Discipline: performing arts

jamila ‘jai' joseph

Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph is the recipient of the joint mentorship with Playwright’s Workshop Montreal for 21-22.

Jamila ‘Jai’ Joseph is a Montreal based interdisciplinary artist with her primary mediums being dance performer 20+yrs/choreographer 10+yrs, self taught emerging singer 15yrs/song writer 15yrs, emerging theatre artist 3yrs. A past recipient of Black Theatre Workshop’s Victor Phillips award in 2002 Jamila has continued performing, creating, and learning, telling
her stories, and sharing her expressions throughout her work. In 2015, Jamila started JaiDanse, a dance facilitation/dance performance company and has produced and co-produced shows both for stage and theatre at local venues around the city. Between 2017 – 2019 Jamila has had the pleasure of joining the casts of How Black Mothers Say I Love you, written by Trey Anthony (Black
Theatre Workshop 2019) & Nicole Brooke’s a Cappella “musical odyssey” Obeah Opera (ASAH Productions 2019) in Toronto, with her first stage role being back in 2017 where she portrayed ‘Lady in Purple‘ in the Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls… (McGill University’s Tuesday Night Café Theatre) and again in 2018 as an “Encore presentation…” produced by the cast (Les 6 Productions).
As we all came to stand still in the last 2 years, Jamila used the time to study her crafts, sharpen her creative tools and has added some new skills to her toolbelt. Currently, she is choreographing for theatre (TBD) and is also writing script and song/working on her own Performance Theatre piece entitled Wild Roots. 

chloé barshee

Graduated of the École supérieure de théâtre de l’UQAM in 2014, Chloé Barshee co-founded the Grande Surface collective with her classmates when she left school. She has been seen performing at the Théâtre La Chapelle, at the Théâtre du Rideau-Vert in the production Molière, Shakespeare et moi and at the Zone Homa festival.

She is the theater director of Théâtre Everest. She is the one who constructs and imagines the craziest images, the one who always pushes the limits of the possible, who always asks herself : How are we going to do this?

“With Théâtre Everest, the creative process is a return to our roots, to childhood, a great playground where anything is possible, where anything can happen, where an accident can turn into an extraordinary idea and where there are no right or wrong moves… because it’s all about creation.”

sebastián mejía

Sebastian Mejia studied Colombian percussion with Kelly Rojas and Luis Carlos Ochoa (Colombia, 2005, 2006) and Cuban percussion with Francisco Sánchez “Lele” and the company Cutumba (Cuba, 2009, 2010).  He did a training programme with DEI in Costa Rica (2007), which introduced him into popular education. He has put theses experiences into the creative projects he has co- founded, Barefoot Salsa Collective and Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra, as well as punctual collaboration with some musical projects in Montreal such as Tamcoaré (2006- 2007) and Ramón y Su Son (2007- 2010).

lydie dubuisson

Born and based in Montreal, Lydie Dubuisson is a theatre creator, playwright, director, and storyteller.  She performed in musicals, sang in choirs, directed choirs, sang in a jazz band and graduated with distinction in Theatre from Concordia University.

Her art explores intersectionality, dystopian reality, collective memory, and ritualistic moods.  Gospel music permeates her work. Dubuisson’s plays give voice to women living in conservative communities by questioning destiny within fundamentalist environments.

Her play Quiet had a staged reading for the Black Theatre Workshop’s 2018 Discovery Series.  She is part of the writing team of Blackout, a Tableau d’Hôte production, which will be presented in January 2019. Dubuisson is currently writing her second play, Sanctuary.

kym dominique-ferguson

Kym Dominique–Ferguson is a poet by birth, a theatre performer by training, and a producer by nurture. For over a decade he has serenaded Montreal and international audiences with his blending of spoken word poetry and theatre. He successfully produced and performed his first one man show to a sold-out audience back in August of 2015: The Born Jamhaitianadian. Ferguson is also a radio show host on Soul Perspectives for the past 6 years which talks about the issues affecting the Black community here in Montreal, across Canada and internationally.   He is currently in development his first theatre play: The #DearBlackMan Project, officially commissioned by Black Theatre Workshop.