About the playwrights
Dave Deveau
Dave is an award-winning writer who investigates queer themes that speak to a broad audience. His work has been produced across North America and in Europe with recent productions in Poland and Germany. He is the Co-Artistic & Managing Director of Carousel Theatre for Young People and the Founding Associate Artistic Director for Zee Zee Theatre. He is devoted to developing intelligent, theatrical plays for young people that foster conversation. His plays for young audiences include Celestial Being, Tagged and Out in the Open (Green Thumb), Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls (Roseneath/Carousel) and The Papa Penguin Play (Carousel/Zee Zee/Vancouver Children’s Featival). For adult audiences his work includes Elbow Room Cafe: The Musical, Lowest Common Denominator, and My Funny Valentine. In total, his plays have been nominated for 28 Jessie Awards, 4 Ovation Awards and 9 Dora Awards. He is published in Scirocco’s Fierce anthology and his first collection CISSY: Three Gender Plays is published by Talonbooks. This is his second Silver Commission. In drag he’s known as East Van’s Cheapest Date, Peach Cobblah . www.davedeveau.com
Bronwyn Carradine
Bronwyn is an award-winning writer, director, and arts administrator. Her stage work has been workshopped, produced, and developed by theatre companies across Canada, including the Arts Club (Unexpecting; Listen to This Series, 2021) where she was part of the inaugural Emerging Playwrights’ Unit in 2019. She's a graduate of Studio 58, a member of the Playwright's Guild of Canada, and currently works as the Artistic Managing Producer for Zee Zee Theatre.
Meghan Gardiner
Arts Club audiences may know Meghan from performances in such shows as The Cull, The Sound of Music, Beauty and the Beast, A Christmas Story: The Musical, Blood Brothers, Paradise Garden, and Evita. She has written two plays for Green Thumb Theatre – Blind Spot and Role Call, the latter winning her the Sydney Risk Award for Emerging Playwright in 2012. She premiered We Three in 2018 at Carousel Theatre and premiered Gross Misconduct in 2019 at the Gateway Theatre, produced by SpeakEasy Theatre. Meghan has three plays currently touring with Shameless Hussy Productions (Love Bomb, Dissolve, and To Perfection) and is currently working on commissions for Carousel Theatre and the Arts Club. She is a proud YWCA Women of Distinction nominee and lives in Vancouver with her husband and daughter.
Amy Lee Lavoie
Amy is an award-winning playwright and graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting Program. Her plays include Rabbit Rabbit, Genetic Drift, C'mon, Angie!, and she has co-written Doubletree, Redbone Coonhound, Black Fly, and Megalodon with her husband and writing partner Omari Newton. Amy Lee is currently in development on a film adaptation of Claudia Caspar's best-selling novel, The Reconstruction.
Jessie Liang
Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, Jessie has appeared in shows like Netflix's The Night Agent and Virgin River, The CW's Supergirl, and Arts Club's 2020 touring production of Kim's Convenience. Her play, Surrender, had two staged readings with vAct's MSG Lab and Ruby Slipper's Advance Theatre Festival, and she is currently part of Arts Club's Emerging Playwrights Unit. Jessie co-directed A Life Sentence for the 2023 Vancouver Fringe and 2024 Revolver Festival, and will be directing Baggage at Studio 58, her alma mater, opening this October. You can connect with her @jessieliang21
Sydney Marino
Sydney is a Vancouver-based playwright, director, and educator. Her plays have been produced by Story Theatre, the Or Festival, the Bryan Wade Brave New Play Rites Festival, and Killarney Theatre, and she has developed work at the Arts Club and PTC. Currently, Sydney’s TYA play The Great Bloom is touring with Story Theatre, and she is developing new work as the Artist in Residence at Killarney Theatre. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from UBC.
Omari Newton
Omari is an award-winning professional actor, writer, director and Head of the Acting Department at Vancouver Film School. His original hip-hop theatre piece Sal Capone has received critical acclaim and multiple productions, including a presentation at Canada’s National Arts Centre. Together, Amy Lee Lavoie and Newton have written Redbone Coonhound, Black Fly and Megalodon.
Jiejun Wu
Jiejun (she/her) is a writer and arts administrator based in Burnaby, BC, on the unceded territories of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples. She received her BFA from UBC with a double major in English Literature and Creative Writing. Her previous works have been presented as part of UBC’s Bryan Wade Brave New Play Rites Festival, Momentum 180’s The Parallel Project, and vAct’s MSG Lab. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading, horseback riding, and buying yarn she’ll never use.