MARCH 20-26, 2016

DIRECTOR - Michael Greyeyes

Professor Michael Greyeyes teaches physical performance and devised theatre in the Department of Theatre at York University. A graduate of Canada's National Ballet School, he is a director, actor, choreographer and founding artistic director of Signal Theatre, a company that engages in practiced-based research to create live performance, exploring dance, opera, music, design and the spoken word. His productions for Signal include the dance theatre work from thine eyes created in collaboration with Yvette Nolan (Harbourfront Centre, 2011) and A Soldier’s Tale created with Tara Beagan (Fleck Dance Theatre and National Arts Centre, 2014). Directorial credits include Pimooteewin, the first Cree language opera, with libretto by Tomson Highway (Soundstreams Canada); Almighty Voice and his Wife (Native Earth Performing Arts); The River (Nakai Theatre); and the Super 16mm film Seven Seconds (imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival). As an actor, he has worked with such notable directors as Terrence Malick, John Sayles, Bruce McDonald, and Chris Eyre. His screen credits include Smoke Signals, The New World, Dance Me Outside, Skinwalkers and Passchendaele.

ASSISTANT DIRECTORS

Undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Theatre devised and directed the following interstitial movements:

Barbara Cotado Martinez - Raven Brings Light to the World

Barbara Cotado Martinez is a fourth-year BA student in Theatre Studies. She has previously directed for the Department of Theatre’s playGround Festival and assistant directed for Theatre @ York’s unmounted shows. She is honoured to work on The Birds alongside some of the finest established and upcoming artists in Canadian theatre.

Patrick Fowler - The Vision

Patrick Fowler is a BFA student who completed his training in York’s 4th Year Acting Conservatory last year. Embarking on a new journey as a director, he thanks Michael Greyeyes for the opportunity to further develop as an artist, his co-director Deniz Yumbul, and everyone involved in The Birds.

Deanna Galati - The Story of Procne and Philomela

Deanna Galati is a fourth-year BA student in Devised Theatre. She is thrilled to work on a show as diverse and multidisciplinary as The Birds. She would like to thank her co-director Kevin Woolridge and her friends and family who continue to support her.

Taliesin McEnaney - Conference of the Birds

Taliesin McEnaney is a candidate in the MFA Program in Theatre. She is a versatile performing artist who works in theatre and circus as a director, producer, performer and musician. Her interdisciplinary approach is informed by object theatre, conceptual art, clown, corporal mime and the melodramatic body. She has worked as both a director and performer in Europe, Mexico, the US and across Canada.

Andrew Ritchie - Land

Andrew Ritchie is a director, actor, improviser and an MFA candidate in Directing/Creation. He serves as artistic director of Thou Art Here Theatre in his hometown of Edmonton, and has created work in Alberta for the past 10 years. He is a graduate of the Banff/Citadel Professional Theatre Program and the University of Alberta.

Kevin Woolridge - The Story of Procne and Philomela

Kevin Woolridge is an MFA candidate in Theatre who has worked as a theatre artist for over 20 years. He is a past recipient of the Tommy Sexton Triple Threat Award, and former artistic director of the Grand Bank Regional Theatre, NL. He currently runs his own company, Temporary Theatre Company, out of St. John's, NL.

Deniz Yumbul - The Vision

Deniz Yumbul is an emerging artist, director, performer and deviser in her fourth year as a BA student in Theatre Studies. Her recent credits include stage managing the show Six Breakups in the Department of Theatre’s 2016 playGround Festival and working as a deviser in Schema: An Installation. She would like to thank her Birds co-director Patrick Fowler for always being by her side through this journey.

Keith Pike - Birth of the World

Keith Pike is founding artistic director of Theatre St. John's, NL where his productions include Mary Poppins, West Side Story and Salt Water Moon. He has also directed for the Stephenville Theatre Festival, Theatre Sheridan, Rising Tide Theatre and NL Arts Centre. He teaches part-time at York University and Sheridan College, and has twice been a guest artist/director with Acting Up Stage Company’s One Song Glory. A graduate of Memorial University and Sheridan’s Musical Theatre program, he is currently pursuing an MFA in Theatre Directing at York.

CHOREOGRAPHER - Susan Lee

Susan Lee teaches contemporary/modern dance and currently serves as artistic coordinator of the York Dance Ensemble, the resident company of the Department of Dance at York University. In her 20-year professional career as performer and choreographer, she has originated roles in almost 50 world premieres by many leading Canadian choreographers including Holly Small, Yvonne Ng, Peter Chin and Maxine Heppner, performing across Canada, the US, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore and Indonesia. As a member of Kaeja d’Dance (1997- 2008) she originated roles in most of the company’s major works and is featured in their award winning dance films, Asylum of Spoons, Witnessed, Resistance, Departure and the Gemini-nominated Old Country, as well as dance-film collaborations with Allen Kaeja and Emmy-nominated videographer Douglas Rosenberg. Her creative interest lies in improvisation and collaborative performance, the integration of live music and dance, and combining dance with other disciplines and media, including video projection and real-time-based interactive technologies. Her choreography has been presented in dance festivals and series in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Peterborough.

COMPOSER – Christopher Cerpnjak

Christopher Cerpnjak composed Philomela's and Nightingale's songs for The Birds. He is also the conductor and a performer in the band that contributes the music and soundscape for the production.

