new roots | meet the makers collective
MEET THE MAKERS COLLECTIVE
The Makers’ Collective is a playful, meaningful approach to generating new work and building community among interdisciplinary artists at Pacific Theatre. It is a group of 9 talented artists – poets, singers, playwrights, and visual artists – who gather to encourage and inspire one another in the act of making new work. The collective is co-hosted by Ins Choi and Kaitlin Williams and involves creating artistic responses to a biblical text and then sharing the collectives’ work with a broader audience. A digital exhibition of their work will premiere at the New Roots Festival June 10-12th at PT.
Funds raised by the New Roots Campaign will support PT’s capacity to launch future Makers Collective gatherings with additional artists, expanding our reach, and the creation of new work.
Help us support the Makers and new work at Pacific by donating to the New Roots Campaign.
Top-Bottom L-R: Ins, Charlie, Duane, Shayna, Zach, Tetsuro, Betty, Kaitlin, and Maki.
INS CHOI
Ins Choi is an actor and a playwright who was born in South Korea but grew up and currently lives in Toronto with his wife and two children. He has performed with theatre companies such as Stratford, Soulpepper, fu-GEN, vAct, PTE, and Pacific Theatre. His award-winning play, Kim’s Convenience, was adapted into a TV series with Thunderbird Films available on CBC and Netflix. He’s retooling his solo show Subway Stations of the Cross and working on his next play, Bad Parent.
CHARLIE DEMERS
Charlie Demers is a comedian, author, and voice actor born & raised in Vancouver. A regular on CBC Radio’s ‘The Debaters’, he co-stars on two Emmy-winning Netflix animated series, ‘Beat Bugs’ and ‘The Last Kids on Earth’; has written scripts for stage and screen; and is the author of six books of fiction and non-fiction. His stand-up comedy album ‘Fatherland,’ from 604 Records, was nominated for Best Comedy Album at the 2018 Juno Awards.
DUANE FORREST
Duane Forrest is a singer-songwriter and multimedia artist from Toronto, Canada. His unique sound blending jazz, reggae, bossa nova, and soul and smooth vocals draws on his experiences traveling the world, falling in love, and finding wonder in the joys and sorrows of a common human experience. He has toured in Canada, Europe, and Central America.
In 2017, Duane debuted his first theatre production, Climb, a live album experience based on his concept album, The Climb. Climb hit the stage again at the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival, where Toronto Fringe Festival founder Gregory Nixon described Duane’s show as “an engaging, multilayered work of song, storytelling and movement” and “one of the highlights of this year’s Fringe.” His forthcoming double jazz and fusion album Sol e Sol builds on themes of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery, reflecting musically Duane’s growth as an artist and a human being.
Aside from his innate drive to create beautiful things, Duane also has a passion for arts education. In 2011 he founded Genesis Community of the Arts, a registered Canadian charity offering music and arts education to marginalized children and youth in Toronto and Central America.
To find out more about Genesis, please visit www.genesisartschool.com
SHAYNA JONES
Shayna Jones is a mother, an award-winning actor, a performance storyteller, spoken word artist, and folklorist. While raising three young kids, tending a grand garden, and living in the rural mountains of BC, she earns her living through a performance career steeped in her life context. Presently, she is the founder and leader of The Black and Rural Project, a multi-year artistic investigation into the hearts and minds of black folks tucked away on the Canadian countryside. Partnering with both arts and heritage organizations, her vision is to gather, honor and showcase black and rural Canadian life through a touring performance and gallery exhibition. Learn more about her and her work at www.wearestoryfolk.com.
ZACH RUNNING COYOTE (he/him)
Zach Running Coyote is a playwright, actor, musician, and screenwriter. He is a graduate of the acting program at Rosebud School of the Arts and the former artist in residence at Making Treaty 7. Adopted at six months old, with Mi’gmaq and settler ancestors, Zach’s work focuses on stories for the displaced and disenfranchised, the marginalized and oppressed, as he continues his own search for community, healing and the unwinding of generational trauma.
Select Credits: Snowblind (Creator/Performer, Lunchbox Theatre/Making Treaty 7), The Rez Sisters (Stratford Festival) Cariboo Magi (Far From the Tree Productions), Bright Star (Rosebud Theatre).
