PXR2021
2022 Presenters

Aaron Collier was born in Prince Edward Island in 1981 and is an award-winning multi-talented musician/ composer, sound and video  designer, performer and theatre creator. His composition, sound,  production, and video design work has toured throughout Canada,  Ireland, the UK, and India and he has 14 years of touring and  performance experience throughout the world with his previous bands The Jimmy Swift Band and Scientists of Sound. He is the co-founder  and technical director of Halifax-based live art company Heist and is the co-creator of their lauded productions The Princess Show, New Waterford Boy, Nature Vs Nation, FACE, and Princess Rules.

Andrew Sempere is lead developer and digital scenographer for Toasterlab. Previously, he was a Design Researcher at IBM, responsible for UX on design prototypes and provided the voice of “design thinking” for research strategy. Recently he as a Senior User Experience Designer Food52, a NY-based media and e-commerce company. His previous locative interactive design includes Hotel City / CinemaMutation (interactive film installation / game engine) and Summer of Darkness, a locative history application.

Ari Tarr, a multimedia immersive theater director, is the world’s most experienced performer of live VR productions. Tarr is currently the VR acting UI consultant, trainer, and lead host of the multi award-winning Adventure Lab, and has been creating tools for VR actors for almost a decade.

Brendan is a multi-award winning actor and creator with 100+ IMDb film and television credits and 50+  million online views. As a scrappy storyteller, Brendan is a champion of new tools and techniques,  including his own Lab at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for integrating emerging  technologies in live performance and supporting the next generation of multi-disciplinary storytellers.  During the pandemic, Brendan began releasing free tutorials and case-studies for adopting ubiquitous  streaming tools for live performance, including a customizable virtual theater that allows anyone in the  world to perform for their own live, virtual audience for free.

Carey is a board member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Society. Carey is a multidisciplinary artist and technologist whose work focuses on sonic arts, interactivity, installations, sound design and performance. He studied Electroacoustics at Concordia University and received a Masters at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. He has collaborated with hundreds of artists in the creation of works mostly in Vancouver but also Montreal, Toronto, the USA, UK & Ireland.

Through his work with Boca del Lupo in the unique role as a full-time technology director for a theatre company he as worked with the core creative team to continually expand, challenge and grow what is possible and what are impactful uses of technology for expressing artistic vision and connection with each other.

Casey Koyczan is a Tlicho Dene interdisciplinary artist from Yellowknife, NT, that works with various mediums to communicate how culture and technology coincide together alongside the political, economic, and environmental challenges that we are presented with. A portion of his large scale installation work utilizes earth materials to evoke the idea of nature reclaiming architectural space; returning to its original place of being. Inspired by sci-fi and Indigenous Futurisms, Koyczan implements various techniques of interactivity, audio-video, and the engagement of the bodily senses to raise awareness about a variety of topics within his creations. www.caseykoyczan.com You can also follow Casey on Instagram at @caseykoyczanart.

Charles Douglas is thrilled to be collaborating with Single Thread for the first time. He works internationally as an actor, movement and fight director, and teacher. Credits include: A Christmas Carol, Anne and Gilbert (NAC English Theatre); Beauty and the Beast, Shrek: The Musical, The Addams Family, Into the Woods, Mary Poppins (Neptune Theatre); The Tempest, Turn of the Screw (Two Planks); Unconscious at the Sistine Chapel (2b theatre company, world premiere); Anne of Green Gables and Ted Dykstra’s Evangeline (Charlottetown Festival, world premiere). Charles has also lent his voice and movement to Dream Adoption Society’s XR work. He teaches at the Vancouver Film School, is a guest lecturer on the MA Character Animation programme at Central Saint Martins (UK), and collaborates with Sheridan College’s SIRT Centre on their innovative research. Charles is a proud Chevening Alumnus, a Fellow of the RSA, and a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Upcoming: The Hatchling (Trigger, UK). My thanks to the entire Single Thread team and ensemble. Love to my family and my wife, Sierra. Visit: www.charlesdouglas.ca

Chloe Payne is a physical theatre performer, creator and arts educator based in Vancouver. As a graduate of the prestigious physical theatre school École Philippe Gaulier, she uses physical theatre, improvisation, devising along with text-based creation styles to produce theatre that is funny, relevant and poignant. Creation and devising credits include: The Five Points (Theatre by the Bay), Configurations of a Divine Bitch (Goat Howl) and Waiting for Batteries (Slippery People). As a performer, she specializes in physical comedy and classical text. Noteworthy credits include: Northern Lights (Theatre by the Bay), The Stranger (DLT Teatro), Antigone (Soup Can Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Single Thread Theatre Company). She teaches physical theatre for various institutions, including: Rumble Theatre, The University of Toronto, Havergal College, The Storefront Theatre, The County of Simcoe and Sweet Action Theatre Company. Follow Chloe: @payne.chloe

