MEET OUR PARTICIPATING THEATREMAKERS
Hover over each image to read the artist’s biography.
Alten Wilmot (he/them) is a multidisciplinary artist. He is the founder of Unwrap Theatre and in his teenage years, he founded Voices Over Time – a troupe that provided free concerts for long-term care facilities. He has worked with companies from coast to coast, performing in two Dora Award winning productions, receiving a Denny Award from the KW Arts Awards and the Queer Emerging Artist Award from Buddies in Bad Times.
Lucy Rose Coren is a Canadian theatre-maker whose work before now has been in the UK. It began 7 years ago while she completed her MA in Dramaturgy at the University of Kent. She was the Resident Dramaturg for Empty Deck Theatre Company from 2016-2018 before becoming Associate Dramaturg for Beyond Face Theatre Company in 2019.
Lucy has also created, facilitated and produced projects across the UK and in Italy and Belgium. She returned to Toronto at the end of 2019. She is currently a member of Factory Theatre's Foundry and is thrilled at this opportunity to participate in Project Humanity's Proximity Lab.
Selected credits: programsound.fm (Outside the March); 2000 Stories (Beyond Face Theatre Company); Football Fathers (Live Others Theatre Company); Ignatius (Tramshed); Cosmic Fear or the Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia (Empty Deck Theatre Company); A Doll’s House (Theatre of Europe)
Katey Wattam is a director and creator of mixed English, Irish, and Anishinaabe ancestry who has worked across Turtle Island. She is drawn to stories connected to her ways of knowing while allowing space to explore and experiment with theatrical forms through an Indigenous lens. Through her embodied practice, she mines bodies for their blood memory, uncovering experiences and traumas to reclaim and decolonize bodies, minds, and spaces.
She is an alum of McGill University, MAI Alliance Program, and Black Theatre Workshop's Artist Mentorship Program. Katey is currently an artist-in-residence at Imago Theatre, developing a theatrical adaptation of Katherena Vermette's poetry book, river woman, a part of the 2021 ThisGen Fellowship with Why Not Theatre, and just directed Dreary and Izzy with Guild Hall and Gwaandak Theatre in Whitehorse, Yukon.
Born and raised in Tkaronto, she currently lives in Tio'tiá: ke and is pursuing her Masters in Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto.
Richard Lam is a Toronto-based Actor, Writer, Musician, and Sound Designer. Originally from Vancouver, Richard obtained his B.A. in Political Science at UBC before training in the BFA in Acting program at the University of Alberta. Richard was a company member at Soulpepper Theatre for four years, where he trained at the Soulpepper Academy in a split actor/musician stream under Director of Music Mike Ross. At Soulpepper, he appeared in 15 stage productions and concerts, and joined the company on tours to the Charlottetown Festival and Off-Broadway in New York City. He has also worked for many other theatres across Canada, including the Citadel Theatre, Canadian Stage, Bat Hats Theatre, Coal Mine Theatre, Buddies In Bad Times, Talk Is Free Theatre, and Outside The March. In 2019, Richard wrote, performed, and composed music for his first original play, The Little Prince: Reimagined, and received Dora Award nominations for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance. He is the guitarist in the band James King and the Midnight Hours (@jk12hr), and recently released his own home-recorded pandemic EP Hard Rain: A Mixtape Cabaret.
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Four images of the Proximity Lab participants:
1. ALTEN WILMOT (they/he), with blue eyes and cropped hair, wearing a blue T-shirt and a serene gaze against a black background; 2. KATEY WATTAM (she/her), with shoulder-length dark hair and rust-and-white beaded triangular earrings, wearing a turtleneck and a serious but gentle expression; 3. LUCY ROSE COREN (she/her), a mixed-race woman with wire framed glasses and cropped black bangs, smiling slightly at the camera against a background of brick and houseplant; 4. RICHARD LAM (he/him), with cropped black hair, a half-smile, and a black blazer over a white shirt emblazoned with partly-visible text (“Doug … LKS WI…”) against a gradient black and grey background.
