Laura Stinson

Laura (she/her) crafts images from both found and traditional materials. These creations become narratives, characters and atmospheres in a variety of theatrical spectacles. She began her career in puppetry with Bread and Puppet Theater in 2016 where she apprenticed under Peter Schumann and has continued to develop her puppet manipulation and construction with Mermaid Theatre (NS, Canada), Compagnie Arketal (Cannes, France) and Compagnie Coatimundi (Châteaurenard, France). In 2017 she collaborated with Noella Murphy and Julia Walker to form A Road Less Graveled Productions, which has performed puppet shows at art festivals throughout Nova Scotia. After four years working as a touring member and subsequent resident puppeteer for Bread and Puppet, Laura co-founded The North Barn Theatre Collective in 2020. She currently lives and makes art in Mi’kma’ki.

GaRRy Williams

Born in Halifax (Canada); education in Musicology at the Free University (Berlin); Voice und Composition at Manhattanville College (NY) and Mt. Allison University (Canada); studied Theatre of the Oppressed with Julian and Augusto Boal (NY); freelance artist, educator, and Artistic Director and founding member of DaPoPo Theatre 2004-present.

Work includes “Café DaPoPo” and “The Drinking Game”; Music & Lyrics for “KAMP” winner of the Merritt Award for “Outstanding Original Score”; nominated for Best Original Score for “Twelfth Night”, “Peter Pan”, “Pinocchio”, and “The Jew of Malta”; Music & Lyrics for “Wizard of Oz”; Music Direction for “Midlife: A Crisis Musical”, and “The Veil”; collective creations “The FEAR Project”, “So… What About Love?”, and “The Halifax Hearings”; nomination for Best Supporting Actor for “King Lear” (SBTS) and “Tournaments & Lies” (Us -vs Them); most recently, composed music for "Play-Building" (Ship’s Company), "Gonzalo’s Map" (Keep Good); "Crypthand" (Gale Force); currently working on an Original Score for “The Book of Kit and Mel”. He brings to his work a love of music, collective creation, and political theatre.

In the Spring of 2021 he collaborated with the North Barn Theatre Collective to compose an original score and to provide dramaturgical support for Troubling Joy: a bicycle puppet circus.

Franziska Glen

Franziska Glen (she/her) is an actor, puppeteer and theatre maker living in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). She is co-artistic director of Gale Force Theatre and performed in their inaugural show Crypthand, for the 2019 Halifax Fringe Festival. After completing three international tours with Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia’s show The Rainbow Fish, Franziska spent the summer of 2019 at Bread and Puppet as an apprentice puppeteer to their circus and pageant shows. Recently she spent the summer of 2020 developing outdoor shows to be performed during the time of Covid. These include Late Night Radio with the North Barn Theatre Collective and A Tale On Two Wheels with Gale Force Theatre.

Noella Murphy

Noella Murphy made her theatrical debut at the age of 11 in Theatre Antigonish’s production of The Sound of Music. From there, she appeared in every local production she could, which eventually led to her working with FAST in a variety of roles over many seasons. Noella is an alum of Kinsale’s Wooden O Drama Program (Ireland) and NSCAD University. A multidisciplinary artist, Noella often runs theatre camps, workshops, and art groups for different community groups, with a focus on performance and creation as a therapeutic outlet. Recent performance credits include: Listen to the Wind (Steady Theatre Co), Late Night Radio (North Barn Theatre Collective), The Blazing World (The Villains Theatre), Worry Duck (Halifax Fringe), and Eurydice (Theatre Antigonish). She is happy to be back in town with her partner, near her family and friends, after many years away

Ian McFarlane

Ian (he/his) is a maker, performer and community advocate whose multifaceted practice of landscape poetics, junkyard theatrics, and performative alchemy explores the unexpected correspondence between the performing body and the performing of the world. Expanding on the disciplines of puppetry, ecoscenography and sensory ethnography as foundations for creative inquiry, Ian creates works for the theatre, outdoor spectacles and community-led projects. Recent artistic activities include: Late Night Radio with the North Barn Theatre Collective (2020), workshop facilitation at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space with The Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry, set design for Playmaking with The Ship’s Company Theatre (2020), and Resident Puppeteer with Bread and Puppet Theater 2019-2020, including an international performance of The Honey Let’s Go Home Opera at the 2019 Festival Mondial des Theatres de Marionnettes. Ian received an MFA in Contemporary Art from Simon Fraser University in 2018, is a co-producer of The River Clyde Pageant and a co-creator of The North Barn Theatre Collective.

Behrooz Mihankhah

Iranian/Canadian composer, pianist, and singer/songwriter Behrooz Mihankhah started performing professionally as a singer/songwriter in India in 2011. In 2013 he shifted his focus to piano and composition when he went to Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music in Tamil Nadu, India in 2013. Along with a major in piano and composition he studied jazz, western harmony, Carnatic music and Konnakol. While in India, he played, toured, and had multiple television performances with various ensembles. He toured throughout India (New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Rajasthan, Mumbai) and Eastern Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI). Behrooz holds a Bachelor of Music from St. Francis Xavier University in Jazz Studies and a Music Arts Diploma from the Nova Scotia Community College. Since 2015 Behrooz has lived in Halifax where he has been writing, producing, performing, and touring. Inspired by his migrations through Iran, India, and finally to Canada, Behrooz Mihankhah’s latest album "Lydium", takes impressionist and jazz compositions and presents them in an Iranian instrumental context. This collection of original and pre-existing pieces fuses musical traditions of the past with contemporary concepts of composition and improvisation.

behroozmihankhah.com

Lily Falk

Lily Falk (she/her) is an emerging theatre artist based in Kjipuktuk. She's Co-Artistic Director of Gale Force Theatre, a company making plays with whimsy and heart for children and adults. A workshop version of her first play, Crypthand won Best Original Script at the 2019 Halifax Fringe Festival. It's since been in development with Eastern Front Theatre's Emerging Playwrights Unit and is slated for production late 2021. This summer, she'll be touring A Tale on Two Wheels with Gale Force Theatre, a devised show for very young audiences delivered by tandem bike to parks around the province. When she's not working in theatre, Lily is an outdoor educator and youth program facilitator. Currently, she's writing a serialized audio drama for kids.

She worked with the North Barn Theatre collective in the spring of 2020 for the creation of Late Night Radio.

Megan Stewart

Megan Stewart (she/her) is a theatre artist residing and working in Epekwitk (Prince Edward Island), the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people. A director, producer, dramaturg and performer, much of her practice centres upon large-scale collaborative theatre projects, with a focus on community-engaged creation. She has established several outdoor theatre festivals and performance events on PEI, including the inaugural March of the Crows for Art in the Open (2011) with Jamie Shannon and Harmony Wagner; and the Island Fringe Festival with Sarah Segal-Lazar in 2012. She is the artistic director of The River Clyde Pageant, which she co-founded in 2016 with Ker Wells. Recent work includes The Flock (Art in the Open 2020); co-curating Art in the Open 2019; and directing the Pageant’s first satellite production, Undercurrents, for the 2019 edition of Lumière in Sydney, Cape Breton. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s MFA program in Interdisciplinary Arts. www.meganblythe.com