THE GAY HERITAGE PROJECT
JANUARY 6 - 31

DAMIEN ATKINS (Creator/Performer)
For Buddies: Real Live Girl. Selected credits: Angels in America, The Way of the World, The Caretaker, King Lear, The Importance of Being Earnest (Soulpepper); Someone Else, Unidentified Human Remains…, Shopping and Fucking (Crow’s Theatre); Seussical (YPT); The Clockmaker (Tarragon); Geometry in Venice, Amadeus, Cabaret (Segal Centre); The Retreat From Moscow (Neptune Theatre); Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Amadeus, Frost/Nixon, 7 Stories (Canadian Stage); four years at Stratford, one year at Shaw. As playwright: miss chatelaine (TPM, The Grand); Good Mother (Stratford); Real Live Girl (Buddies/The Grand/MTC); Lucy (Canadian Stage/Ensemble Studio Theatre – NYC, Delaware Theatre Co.); The Mill, Part Four: Ash (Theatrefront). Damien has taught Vocal Masque at the National Theatre School of Canada, and he has been a playwright-in-residence at the University of British Columbia, The Canadian Stage Co. and Crow’s Theatre. He has been nominated for four Dora Awards for acting and writing, winning twice. Upcoming: London Road (Canadian Stage), Beatrice and Virgil (Factory Theatre).

ASHLIE CORCORAN (Director)
Ashlie is Artistic Director of the Thousand Islands Playhouse for which she has directed Third Floor, The 25^th Annual Putnam County and Salt-Water Moon. She is also the Artistic Producer and founder of Toronto’s Dora Award winning Theatre Smash for which she has directed Tiny Dynamite, Tijuana Cure, A Boy Called Newfoundland and The Ugly One and produced Norway.Today. Ashlie also directs opera, including The Magic Flute at Opera Philadelphia, Don Giovanni, Le Lauréat and Three Sisters Who are Not Sisters at the Glenn Gould School, RCM and The Bear, Cinderella, Isis & The Seven Scorpions and The Brothers Grimm at the Canadian Opera Company. Ashlie is a past Shaw Festival Director Intern, was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award (for The Ugly One), was short-listed for the Pauline McGibbon Award and is a past Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist at the Tarragon Theatre. Upcoming: THE UGLY ONE: Theatre Smash/Tarragon Theatre

CAMERON DAVIS (Projection Designer)
Selected credits include: projection designer: Yukonstyle (Canadian Stage); CRASH (Theatre Passe Muraille); Beyond the Farm Show (Blyth Festival); Feng Yi Ting (Spoleto Festival USA/Lincoln Center Festival/Luminato Festival); Chile con Carne (Alameda Theatre); Every Letter Counts (Factory Theatre); Cruel and Tender (Canadian Stage); Swimmer (68) (Hopscotch Collective); The Book of Esther (Blyth Festival); Rock ‘n’ Roll (Canadian Stage/Citadel); video designer: Dance Marathon (bluemouth inc – various international festivals). Cameron also teaches and mentors projection design at the National Theatre School of Canada.

PAUL DUNN (Creator/Performer)
Paul’s recent acting credits include the world premiere of Tim Luscombe’s Pig, (here at Buddies earlier this season), Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Driftwood Theatre), Woof in HAIR (Grand Theatre, London), Hermann in East of Berlin (Tarragon Theatre and national tour), and performances in After Akhmatova (Tarragon), Peter Pan and Dangerous Liaisons (Stratford), The Middle Place (SummerWorks), Hana’s Suitcase (YPT premiere and tour), The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (Canadian Stage),  After the Orchard (NAC), Snowman, Steel Kiss/Gulag (Buddies in Bad Times), and his own one-man show BOYS (Theatre Direct).  He was a member of the Stratford Festival’s acting company for seven seasons, appearing in numerous Shakespeare plays, as well as Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, David Young’s Glenn, and the premieres of Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex and Peter Hinton’s The Swanne.  As a playwright, his work includes BOYS, High-Gravel-Blind, and Offensive Shadows.   He is currently developing Outside, with Roseneath Theatre, about homophobia, bullying and GSA’s in high-schools. Paul is a graduate of Grant MacEwan University and the National Theatre School of Canada, where he has been a regular guest instructor.

PAUL HALFERTY (Dramaturg)
Paul Halferty is in the final stages of completing his Phd dissertation, a history gay male theatre in Toronto at the University of Toronto. His work has been published in Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Theatre Review, and in the anthology Queer Theatre in Canada. He is associate editor of TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work, published by Intellect Press, and is a contributor to the anthology. He has taught at York University, the University of Toronto, and at Brock University, mainly in the areas of theatre history, acting, gender and sexuality studies.

ANDREW KUSHNIR (Creator/Performer)
Andrew is a Toronto-based actor, playwright and community arts worker, as well as creative director of Project: Humanity (PH), an organization raising awareness of social issues through the arts. Select acting credits: Passion Play (Convergence/Sheep No Wool/Outside The March), Spelling Bee (Thousand Islands Playhouse), The Middle Place (PH, Canadian Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille, national tour), Frankenstein (Catalyst Theatre, 3 national tours), Habitat (Theatre Network), The Last Five Years (Theatre&Co.), Offensive Shadows (Studio 180). His play The Middle Place is an award-winning piece of verbatim theatre about youth homelessness, which has toured Toronto high schools, has been produced for general audiences in Toronto three times, and has toured nationally. Andrew is currently playwright-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre and developing a new verbatim work at The Theatre Centre. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program and a 2013 recipient of the university’s Alumni Horizon Award. Upcoming: COCK (Studio 180)

THOMAS RYDER PAYNE (Sound Designer)
Thomas Ryder Payne is a Toronto based composer and sound designer. Starting as a songwriter with a 4-track recorder, Thomas has followed a varied musical career including studying with composer James Tenney, recording and touring for six years with the Juno nominated band Joydrop and producing numerous records. Recent work has focused on theatre, dance and film including designs for Soulpepper (Kim’s Convenience, La Ronde), Stratford (The Matchmaker, Othello), CanStage (Someone Else, Middle Place), Tarragon (The Little Years, If We Were Birds, Leo), Toronto Dance Theatre (Everyday Anthems), NAC, Theatre Calgary, GCTC, Nightwood, YPT, Factory, Modern Times, Crows and many others. Thomas has received 2 Dora awards and 12 nominations.

KIMBERLY PURTELL (Set and Lighting Designer)
Kimberly is thrilled and honoured to be working with this fabulous group of artists on The Gay Heritage Project.  Most recently she designed the lights for Proud (GCTC), Waiting for Godot (Stratford Festival), Race (Canadian Stage), Entertaining Mr. Sloane and La Ronde (Soulpepper), Falsettos (Acting Up Stage), The Normal Heart (Studio 180), Svadba (Philadelphia Opera), Loveloss (Dancemakers), and the set and lighting for Crash (Theatre Passe Muraille).  She is a recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award and three Dora Awards for lighting design.