MEET OUR GUEST ARTISTS
Hover over each image to read the artist’s biography.
Adam Chen is a writer, entrepreneur, and performer with experience spanning several continents and disciplines. As a journalist, Adam worked on the audience development team of HuffPost Canada, and has written for publications including BuzzFeed, Greencamp, The Hoser, and the Review of Journalism.
In the field of live journalism, Adam conducts research with the stitched! Live journalism lab, a resident in The Catalyst at FCAD, based out of Ryerson University. Adam is also the founder of a local journalism experience and events company called Talk Media, where he experiments with different interactive physical and online platforms to present new ways for audiences to engage with local storytelling. Their current projects include the live-streaming show Shiny Talking People, and the online journalism museum and carnival experience, Toronto Rewind.
Named one of the most influential disabled artists by UK’s Power Magazine, Alex Bulmer has thirty professional years’ experience across theatre, film, television, radio and education. She is dedicated to inclusive collaborative art practice, fuelled by a curiosity of the improbable and deeply informed by her experience of becoming blind. She is activated by obstacles, well exposed to the absurd, and embraces the disciplines of generosity, listening, time, and uncertainty within her artistic and personal life. Alex is artistic director of Common Boots Theatre, co-founder and artistic director of Cripping The Stage, and the lead curator of CoMotionFestival 2022, an international disability arts festival produced by Harbourfront Centre. Alex has designed and led numerous programs and consultancies in Canada and the UK to enable greater intersectionality and accessibility within arts organizations and educational institutions. She continues to be a mentor for disabled artists in Canada and the UK, emboldens others to imagine beyond the assumed, and celebrates that disability is good for art.
Tristan R. Whiston is a multi-disciplinary artist who has worked in Toronto’s arts community for 30 years as a director, dramaturge, writer, performer, teacher and community artist. His work as an audio artist has gained him international acclaim and attention. He wrote and directed five audio documentaries for CBC; most notably, his work, Middle C, won the 2007 Premios Ondas Award for International Radio, and in 2010 was selected as CBC’s entry for the Global Perspectives Series; as a result, audiences of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Netherlands, Australian Broadcast Corporation, Radio-Television Hong Kong, Radio New Zealand and South Africa FM heard Middle C.
As a community artist, Tristan was the artist in residence at Central Toronto Youth Services, directing Gender Play (2004-2010) working with LGBTQ youth to explore issues and experiences of gender, and, most recently, Transcend, a group exploring gender through art and activism. Tristan is the artistic co-director of ReDefine Arts (formerly Red Dress Productions) with whom he co-led 30+ community-engaged arts projects including Drift Seeds, (a site-specific performance with a cast of 150+) and co-created numerous interdisciplinary arts projects including May I Take Your Arm, Where There is Smoke and trace (with Moynan King) that toured Canada in 2015 and was featured in the Fall edition of Canadian Theatre Review journal.
Camille Turner is an explorer of race, space, home and belonging. Straddling media, social practice, installation and performance art, her work has been presented throughout Canada and internationally. Wanted, a collaboration with Camal Pirbhai, was presented most recently by the Art Gallery of Ontario and uses the trope of fashion to transform 18th century newspaper posts by Canadian slave owners into contemporary fashion ads. Freedom Tours, created collaboratively with Cree-Metis artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle is a national commission for LandMarks 2017/Repères 2017 that consists of participatory, site-specific events that re-imagine and reanimate land and water from African Diasporic and Indigenous perspectives. Afronautic Research Lab is a futuristic reading room in which participants encounter silenced evidence of slavery and racial violence in Canada. The Landscape of Forgetting, a walk created collaboratively with Alana Bartol and sonic walks HUSH HARBOUR and The Resistance of Peggy Pompadour evoke sites of Black memory that reimagine the Canadian landscape. Miss Canadiana, one of her earliest projects, challenges perceptions of Canadianness and troubles the unspoken binary of “real Canadian” and “diverse other”. Camille is the founder of Outerregion, an Afrofuturist performance group. She has lectured at various institutions such as University of Toronto, Algoma University and Toronto School of Art and is a graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design and York University’s Masters in Environmental Studies program where she is currently a PhD candidate.