Clemence is a dance artist, UX/XR designer and creative technologist. She is the artistic director of  Unwired Dance Theatre. Her work explores notions of control, empathy and intimacy, questioning how  technologically mediated interactions influence human behaviours. She often works with telepresence,  networked wearables, Mocap technology and VR. With a background as a dancer and creative  technologist – and a previous career as a UX designer – she brings a unique perspective to  choreographing interactive and participatory experiences. She is also a lecturer and researcher at  Goldsmiths University, UK.

An actor in theatre, film, TV & voiceover, Craig has been performing for close to 15 years now! Alien Rescue is Craig’s second experience with the MetaMovie Project, and he is excited to bring Cello to life and discover a multitude of multiverses with each of these performances. He is thankful for his extremely supportive wife and baby boy, as well as his friends and family who give him the opportunity to reach for these bleeding edge technological storytelling experiences. For more about Craig, check out his website: www.craigernestwoodward.com

Dasha Kittredge is an actor and creative director specializing in interactive storytelling. Kittredge is currently a live actor in Oculus/Tender Claws’ Tempest and The Under Presents, which was a 2020 Emmy Awards Finalist for Innovation in Interactive Media as well winner of Forbes “VR Game of the Year” and winner of the AIXR VR Awards “VR Experience of the Year.”

Currently living in Los Angeles, Deirdre Lyons has been in over 75 Film and Theatrical productions throughout the west coast.

Her Virtual Reality work began when The Willows was filmed and released as a 180 VR film on the Amaze app available through Steam, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR, Windows Mixed Reality (WMR), Viveport and Google Daydream. She also appeared in Freakin’ Weekend, another 180 VR film from Amaze Productions. In 2019 she joined the ensemble cast of The Under Presents, a time and mind bending immersive theater experience in VR that was selected as a finalist for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media, and won the VR Awards Experience of the Year. She was Prospera in a Shakespearean production from the same studio, Tender Claws, called The Under Presents: Tempest, a theatrical and technological first: a live, part scripted/part improvised, immersive theatrical experience that audiences attend from home, using a virtual reality headset that is experienced as a one person show to small intimate audiences. Deirdre was also a principle in Finding Pandora X by Double Eye Studios, Winner of Best Immersive Experience in Venice VR Expanded, the official Virtual Reality competition section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival and the Audience Award at SXSW.

She then started producing live VR immersive theater experiences with a group of creatives that formed Ferryman Collective, including her husband Stephen Butchko, starting PARA and Krampusnacht, the latter a finalist for the PGA Innovation Award, and The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite which premiered at Tribeca, went on to be an Official Selection of the 78th Venice International Film Festival, the Kaohsiung Film Festival, Anny Fest, Church of VR and is the winner of ‘Best Narrative Experience’ at London’s Raindance Film Festival.

A multidisciplinary artist and musician, Fred Deakin was half of the Mercury/Brit nominated band Lemon Jelly who sold over half a million albums. In the last decade he has produced many large-scale interactive gallery installations and innovative live performances blending music, technology and improvisation. From 2013-2020 he was Professor of Digital Arts at the University of the Arts London. More details at http://freddeak.in/

Howard Dai is a Taiwanese-Canadian actor, performer, and theatre artist living on qiqéyt territories, works on the unceded territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Nations. He holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. He has worked as a performer, collaborator, and producer with Carousel Theatre, Single Thread Theatre, Fight With A Stick Performance, Re:Current Theatre, rice & beans theatre, Rumble Theatre, Radix Theatre, HIVE Performance Collective, and Playwrights Theatre Centre. His work the Rex Project received support and residencies from 149 Arts Society, National Theatre School’s Art Apart program, and Impulse Festival’s Peek Fest Digital Residency, He is currently the Associate Artistic Producer with rice & beans theatre, supported by Canada Council for the Arts’ Professional Development for Artists grant. He has also done digital programming, sound design, and musical composition for theatre and dance. www.howarddai.com

Ian Garrett is a designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University (Toronto); and Producer for Toasterlab. He maintains a practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography. Through Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier, recent work includes The Stranger 2.0 with DLT Experience; Groundworks with collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; the locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony; and Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York). Notable projects include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm’s Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre Is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory.

