TEAM VANCOUVER
June Fukumura (Dramaturg - Improv in 5 Dimensions)
June Fukumura is a Japanese-Canadian inter-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. Popcorn Galaxies has produced over eleven independent productions in eight years and has been presented at Centre A Gallery, Vancouver Fringe Festival, BC Culture Days, rEvolver Festival (Upintheair Theatre), The Array: First Contact (Upintheair Theatre), and PushOFF 2021 (Theatre Replacement).
Additionally, she was the Associate Dramaturg at the Banff Playwrights Lab from 2019-2021. From 2019 - 2021 June worked as the Emerging Dramaturg/Producer/Curator for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG Lab program. She is now the Resident Dramaturg of vAct.
She independently produces the Nikkei Artist Mixer, the Emerging Dramaturg Mixer, and is the founder of Dyslexic Players Canada. 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.
Anthony Lee (C-Space Digital Technologist)
Anthony Lee (he/him) is an emerging writer and director working in theatre and film on the stolen and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, colonially known as Vancouver. Since 2018, Anthony has been working with theatre and film companies as a director, editor, writer, technical director, projection designer, educator, digital technologist and consultant.
With his mixed medium practice in film and theatre, Anthony has been challenging existing ways of storytelling. His recent digital live show, Christine Quintana’s Selfie, is a digital adaption and will be the first attempt on live-cinema digitally using screen-sharing technology. Anthony is also an artistic associate at Radix Theatre.
As a Hong Konger, his works investigate the impacts of cultural diaspora and post-colonial Hong Kong anarchism. His last film, Old News Is So Exciting, has screened ReelWorld Film Festival, Local Sightings Film Festival, Chilliwack Independent Film Festival and has received multiple award nominations. His current project Don’t think about the Pink Dolphins, an animation hybrid film that confronts the guilt and political trauma of an oversea Hong Konger was developed during the Block A residency of PlayWrights’ Theatre Centre.
Anthony received his BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University in 2021. He has artistically and technically collaborated with Radix Theatre, Rumble Theatre, the Cinematheque, Progress Lab 1422, New(to)Town Collective, Electric Company Theatre, Reelwheels Society, Vancouver Asian Film Festival, Fu-gen Theatre and rice & beans theatre.
Hân Pham (Local Documentarian)
Hân Phạm is an emerging Vietnamese filmmaker and artist from Saigon, Vietnam. Experimenting with filmic and sonic experience and their haptic time/space structure, she wishes to construct a collective healing space for minorities community through a storytelling tradition that is rooted in reimagination, conversations, and collaboration. Her works think through the ephemerality of memory, language, and history in relation to the constantly changing landscapes, rooting in the inbetweeness of distance as space for radical reflection. Hân has exhibited at Vancouver International Film Festival, DOXA Documentary Film Festival, and Vines Arts Festival. She is currently completing her BFA in Film at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC.
Heidi Taylor (Artistic and Executive Director / Dramaturg (Always Boy) /co-producer)
Heidi Taylor is a dramaturg, director and performer, and Artistic and Executive Director at PTC, based on the traditional unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She makes sited, devised, and interdisciplinary work, developing performances from first idea through production. She is a dramaturg for VACT’s MSG Lab, developing new work by Asian Canadian writers, and is currently dramturging two projects with rice & beans theatre, Derek Chan’s yellow objects and Pedro Chamale’s Peace Country. She has also dramaturged for dance, including Amber Funk Barton’s current project How to Say Goodbye. Recent projects include world premieres of Carmen Aguirre’s Anywhere But Here, Kuroko and 1 Hour Photo by Tetsuro Shigematsu (Governor General Award nominee), Public and Private by choreographer Ziyian Kwan, and am a by Amber Funk Barton and Mindy Parfitt.
Heidi believes in the role of theatre in encouraging robust civic conversations. With JD Derbyshire, Heidi spearheaded PTC’s ACK Lab, a project to investigate and spark inclusive practice. She has participated in the National Arts Centre’s Repast for Indigenous Theatre, and in multiple phases of the Republic of Inclusion, learning about Disability/Crip and Mad theatre practice across Canada. PTC was nominated for Vancouver’s first NOW Jessie Award recognizing our intersectional practice in supporting playwrights. Heidi studied theatre and performance at college in Singapore (IB) and at University of Toronto (BA). She received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Contemporary Art from SFU, where she taught acting for 15 years. Her collective, Proximity Arts, created cross-disciplinary projects including podplays, sited dance performance, a community-run side show, chamber opera, cabarets, sound installation and a digital gardening project from 2003 – 2011. Heidi served as Board Treasurer of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas 2017-20, and was the founding president of LMDA Canada.
