Keynote Presenters

Metro Vancouver Conference HUB - Friday Oct 21st
Barbara Tomasic

Just off of her huge success directing Kinky Boots at the Arts Club Theatre Barbara comes to us eager to share her best methods for directing musical theatre productions with lots of practical tips and tricks from her years of professional musical theatre directing experience.

Originally from New Westminster, BC, Barbara has made a career working in theatres across Canada directing, acting and producing theatre productions with companies such as Soulpepper Theatre, Western Canada Theatre, Chemainus Theatre Festival, Prairie Theatre Exchange, the Firehall Arts Centre and Gateway Theatre. She was also the Co-Artistic Director of Musical Theatreworks, developing and producing new musicals in Vancouver. As a performing arts educator, she has been on faculty at Capilano University and taught at Studio 58, UBC and Canadian College of Performing Arts.
Barbara has an MFA in Directing from UBC and is an Ovation Award winner and Jessie Richardson Award nominee.

Victoria Conference HUB - Friday Oct 21st
Matthew Payne

Matthew will be talking with us about theatrical innovation and opportunity.

Matthew lives and works as a theatre professional on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples (Victoria). Since graduating from the University of Victoria in 1993, he has worked regularly in Canadian Theatre, taking on a variety of roles and spending time in Victoria, Vancouver and Toronto. Matthew dedicates his professional career to dreaming up inspirational and innovative projects that tour the world, to the development of new work (primarily by Victoria writers) and to building community. Matthew has worked professionally as a writer, performer, carpenter, director, production manager, stage manager and administrator. He has worked with a myriad of companies, including: The Belfry Theatre, Pacific Opera Victoria, Story Theatre, Kaleidoscope Theatre, Giggling Iguana, Nightswimming, Crow’s Theatre, and a dozen peer companies based in Vancouver. In 2010 he furthered his training in a director’s master class led by Peter Hinton, Martha Henry and Josette Bushell-Mingo. As a Managing Producer, Matthew has shepherded Theatre SKAM through a period of remarkable fiscal growth. Over the past five years, the company’s annual budget has grown from five figures to just over half a million dollars. Public funding is dependent on assessment by a jury of one’s peers, and the nearly $300,000 in public funding received by SKAM in the 2018-19 season speaks to the high opinion Matthew’s peers have of the company and of his leadership. In 2019 Matthew was awarded the ProArt Mid Career Artist Award.

All Access - Zoom Across BC/Canada - Friday Oct 21st
Jonathan Rand

Have a Q & A with one of the most produced educational theatre playwrights of our time as we discuss playwritting, educational theatre & creativity with the one and only Jonathan Rand.

Jonathan Rand is among the most popular contemporary playwrights writing today, his stage plays having been performed over 25,000 times in theaters across 67 countries.

According to an independent survey of American schools, Jonathan’s one-act comedy Check Please was the #1 most-produced short play every season for the last 16 years.

A four-time Heideman Award finalist, his work is published by Random House, Stage Partners, Playscripts, Smith & Kraus, TRW Plays, Dramatics magazine, and Macmilllan.
Jonathan also served as CEO and co-founder of Playscripts, a publishing and performance licensing company for new stage plays and musicals, serving tens of thousands of theater groups with an exclusive catalog of over 2,700 titles by over 1,500 writers. It was featured by NPR for “bringing the business of theater into the 21st century” and ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the nation’s fastest growing companies. (Playscripts was acquired in 2014.)

Zoom Across Canada & Montreal & NB HUB Virtual Keynote - Friday Oct 21st - Tetsuro Shigematsu

Tetsuro is a playwright/performer, filmmaker, comedian, and Canadian radio broadcaster. He was the final host of CBC Radio One's former afternoon series The Roundup, where he replaced Bill Richardson in 2004, making him the first visible minority to host a daily network radio program in Canada. The show completed its final episode on November 4, 2005. Prior to working for CBC Radio, he was a writer for the Canadian TV show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He is currently a writer for The Huffington Post, and artist-in-residence at Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.