Jacob Zimmer is a theatre maker, process designer, facilitator and dramaturge. Born in Cape Breton and growing up in Halifax, Jacob has 15 years of experience creating theatre and facilitating conferences across the country.

Jacob studied at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and in 2004 was a technical intern with The Wooster Group and studied Viewpoints, Suzuki and Composition with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Jacob received the 2008 Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors.

Jacob founded Small Wooden Shoe, a company that engages with the world around us and its history in a curiously critical manner while maintaining the need to perform – to step up and to entertain. We create spaces to reduce alienation while admitting difference.

Jacob was a process designer and faculty member in Leadership at Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. He organized the UnConference on the Future(s) of Toronto Performance and has facilitated unconference events for PACT, Harbourfront Centre and LMDA as well as Small Wooden Shoe and Dancemakers.

Jacob worked extensively as a dramaturge with Dancemakers and the Centre for Creation in Toronto and in an on-going dramaturgical collaboration with Public Recordings as well as having been a co-director of HUB 14, a rehearsal and performance studio in Toronto.

Jacob leds performance workshops for theatre makers, dancers and choreographers, young people and non-arts professionals. As a featured speaker he gave the keynote address at Performance Creation Canada in Halifax (2008); spoke at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary (2010); Performance Creation Canada in Armstrong BC (2010); and has been an invited panelist for the Literary Managers and Dramaturges of the Americas, Canadian Stage, Canadian Dance Association, Society for Dance History Scholars and the Toronto Fringe Festival among others.

The Artistic Producer of Boca del Lupo since 2001, Jay Dodge was also part of the founding collective in 1996. During his tenure as Artistic Producer, Boca del Lupo has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards including seven nominations for the Criticís Choice Award for Innovation. Jay is also a co-founder of PL1422 and comes with a background in design and construction.

Currently serving on the national board of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT), Jay also has special interest in creative space making.  He has consulted with several local companies including the Playwrights Theatre Centre and Gateway Theatre for their strategic and facility planning. His artistry is one of innovation and daring and his recent a one man show about conflict photography featured interactive video, stunt rigging and verbatim text. Photog. toured to World Stage (TOR), Prismatic (HAL), Festival Trans Amerique (MON) and PuSh (VAN).

Director, producer and visual FX artist Jayden Soroka brought Pixelbox Studio to life in 2009. His directorial debut in 2006, four years after his start in the industry, won him a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival for the CBC film Under the Skin. The years that followed allowed Jayden to produce, direct and edit a large body of work and ultimately led him to start Pixelbox Studio.

Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian novelist, playwright, and director of film and theatre. He has been described as being ‘widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists’ (Toronto Star); ‘one of Canada’s most extraordinary artists’ (CBC Arts); ‘the enfant terrible of Canadian theatre’ (Libération); and ‘the hottest name in Canadian theatre’ (Montreal Gazette).

As a filmmaker, Jordan’s work has been presented in festivals and galleries the world over. His virtual reality performance Draw Me Close, produced by the National Theatre (UK) and the National Film Board of Canada, was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival and Venice Biennale in 2017, and ran at London’s Young Vic Theatre in January 2019.

Justine Garrett is a writer, director, producer, and performer. Her focus is on storytelling for immersive, interactive experiences. She co-wrote Transmission, an augmented reality (AR) performance series at FuturePlay (Edinburgh) and the Future of Storytelling Festival (NYC) in 2017. She has written extensively across a variety of media, including performance material for Lily Tomlin and articles for the Los Angeles Times, the University of Chicago Magazine, The Hairpin, and others. She recently directed the Captain Me interactive series for children, premiering in 2021. She is the recipient of an Emmy Award for her production work on the documentary No Greater Love. She has degrees from UCLA and CalArts, and is a graduate of The Second City Conservatory.

Kenneth Rougeau is a professional artist, actor & virtual reality game developer, among other strange things. He’s traveled extensively in true nomad fashion but currently resides deep in middle America (Kansas). His other passions include playing music (guitar/ukulele), singing, writing poetry, and pretty much anything involving playing with physics (juggling, billiards, pinball, etc).

Kiira Benzing is a director crossing the mediums of theater, hybrid cinema and virtual reality. “Cardboard City” her first venture in Virtual Reality won the Samsung Gear Indie Milk VR contest (2016). Following this VR film her interactive installation for “Cardboard City” combining VR and AR premiered at the 54th annual New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Her short film “Hilda” had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2017 and was distributed to Amazon and her recent film Diptych had its world premiere at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera (2018). She has been selected twice for the Oculus Launch Pad Program, Google’s Jump Start, and as a JustFilms Fellow in partnership with the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. She is currently working with live actors performing in social VR with the open software platform High Fidelity and she writes for the Medium blog “Alive in Plasticland”.