TETSURO SHIGEMATSU
A former writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Tetsuro Shigematsu became the first person-of-colour to host a daily national radio program in Canada, when he became host of The Roundup on CBC Radio, where he voiced nearly a thousand hours of network programming, as well as writing, producing and voicing over 50 pieces of radio drama.
Dubbed “the voice of our Azn generation” by Ricepaper magazine, Tetsuro’s theatrical solo-work Empire of the Son was named the best show of 2015 by the Vancouver Sun, and has been touring continuously throughout Canada, and beyond. It has played in 18 cities to over 20,000 people, and was described by theatre critic Colin Thomas as, “one of the best shows ever to come out of Vancouver. Ever.”
His other solo-work, 1 Hour Photo garnered five Jessie nominations, winning for Significant Artistic Achievement, and was named as a finalist for the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Drama. The Georgia Straight recently declared him to be, “one of the city’s best artists.” Visit him at shiggy.com.
BETTY SPACKMAN, MFA
Betty is a multimedia installation artist, painter, educator and author. She has worked, taught and exhibited internationally for over 20 years and spoken at conferences and galleries in Canada, Europe, the US, and Mexico. She has a background in Theatre, Animation, Performance Art and Video Art.
Spackman’s work has often centered on cultural objects and the stories connected to them. Her recent focus is on issues of animal/human relations and the connections between faith and science. Her current project, ‘A Creature Chronicle. Considering Creation: Faith and Fable. Fact and Fiction.’ addresses questions of posthumanism and the use of creation narratives in faith, science and art.
She has written and illustrated art related books including, ‘A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch’, a 500p illustrated book published in 2005 by Piquant Editions, UK which is about images of faith in popular culture.
Spackman has taught studio art at several Universities in Canada and the US as well as in various community arts programs and developed ‘The Open Studio Program’, an alternative community education model for emerging artists. She is co-founder of the Fort Gallery in Fort Langley. Spackman currently lives and works in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.
KAITLIN WILLIAMS (she/her)
An interdisciplinary theatre artist, Kaitlin was named Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre in September 2020. In various capacities, she has also worked with Bard on the Beach, the Arts Club, the Belfry Theatre, ITSAZOO, Delinquent Theatre, the Electric Company, Chemainus Theatre, Western Canada Theatre, Touchstone Theatre, Rumble Theatre and many others. Kaitlin has been nominated for multiple Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards and her Pacific shows have received 8 nominations, including “Outstanding Ensemble” (Almost, Maine) and “Outstanding Production and Direction” (Kim’s Convenience).
Above all, Kaitlin is a community builder and she believes theatre is one of the best ways we can commune together–to bear witness to what it means to be human, grow in our empathy, and collectively attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the world around us.
Kaitlin was born and raised on the unceded land of the of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She has had her feet planted on Coast Salish territory all her life and is grateful to call this beautiful place home.
MAKI YI
Maki received a BFA in Theatre Performance at the University of Regina and a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at Simon Fraser University. Maki was an artistic apprentice at Pacific Theatre in 2011/12. In 2013/14 season, she presented at Pacific Theatre Lobby Project: Suitcase Stories, 10-minute autobiographic stories, which was to become a full length play. In 2015, her collaboration with culturally diverse artists for the interpretive movement piece of a Korean short story, Weaver Woman, premiered at the Dancing on the Edge Festival, produced by Tomoe Arts.
After being invited to Uno Festival in 2015, Suitcase Stories, the full-length play, premiered at Pacific Theatre, and was remounted at Evergreen Cultural Centre in 2017/18 season. Maki appeared in Kim’s Convenience at Pacific Theatre in 2018. Maki enjoyed playing a cat in Chicken Girl by Derek Chan, a new work from Rice & Beans Theatre in May/June 2019. In January 2020, she returned to the PT stage to perform Gramma, another autobiographic play, and moved onto Arts Club tour of Kim’s Convenience until the abrupt cancellation due to COVID. Maki is grateful to PT for taking her out of her cave since the lockdown, and so happy to return to creating.
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