year of Astronomy, will be opening the new Isabel Bader Performing Arts Centre in Kingston in 2014, directed by Craig Walker.