Lesley has directed over a dozen VR applications and experiences, presented at Oculus Connect about the best practices in VR design, and collaborated with his co-founders to build out Flipside XR’s vision. He has worked with high profile customers like SuperRTL, Caffeine Studios, a joint venture with 21st Century Fox, and Bento Box Entertainment, the creators of the Emmy award winning animated series Bob’s Burgers.

Marinda Botha is a South African actor, voice-over artist and puppeteer with 20 years of experience. She studied classical acting, then promptly moved to London where she worked in the above fields for 8 years. She recorded for brands like the BBC, CNN Africa, Virgin Media, Hallmark Entertainment, to name a few. She also toured throughout the UK with The Sooty Show and worked on several other puppet productions. Marinda writes poetry and also carves wooden marionettes. Having returned to her native South Africa, she now records voice overs for international clients from her home studio and performs Alien Rescue shows with her snazzy VR setup.

Max graduated from MIT in 2004 with a degree in computer science (specializing in computer graphics).  After graduation, he worked at Pixar for 10 years as a technical director working on movies like Cars, WALL-E, Up, Brave, and The Good Dinosaur creating creative technology around lighting, shading, animation, and simulation.

He cofounded Oculus Story Studio in 2014 where he produced and supervised some of the early groundbreaking, award winning narrative experiences in VR including Lost, Henry, Dear Angelica, and Wolves in the Walls. Max won an Emmy for his work with Henry and Wolves in the Walls. He won a Lumiere and Peabody Award for Dear Angelica.

Melaina Sheldon is Inland Tlingit from Teslin, Yukon where she currently resides and works as the Community Arts & Events Coordinator for the Teslin Tlingit Council. Her passion for the arts has lead her to work both literally and figuratively on stage and behind the scenes as actor, playwright, production assistant, event coordinator and dedicated board member. She is a trained facilitator of CHRC’s, The Art of Managing Your Career for Aboriginal Artists and a Jane Glassco Northern Fellow. Melaina recently completed the New Fundamentals: Leadership for the Creative Ecology program at the Banff Centre and has stepped into the role of Artistic Associate with Gwaandak Theatre. She is a board member for the Yukon Arts Centre and is a reference point for the thriving art and cultural sector in the territory. Melaina acknowledges T2L as a vital opportunity for mentorship fostering new relationships and new successes to see her into the future. To all those who have broken trail before her, Gunalchéesh!

Michael is a theatre director, performer, and creative technologist from Austin, TX currently based in New  York City. He loves to research the application of new media for live performance and tell stories that  reflect and criticize the increasingly digital realities that his generation has grown up in. In the past, he has  made performances using XR, web-design, MoCap, and networked devices. Michael also loves to teach  and empower other creators with tools to tell stories about the technology that fascinates them.

MoniGarr is an Onkwehonwe XR Multi-Disciplinary Artist (VR, AR, 360/180, 3D, Performance, Digital, Kanien’keha Revival, Haiku, Author, Audio, Visual, Procedural Animation, Software Architecture) producing immersive digital art in the Indigenous Futurism / Survivalism / Kanien’keha Revival genres.  MoniGarr’s art practice combines Onkwehonwehneha AI, traditional arts & computer science with a strong focus on Indigenous Language Revival, Retention & Personal DeColonization.

MoniGarr’s art spans decades integrating 3D Character Design / Animation, XR, VR, AR, AI, Motion Capture, 3D Fractal Environments, animatronics, raised Mohawk Woodlands beadwork, basket weaving, designing Regalia, Kanien’keha revival / retention, dance, videography, music, animation and Digital Human Design – Rigging – Animation – Motion Capture.

MoniGarr integrates bleeding edge tech, autodidact feral experiments with traditional art forms to create experiences that encourage viewers, participants and collaborators to learn about and experience Onkwehonwehneha A.I. (Onkwehonwe Ancient Intelligence, Respect for All Beings including Self and modern day Artificial Intelligence).

MoniGarr first developed Onkwehonwehneha A.I. tech solutions in the early 1990s to teach Artificial Intelligence to drop harmful negative bias while creating meaningful respectful relationships with Mother Earth, self, machines and all beings with Indigenous language dialects. She created her first A.I. in the mid 1970s. MoniGarr has 30+ years experience as a software architect mentoring & training Indigenous and non-Indigenous in art & computer science projects while navigating heavily colonized industries with techniques for respecting personal decolonization processes, Indigenous language / culture revival & retention efforts. MoniGarr acknowledges very dark life experiences without leaving audiences in dark places (Onkwehonwehneha AI).