Before moving into her current role as Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, Lisa Marie DiLiberto co-created, directed and produced The Tale of a Town – Canada, a theatre and media project develop in collaboration with The National Arts Centre that toured to every province and territory including presentations at Theatre Passe Muraille (ON), The Fredericton Playhouse (NB), The Northern Arts Cultural Centre (NT), The Yukon Arts Centre (YK), The Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre (AB), The Arts and Culture Centres of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL), Curtain Razors Theatre (SK), Theatre NorthWest (BC), and Victoria Playhouse (PEI), among others. Over the course of this multi-year project, Lisa Marie had two children who came along for this epic adventure
Lisa Marie is the founding Artistic Director of FIXT POINT, a theatre and media company which began in a Parkdale storefront where it operated for 10 years before its current expansion.
Devising and directing projects with FIXT POINT include The Tale of Harbourfront Centre (Fresh Ground Commission / World Stage), The Tale of a T-Shirt (Theatre Direct / Dora Award Nominations for Outstanding Direction and Best Ensemble), Four Corners (Theatre Passe Muraille / Beyond the Walls Series Commission), Main Street Ontario, an animated series on TVO, as well as a 7-city Canadian Fringe tour, a stint at the Edinburgh Festival and performances in Graz, Vienna and at the Prague International Festival.
Other career highlights include director of The Keith Richards One Woman Show (Suitcase in Point / Dora Nomination for Best Touring Production), Associate Director for The Double (Bad New Days w Tarragon / 5 Dora Nominations), and over a year of improv comedy in Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding at Second City.
Past posts include Playwright-in-Residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, Associate Artistic Director at Jumblies Theatre, and Education & Audience Development Coordinator at Canadian Stage.
Lisa Marie holds a Masters of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University and she is currently pursuing her PhD. She is a course instructor at Centennial College and Brock University, an Artistic Advisor for the National Arts Centre of Canada and a graduate of George Brown Theatre School and École Philippe Gaulier in Paris, France where she studied clown, bouffon and many other seriously silly things.
Lisa Marie is an advocate for artist caregivers, and above all, a proud mom to her wild children.
Chris Altorf is a working filmmaker that studied Cinema Studies at U of T. He has completed several documentaries and is compelled to investigate how art conspires with community. He enjoys being challenged to visualize the experience of others and is passionate about the intersection of technology and representation.
His documentary "Love Ya" premiered at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival, he has created episodes of the award winning series "Canada's a Drag" for CBC, and edited the documentary "Fit to Be Tied" available on CBC GEM.
+ click for image descriptions
Six images of the Proximity Lab guest-artists:
1. A screen-grab of Adam hosting his first digital live journalism performance, Shiny Talking People, on Twitch in 2020. Adam, with a black moustache and heavy-duty headphones, is mid-speech extending his hands toward the camera. Adam is framed onscreen by a microphone, the Twitch logo, a Justin.TV logo, and yellow and black text reading ‘Adam Chen’. 2. Alex Bulmer - image description pending. 3. An image of Camille, wearing a red scarf around her hair with a silver necklace and a white tank top, standing against a charcoal background. She looks upward away from the camera, wearing a serene and confident expression. 4. Lisa Marie DiLiberto, with blue overalls, red sandals and chin-length blonde hair, is playing her cello for an audience in a theatre studio. She wears a focused expression and is seated beside objects from The Tale of A Town Canada — a miniature-sized storefront, a photo of a family smiling in front of a Canadian flag — and an open book with many bookmarks. 5. Tristan R. Whiston - image description pending. 6. A black-and-white image of Chris Altorf, with cropped hair and his arms folded over a black long-sleeved t-shirt, looking directly at the viewer with a neutral, inquisitive expression.
