Night Feed Creative Team
Sarah Joy Bennett – Playwright, Co-Creator & Performer
Sarah Joy Bennett is an actor, writer and designer. She is a member of Keystone Theatre, which creates original works in the style of silent film, and with them has toured Canada with their shows The Last Man On Earth and Gold Fever.
Other past projects as a co-creator include Theatre Sasa’s puppetry-based The Pressed Fairy Book, and Power Of Flight’s original musical The Ballad Of One-Eyed Jack. She has also performed with Classic Theatre Festival, Odyssey Theatre, Brookstone Theatre, and Metaphysical Theatre. As the burlesque performer Cherry Temple, she has been featured in international burlesque festivals, and at Le Tambour Royal Theatre, in Paris.
Her writing work includes Postcards (CBC Radio, Out Front), and Trophy, a Summerworks Festival installation for which she was part of a team of writers and storytellers.
Sarah Joy Bennett appears courtesy of CAEA
Ginette Mohr – Assoc. Director, Co-Creator & Performer
Ginette is an award-winning performer, director and playwright. Her twenty-year career in the performing arts has galvanized her love for live experiences and direct contact with people. Driven by curiosity, she works to motivate a more conscious and compassionate community through the creation of imaginative, participatory theatre.
She has created theatre with companies that include: The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Neptune Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, Drayton Entertainment, Theatre Direct, Theatre Aquarius, The Quickening Theatre, Keystone Theatre, and The Second City. Ginette recently directed and co-created Snack Music and Table Top Tales with SNAFU Dance Theatre.
More information at www.ginettemohr.com
Ginette Mohr appears courtesy of CAEA
Shawna Reiter – Puppetry Director & Designer, Co-Creator
Shawna Reiter is the co-founder and Artistic Director of CLUNK Puppet Lab where she is co- creator/writer/and performer of How I Became Invisible, Fin, The Uneventful Disappearance of Mr. Ogorki, and Gone Fish’in.
Alongside her theatrical productions, Shawna has created large-scale sculptures, robotic puppet installations, and interactive video animations. She has also designed puppets for Young People’s Theatre, Theatre Direct, Old Trout Puppet Workshop, New England Puppetry, and Forte Musical Theatre. She currently teaches puppetry design at Humber College.
More information about CLUNK Puppet Lab at www.clunkpuppetlab.com
Corinne Murray – Performer
Corinne is proud to be making her Fringe Fest debut in Night Feed. She studied theatre at The Neighborhood Playhouse and The Canadian National Voice Intensive. She is primarily a voice actor and can be heard on various Radio and Television commercials. She performs in improv shows with The Kate Ashby Academy and past notable theatre credits include Stephanie in Greased Too! Corinne is also a producer. She produced the short film Gabriel’s Mustache, along with a number of other projects for The Twenty Buck Film Club. She has been the Executive Producer at Imprint Music for over a decade.
Mike Petersen – Guest Puppetry Director
Mike has performed around the world with such companies as Mermaid Theatre, Neptune Theatre, Kaleidoscope Theatre, the Edinburgh Puppet Company, and Poland’s Teatr Arlekin. Television credits include Fraggle Rock, The Mighty Jungle, Toopy & Binoo, and the Emmy-nominated preschool series Miss Persona. Mike is a proud member of puppetry ensemble that created Old Man and the River for Theatre Direct, and he created and performed in As You Puppet at YPT. As a teacher of puppetry Mike has worked alongside Graham Whitehead at Mermaid Theatre, Allen MacInnis at YPT, Lynda Hill at Theatre Direct, and Seanna Kennedy, director of the first Canadian production of Avenue Q at Lower Ossington Theatre.
Stevie Baker – Stage Manager
Stevie Baker is a producer, costume designer and stage manager. Internationally, she has worked with Kansas City’s MET and served as Artistic Director for the Daegu Theatre Troupe in Daegu, South Korea. Stevie is extremely proud to be the resident head of production, and primary costume designer, at her theatrical home Dauntless City Theatre. Favourite credits include directing Zora Neale Hurston’s Lawing and Jawing and A Streetcar Named Desire for the DTT. Recent productions include Scarred Leather (Whiskey Ginger Collective), Drunk Julius Caesar and Much Ado About Nothing (Dauntless), Lysistrata (how.dare.collective 2017 Toronto Fringe), The Winter’s Tale (Leroy Street Theatre). Stevie is ever grateful for her magical and perfect children Stella and Gilda.
David Atkinson – Music Director
David Atkinson is an award-winning pianist, composer, and music director. He is currently the Associate Music Director for the Mirvish production of Dear Evan Hansen. Other selected musical theatre credits include: London Road (CanStage), West Side Story (National Arts Centre), Jersey Boys (DanCap), Kinky Boots, Wicked (Mirvish), Over The Rainbow (CBC Television; asst music director).
As music director of Keystone Theatre, David co-created three new works, including The Belle Of Winnipeg for which he proudly received the 2010 Dora Award for Sound Design & Composition; as well as The Last Man On Earth, which won several awards during its 2012 cross-Canada Fringe Festival tour.
More information at www.davidatkinson.ca
Melissa Joakim – Lighting Designer
Melissa Joakim is a lighting and projection designer, scenographer and stage manager in Toronto. She has been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award in Outstanding Lighting Design, and the Pauline McGibbon Award. Recent credits include: Scenography: Prophecy Fog (Theatre Centre with Paper Canoe Projects). Lighting and Projection Design: This is the Point (Theatre Centre & Ahuri Theatre); A Side of Dreams (Paper Canoe Projects); Heathers The Musical (Hart House Theatre). Lighting Design: Isitwendam (Native Earth Performing Arts and Theatre Northwest); Space Interrupted (Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre); Balaklava Blues (Luminato and Latitude Festivals). Projection Design: Flashing Lights (Bad New Days and Ahuri Theatre), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Hart House Theatre); Dissidents (ARC). She is the touring lighting designer and stage manager for Theatre Centre’s Sea Sick which has toured internationally and across Canada, and is traveling to the Edinburgh Festival this summer.
Jonathan Davis – puppet builder
Jonathan is a puppet designer and special effects engineer at CLUNK Puppet Lab. He designs and builds sets, creates puppet mechanics, special lighting effects, and designs lighting and sound. Jonathan worked with the Old Trout Puppet Workshop building remote DMX controlled LED fire props for their recent theatrical production Ignorance, and built mechanical set pieces and fire and lighting effects, and a wireless mechanical turnkey for Santa’s sled for their NFB film “From Naughty to Nice”. He has also designed and programmed a joystick controlled set of eyebrows for Dutch Uncle Puppetry, and created the Mystery Man’s Glowing Bag special effect for Young People’s Theatre‘s Production of James and the Giant Peach. He is also the co-creator/writer of CLUNK’s Gone Fishin’.
Additional Acknowledgements
We would also like to acknowledge those who helped breath life into Night Feed in its infancy by participating in the first workshop phases. Their contributions and feedback were instrumental in helping add shape and clarity to the world of the play.
Alexandra Montagnese – puppeteer, co-creator – alexandramontagnese.com
Emily Pearlman – dramaturg – micasatheatre.bandcamp.com
Ingrid Hansen – puppetry consultant – www.snafudance.com