Cerpnmjak is a third-year student in the Department of Music, focusing on studies in composition and guitar performance (jazz and folk). A winner in the 2016 York University New Chamber Piece Competition, he is a member of the York University Electro-Acoustic Orchestra and serves as director of music education for the York University Musicians' Society. He also performs in the local rock bands Silus and Grant Ulysses.

STAGE DESIGNERS

The stage design for The Birds is created by students in the Department of Theatre's BFA program in Production & Design. Teams of undergraduate theatre students collaborated with the designers to construct sets and costumes, and map lighting, sound and projection technology.

SET DESIGNER - Erica-Maria Causi

Erica-Maria Causi is a fourth-year student in Theatre Production & Design. A veteran of the carpentry shop, she has worked on a number of Theatre @ York shows, including Road, Hamletmachine and the playGround Festival as well as the department's annual stage design exhibition, Scenes by Design.

COSTUME DESIGNER - Natalie Voorn

Natalie Voorn has participated in various Theatre @ York productions, and was part of the York team at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. She has also worked for Theatre PANIK, Drayton Entertainment and Classical Theatre Project.

LIGHTING DESIGNER - Rachel Annen

Rachel Annen is a fourth-year student in Theatre Production, set to graduate this spring. She discovered lighting design in her second year of studies. She also creates costumes at PAX & Anime North.

PROJECTION DESIGNER - Jason Thomson

Jason Thomson is a theatre designer, stage manager, technician and digital design artist in his final year of studies in Theatre Production & Design. In addition to Theatre @ York productions, his recent credits include assisting the Spacelab Team at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial, stage-managing productions in Gravenhurst and Orillia, and designing for shows at the Toronto and Hamilton Fringe Festivals. He currently serves as technical director for Vanier College Productions at York.

SOUND DESIGNER - Kevin Feliciano

Kevin Feliciano is a fourth-year student in Theatre Production & Design. In addition to his work in the program, he collaborated with other AMPD students to create Impress: Visage, an immersive photo media experience installation on campus during the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games.

ASSISTANT SOUND DESIGNER - Madeleine Monteleone

Madeleine Monteleone is a second-year production student focusing on management for devised theatre. Her credits include serving as assistant stage manager for Theatre @ York’s production of Brébeuf’s Ghost. As resident stage manager for Homeland Collective, she is working on a site-specific piece for the 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival.

DIGITAL PRODUCER - Don Sinclair

Don Sinclair is associate professor and coordinator of the Digital Media Program in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University. His research and artistic practice span a variety of media and formats using computer programming as a creative tool for artistic expression. His projects, which have been exhibited and performed locally and internationally, encompass physical and wearable computing, interactive sound art, laptop performance, web art, database art, interactive theatre and dance, video projection, cycling art, sustainability, green architecture and choral singing. With Professor Antje Budde, he co-founded the Digital Dramaturgy Lab, a creative research initiative of artists, scholars, scientists, technicians, programmers/software developers and students. His interdisciplinary collaborations include works created with choreographers and dancers that explore movement-based manipulation of sound and images, and audience-focused interfaces created with sound artists.

DIGITAL MEDIA DEVELOPERS

Interactive sound, visuals and code-based video projections for The Birds are created collaboratively by third and fourth-year Digital Media students enrolled in courses in Interactive Installation and Performance.

MASK DESIGNER - Mike Dangeli

Mike Dangeli is an artist, carver, singer, songwriter and dancer whose work is collected and exhibited throughout North America, Asia and Europe. He is of the Nisga’a, Tlingit, Tsetsaut and Tsimshian Nations, and grew up in his people’s traditional territory in Southeast Alaska and Northern British Columbia. He has carved more than 100 of the masks performed by the Git Hayetsk Dancers, an internationally renowned First Nations dance group based in Vancouver that he leads in partnership with his wife, Dr. Mique’l Dangeli. Working in collaboration with theatre students, faculty, and members of the Indigenous community inside and outside of York University, Mike Dangeli led a week-long workshop at York in January 2016 to design and build the original masks created for The Birds.

MASK MAKERS

The six large-scale marks created for The Birds were built by undergraduate theatre students Samantha McCue, Bradley Plasa and Anastasiya Popova under the guidance of First Nations designer and master carver Mike Dangeli.

PRODUCER - James McKernan

Professor James McKernan teaches stage technology in the Department of Theatre at York University. In collaboration with industry partners, he has produced a series of professional development workshops for stage designers, directors, producers and technicians on topics such as theatrical fog devices and lighting atmospheric effects, LED lighting, theatrical flying, and multimedia projection techniques and design in theatre. He served as director of education for SpaceLab 2015, an international celebration of scenography held in conjunction with the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the world’s premier event in the field of scenography and theatre architecture. Recent production credits include The Immigrant (Harold Green Jewish Theatre/Toronto Centre for the Arts), for which he served as production manager, and The Living (SummerWorks Performance Festival 2015), where he was recognized for excellence in sound design. He currently chairs the Ontario section of The Canadian Institute of Theatre Technology.

PRODUCTION TEAM

The production team for The Birds comprises upper-year undergraduate students in the Department of Theatre’s BFA program in Production & Design.

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR – Adam Brewer

PRODUCTION MANAGER – Laura Clark

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION MANAGER – Jamin Daniel