Joanna Garfinkel (Program lead/producer/dramaturg (Underground Absolute Fiction))
Joanna Garfinkel lives and works on the the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation). She is grateful, as granddaughter of refugees, to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this land. Joanna is the co-founder of collectively and socially-driven play development company Universal Limited. She is the co-creator, with Yoshié Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, which has been performed site-specifically in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and in several locations in between. Previously, she co-created and directed the pedicab adventure Tour for HIVE 3, produced by the Electric Company, Universal Limited, and the Cultural Olympiad. That site-specific escapade was reinvented for Victoria (Theatre SKAM), and Toronto (SummerWorks). Joanna is struck by the systemic inequities that repeat in Canada, and to troubling those patterns through performance.
Brian Postalian (Production Coordinator)
Brian Postalian (Բրայն Փոսթալյան) is an arts administrator, educator, and creator born and raised in Toronto/Tkaronto by way of Armenia, Ireland, Wales, and the Czech Republic. He works in the Arts & Theatre sector as a highly skilled and sought-after freelance administrator, producer, and educator. As a producer, he has worked on projects locally and nationally across Canada. From small independent theatre companies to mid and large-scale arts organizations and performing arts festivals, he is quick to adapt to the given needs and circumstances a project requires. He has shaped his career working with community groups and is skilled in facilitation across disparate groups. A passion for live performance that is exemplified in his 10+ year history of making events in public spaces (and often unusual places). As an artist, Brian makes work that reconsiders how we share space together in communal places. He is always looking at creating unique happenings for the audience that leave lasting impressions and transformative experiences. His work is highly collaborative and crosses disciplines from creation, direction, performance, and medium. An ambitious risk taker, a reviewer once described him as “clearly unafraid to try just about anything."
Jamie Sweeney (Technical Director)
Jamie Sweeney is a Canadian, Vancouver based, theatre collaborator. She is a lighting designer, a performer, a technical director, a deviser, a creator, an artist.
Davey Samuel Calderon (Dramaturg, Public Engagement)
Davey is an emerging director, curator, writer, producer, drag artist, dramaturg and settler on the unceded territories of the coast salish peoples: the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim-speaking Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation). He has his BFA in Theatre Performance and Communication from Simon Fraser University and is Co-Founder of New(to)Town Collective, an emerging theatre collective aspiring to provide accessible, experimental training workshops and creating new interdisciplinary works together.
Davey’s first written solo show, Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night!, premiered at the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival (Produced by Tender Container and associate producers New(to)Town Collective and Neworld Theatre) and was read at the 2020 Tales of the Flipside Festival (Carlos Bulosan Theatre, Toronto). He also wrote the short film RUN, that premiered at the 2018 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. He is the co-creator and assistant director for the award-winning My Name Is Sumiko that premiered at the 2019 Vancouver Fringe Festival. Davey has worked with nationally recognized companies and individuals – including Neworld Theatre, Alley Theatre, Paul Wong, rice and beans theatre, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association – that have allowed him to not only work in the arts professionally, but also to make many amazing connections with various communities in Vancouver. He is currently the 2020-21 Emerging Dramaturg for vAct’s MSG Lab series and Co-curator for Upintheair Theatre’s 2020 e-Volver Festival (a festival of new, live-digital performance works by emerging and mid-career artists).
Melanie Yeats (Creative Managing Director - Contract Support/Invoicing)
Melanie loves creating splendid order in support of beautiful chaos. Most recently serving as Operations Manager at Gateway Theatre, she comes to PTC with two decades of experience as a performer, director, and arts administrator, as well as a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU. Melanie’s artistic practice is the force that inspires her to collaboratively solve logistical and operational challenges. She is thrilled to be joining PTC’s team of dedicated, inspired theatre professionals.
Dominique Wakeland (Dramaturg - Black Theatre Archive)
Dominique Wakeland (they/them) was born on unceded Kwantlen Territory and graduated from Simon Fraser University in June 2019 with a BFA in Theatre Performance. They are a performer, dramaturg, director, and drag artist. Past credits include: Dramaturging Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night, (2018) Foot Faults in Foreplay, (2017) and being the inaugural winner of Van Slam’s Drag Slam (2019). In 2019 they participated in the development and jury of the Vancouver Fringe’s, Fringe Forward Award. They worked as an Assistant Choreographer/Assistant Director with MISCELLANEOUS Productions, an East Vancouver theatre company for at-risk and culturally diverse youth. In 2020, they worked with the PTC to develop their dramaturgical practice through the BC Arts Council’s Early Career Development program.