Zoom Across Canada - Friday Oct 21st - Drew Hayden Taylor

During the last thirty years of his career, Drew Hayden Taylor has done many things, most of which he is proud of. An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, he has worn many hats in his literary career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., to being Artistic Director of Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. He has been an award-winning playwright, a journalist/columnist (appearing regularly in several Canadian newspapers and magazines), short-story writer, novelist, television scriptwriter, and has worked on numerous documentaries exploring the Native experience. Most notably as a filmmaker, he wrote and directed REDSKINS, TRICKSTERS AND PUPPY STEW, a documentary on Native humour for the National Film Board of Canada, and for CBC, co-created SEARCHING FOR WINNITOU, an exploration of Germany’s fascination with North American Indigenous culture.
As a playwright, Drew has proudly been a part of what he refers to as the contemporary Native Literary Renascence. An author of more than 20 plays (resulting in almost a hundred productions), his popular plays such as TORONTO AT DREAMER’S ROCK, ONLY DRUNKS AND CHILDREN TELL THE TRUTH, THE BERLIN BLUES, and COTTAGERS AND INDIANS have left their mark on the Canadian theatre scene.
In the world of prose, he enjoys spreading the boundaries of what is considered Indigenous literature. His success as a writer has allowed him the opportunity to travel the world, spreading the gospel of Native literature. Through many of his non-fiction books, from the four volume set titled FUNNY, YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE ONE, to the ME FUNNY, ME SEXY, ME ARTSY series, he has tried to educate and inform the world about issues that reflect, celebrate, and interfere in the lives of Canada’s First Nations.
Self-described as a contemporary story teller, his exploration of the storytelling tradition has explored many boundaries. For example, he co-created and was the head writer for MIXED BLESSINGS, a television comedy series as well as contributed scripts to four other popular Canadian television series including BEACHCOMBERS and NORTH OF 60. In 2007, a made-for-tv movie he wrote, IN A WORLD CREATED BY A DRUNKEN GOD (based on his play which was a finalist for the Governor General Award for Drama) was nominated for three Gemini Awards, including Best Movie. In 2011 and 2012, he wrote the script for the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, now known as the INDSPIRE AWARDS
The last few years has seen him proudly serve as the Writer-In-Residence at the Berton House in Dawson City Yukon, the University of Michigan, the University of Western Ontario, University of Luneburg (Germany), Ryerson University, Wilfrid Laurier, as well as a host of Canadian theatre companies i.e. Cahoots theatre, Blyth Theatre etc.
The years of writing have brought him many accolades by his peers, including the Floyd S. Chalmers Award, Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Canadian Author’s Literary Award, He has also been the recipient of many other varied honours; an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Mount Allison University, a Plaque of Honour on the Peterborough Walk of Fame, the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Award, Ontario Premier’s Award for Creative Arts and Design, and Victoria Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement in Theatre, to name a few.
Oddly enough, the thing his mother was most proud of was his ability to make spaghetti from scratch.

A Special Evening with Don Zolidis (for all in person & zoom conference attendees). All Access - Zoom Across Canada

Pitch your play ideas to Don and have a Q & A with one of the most produced educational theatre playwrights of our time as we discuss playwritting, educational theatre & creativity.

Don Zolidis holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from the Actors Studio Program at the New School University. A former high school and middle school theater teacher, for the past decade, he has been one of the most-produced playwrights in American schools. His more than 125 published plays have been performed over 30,000 times, appearing in every state, every Canadian province, and 67 different countries. His first novel, THE SEVEN TORMENTS OF AMY AND CRAIG (A LOVE STORY) was published in 2018 by Disney-Hyperion. His second book, WAR AND SPEECH, was published in 2020 by Little Brown. He lives in Texas and splits his time with his partner in upstate New York.

Zoom Across Canada & Montreal & NB HUB Virtual Keynote - Saturday Oct 22nd - Catherine Lough Haggquist

Catherine is a Canadian actress, producer and entrepreneur. She has over 125 acting credits on film and television, including three seasons as Inspector Nora Harris on the sci-fi television series Continuum and recurring roles in Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Supernatural and Motherland: Fort Salem.
Lough Haggquist is the producer of Reel Women Seen, a short film that has won numerous awards including the 2018 Jury Choice Award at the Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase.[3] Lough Haggquist received the 2008 Women in Film and Television Vancouver’s Special Jury Award, and was named as the Union of BC Performers’ 2013 International Women's Day Honoree, being awarded Life Membership by UBCP in 2017.[3] Lough Haggquist was honoured by UBCP/ACTRA in 2018, with a life membership for her commitment and contribution to the television, film and theatre industry.[1]
Lough Haggquist was awarded honoured with the Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award (a distinguished lifetime achievement award) at the 9th Annual UBCP/ACTRA Awards in November 2020, which were handed out virtually because of the Covid-19 pandemic.