Nicole Eun-Ju Bell is a Toronto based mixed-race multidisciplinary artist with a passion for performance and technology. She is fascinated with cyborgs and Loïe Fuller. Among other things, she is an actor, projection designer, writer, and musician. More recently, she has branched out into producing podcasts and delving into the live-stream medium. She’s worked on shows at Theatre Passe Muraille, CanadianStage, Hart House Theatre, Toronto Fringe, Next Stage, and Summerworks. This is her first foray into Virtual Reality performance and she’s thrilled to be working with a wonderful team, exploring this new intersection of performance and technology.

Nicole Rigo currently resides in Connecticut, and has been acting with The Metamovie Project since 2017. Previous VR projects: A Very Old Mystery in New New York and The Heist, both in High Fidelity. She’s so proud to be working in NeosVR! Outside VR, she has acted in many interactive/ immersive shows, her favorites being at the Mystic Seaport Museum. She also has extensive experience working in children’s theater. Recent film/TV: Alive: Streaming,  Homicide for the Holidays.

Nicole holds a B.A. from Yale University in Music, and regularly works as a classical singer in local projects, most recently Florencia en el Amazonas for Yale Opera. In her spare time, she enjoys horror movies, axe throwing, playing piano and hiking with her dog, Morty.

Nita Bowerman is a multi-disciplinary performance-based artist, mixing the mediums of dance, acting and digital art. She is an experimenter of form and designer of content. Nita is a curious and creative wanderer who finds delight in abstraction. Art is the medium through which she processes existing. A graduate of SFU School for Contemporary Arts, Nita is grateful to be living and working on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh) First Nations.

Inuk artist Nyla Innuksuk makes films, media art and VR content. Her short film Kajutaijuq premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was featured in TIFF’s 2014 Canada’s Top Ten Festival. A graduate of Ryerson University, she has made two films for the NFB’s Stories from Our Land series: Inngiruti: The Thing That Sings! (2012), featuring accordionist Simeonie Keenainak, and Finding Home (2013). In 2017, Nyla started NKSK, her own VR production company, and became the first artist to be awarded the imagineNATIVE Indigenous VR/AR Residency, where she worked with A Tribe Called Red on their Indian City 360 VR experience as part of the Canada 150 SESQUI project.

Award winning digital artist, published researcher in Artificial Intelligence and event planner (Food&Code,  Electric Offense), Roman is a Jack of all trades and thrives on applying what he learned from one field to  another. Gesture and its representation is a common theme in his recent work, as well as how behavior  and artificial entities can trigger deep emotional responses in humans.

From Northern Alberta Shaun has been an artist for 27 years from Film to a professional musician and now recently Shaun has delved into the world of Virtual Reality designing worlds in Altspace and has experience with Blender. Shaun is working on a project involved with University of Frasier Valley Called & (WAMP) Western Arctic Moving Pictures named “Forum Theatre” a program to fight oppression through movement.

Stephanie Fung (they/she) is an interdisciplinary artist and arts worker who falls somewhere between her family’s first and second generations on this land, and flat on the understanding that this land was not meant for her. Upon graduating from Queen’s University (BAH in Drama and Indigenous Studies), Stephanie joined the Kingston Theatre Alliance as an Assistant Theatre Critic. Select performance credits include: The Intangible Queer (YIKES a Theatre Company); Y2Kaper (6am Productions); Talk to Me (Alisha Grech MA Thesis); Christina, the Girl King (5th Company Lane); Between a Wok and a Hot Pot (Theatre Count); In This World (Theatre Count); paper SERIES (5th Company Lane); and Concord Floral (Theatre Kingston).

Sydney Doberstein is an actress, director, voice over artist and a co-founder of a Jessie Award nominated immersive experience company called Third Wheel Productions. She specializes in movement-based performance and immersive experiences using experimental methods and technology. Sydney has trained with SITI Company in both Viewpoints and Suzuki, with Frantic Assembly on ensemble devising and worked extensively in movement-based techniques at Capilano University. Her mission is to push the boundaries of storytelling and blur the lines between what defines an audience member and a performer.

Sylvia Bell is a freelance Stage, Production and Event Manager with more than twenty years of professional experience. Throughout her career, Sylvia has participated in the growth of some of Atlantic Canada’s most dynamic theatre companies and has toured internationally. Sylvia has proudly dedicated her career to the promotion of new voices and has assisted in the development of more than 20 world premieres. At present, Sylvia serves as the Managing Director for Heist, a Nova Scotia based live art production company and studio.