The Collective Bios
Jessica Carmichael
Jessica (she/her) is an artist of mixed Abénaki/Euro heritage. She specializes in directing, acting, dramaturgy and creation. Amidst her professional creative research practice, Jessica continues to hold an appointment as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Theatre Department of Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Molian/Montréal. Jessica has contributed to a variety of artistic roles over the years, notably as Artistic Director of Carousel Players for three seasons, and as an artistic associate with Native Earth Performing Arts, for whom she was program director of their creators’ unit Animikiig. Jessica is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada (Acting), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art/Kings College London (MA Text & Performance Studies with distinction), the University of Alberta (MFA Directing with distinction), and studied with the Stratford Festival’s Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction (2014, 2016). In 2021 Jessica directed Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters at the Stratford Festival of Canada and completed audio direction of four new plays presented by Native Earth and Nightwood Theatre as part of a New Harlem Production’s commission Embodying Power and Place, which was a response to the 2019 Missing and Murdered Women and Girls commission report.
Jani Lauzon
Jani Lauzon is a multidisciplinary artist. She was co-managing Artistic Director of Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble who collectively penned 3 productions. Her company Paper Canoe Projects supports the development of her original work: A Side of Dreams, I Call myself Princess and Prophecy Fog (on tour in 2023). She is an award winning actor/playwright/director.
Matthew MacKenzie
Edmonton playwright Matt MacKenzie (Métis) is Artistic Director of Punctuate! Theatre, as well as the founder and an Artistic Associate with Pyretic Productions. In 2018, his play Bears won Doras for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Production, was named a co-winner of the Toronto Theatre Critics Outstanding New Canadian Play Award and won the Playwright Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt National Playwriting Award. This coming April, Matt’s play After the Fire will play at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, having premiered last January at The Theatre Centre
Michaela Washburn
Keith Barker
Keith Barker is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario. He is a playwright, actor, and director from Northwestern Ontario. Currently, he is the Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program at the Stratford Festival. Before that he was the Artistic Director at Native Earth Performing Arts. Awards for playwriting include: a Dora Mavor Moore Award, The Carol Bolt Award, a SAT Award, and a Yukon Arts Award. Keith was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English Drama in 2018. His plays are published through Playwrights Canada Press.
Christine Sokaymoh
Christine has been the Executive Director of the Annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival since 2016. She is an urban Aboriginal Cree-Métis and has thirty-five years of performance experience, as a dancer, musician, media artist, writer, producer and actor. She currently sits on the board of directors for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra/Winspear Centre and the Edmonton Indigenous Public Art Park steering committee. She is the recipient of the 2007 Esquao Award in Arts and the 2016 Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Artistic Leadership. Former board member and chair of the Edmonton Arts Council, Christine is now the newly appointed Vice Chair of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Sheldon Elter
Sheldon is a Métis actor, writer, stand-up comic, musician and director originally from Northern Alberta. His credits include Evangeline (Citadel Theatre/Charlotte Town Festival), Crazy For You, Alice Through The Looking Glass, One Man Two Guvnors, Julius Caesar, A Prairie Boy’s Winter and Vimy (Citadel Theatre), BEARS (Pyretic Productions), The Crackwalker (Kill Your Television), Tartuffe, Sound of L’Homme de la Mancha (L’Unithéâtre), HROSES: An Affront to Reason (Maggie Tree), NEVERMORE (Catalyst Theatre), HAIR The Musical, Shear Madness, The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee, The Buddy Holly Story and The Full Monty (Mayfield Dinner Theatre). TV credits: Hank Williams’ First Nation (APTN), Hell On Wheels, (AMC). He is the co-star, writer, and Co-Executive Producer on Delmer and Marta and CAUTION: May Contain Nuts (APTN) He is also a core-member of the ukulele rock band sensation, The Be Arthurs.
Michaela Washburn is a proud Métis artist of Cree, French, Irish and English ancestry. Hailing from Leduc, Alberta, and now based in North Bay, Ontario, Michaela feels incredibly blessed to be grounded in ceremony and community based arts in her work with Aanmitaagzi and Big Medicine Studio. An award winning actor, Washburn also has multiple nominations. Most notably, for the Ontario Arts Council’s Indigenous Arts Award and the K. M. Hunter Artist Award for Theatre. She has performed internationally at festivals and theatres in Wales, Aruba and across Canada and the United States.
Currently, Michaela feels very proud of the ongoing success and national tour of the new award winning play she co -wrote with Joelle Peters and Carrie Costello, titled “Frozen River”, which will be published by Playwrights Canada Press in the spring of 2024.