The
Directors Lab
North Team
Founding Team
Evan Tsitsias | Co-Founder/Artistic Director
Evan’s plays include Aftershock (Summerworks), The Murmuration of Starlings (New Works Fest), Unstuck (Frank Theatre), Strange Mary Strange (which he also co-directed at Summerworks) and the musical Inge(new) – In search of a musical. His short film Bagged was produced and aired on the CBC (Canadian Reflections) and played at WIFT, DC Shorts and NSI. As a founding member of the World Wide Lab, an international directors collective, he spent a decade traveling across the globe co-directing/co-writing/co-creating site specific, immersive pieces in Greece, New York, Taipei, Thunder Bay and Rome. In Germany he’s co-created/directed/written I am Invisible (Bluespots Productions/Augsburg), Berlin Bound (Kater Holzig/Tour), My Berlin (FELD Theatre/SDF) and We Are The Play (Sisyphos Der Flugelefant/English Theatre Berlin) for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at the Berlin Wall Memorial.
Selected directing credits: Strega Nona, The City of Tigers, Mo Willems’ Bite Sized Operas and the Art of Opera (Houston Grand Opera/Opera to Go) First Dance (Impact Fest./Aquarius/Grand Studio), A Misfortune (Next Stage),25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee (Koogle), Edges (Musical Stage), I Love You, You’re Perfect… Now Change (Angelwalk/Koogle),Silent City (Best of Fringe) The Mercy Seat (Alchemy), Burn This!, Don’t Tell Mama, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (Buddies), Perfect Life (Alleyway Theatre – Buffalo). In New York he’s directed a staged reading of The Pride (feat. Anthony Rapp) with Fundamental Theatre Project), The Real Inspector Hound (Fordham University), Chandelierva (New York Fringe), several pieces at Irondale in Brooklyn and was the 2nd Ass. Dir. under Leigh Silverman for The Wild Party starring Sutton Foster and Steven Pasquale (Encores Series/NY City Centre). He has produced Homebody/Kabul (Dora Nomination) with Mercury Theatre, Pterodactyls (Tarragon), Talk Sixty To Me (Summerworks) and an Ontario Tour of Shirley Valentine. He was also the Program Manager for Toronto Metropolitan University in a research project blending music and Forum theatre, where he created two new operas.
Evan trained at York University, Sheridan College and has his Professional Training Certificate in Theatre of the Oppressed from London, England where he trained with Augusto Boal, Julian Boal and Adrian Jackson. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Chicago Directors Lab, Playwrights Guild of Canada, SDC Member, Dramatist Guild of America and was a resident artist at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. He’s also worked in the Tarragon Playwright’s Unit and the Stratford Festival’s New Play Development Program/Playwright’s Retreat. He’s been nominated for a Dora Award (Outstanding Direction in Musical Theatre), the John Hirsch Directing Prize, Tom Hendry Award, Herman Voaden National Playwriting Prize (Honourable Mention), Broadwayworld Awards and a finalist for the Charles Abbott Directing Fellowship. He spent 11 years at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas, where he directed James and the Giant Peach at Miller Outdoor Theatre, Assistant Directed Mamma Mia! and Beauty and the Beast, worked as an Associate in the Education/Community Engagement Department, been the Artistic Assistant for the company, and Head of Acting for the Humphreys School of Music Theatre. He also spent several years as an Adjunct Consultant in Acting and Music Theatre at High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. He is former and founding Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre Company where he directed Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Don Jail, Sunday in the Park with George at the Jam Factory, and created the Musical Theatre Lab, culminating in 19 Dora nominations and four awards for the company. He is currently the Shipwide Resident Director for Disney Cruise Lines, focusing on the Disney Adventure in Singapore. His books, The Directors Lab and This is Beyond: A Time Capsule of Queer Experience (co-edited with Zaiba Baig) were published by Playwrights Canada Press. He also co-edited an issue of the Canadian Theatre Review with Jill Carter. His other work has been published in Germany, Canada and the USA. www.evantsitsias.com Insta:@evangelohouston
Esther Jun | Co-Founder/Artistic Director
Esther Jun is originally from Edmonton, Alberta. After pursuing acting in Vancouver, New York and Toronto, Esther decided she was better off making her own work and packed up to move to London, England in 2003, where she completed her BA (Hons) in Directing at Drama Centre London, part of Central St. Martins College.
Upon her second return to Toronto and after much letter writing, volunteering and generally introducing herself to anyone who would listen, Esther began working with a diverse range of companies across Ontario such as fu-Gen, Cahoots, Obsidian, Nightwood, Soulpepper, Buddies in Bad Times, The Shaw Festival and The Stratford Festival. She has helped facilitate programs for Crossing Gibraltar and the Paprika Festival and is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Directors Lab North (http://www.directorslabnorth.com/), the first international offshoot of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, of which she was a 2010 member. She is also a founding member of The World Wide Lab, where in 2014 she co-created/ co-directed a workshop of Imperium, at Teatro Due in Rome, Italy. In 2015 Esther finally returned to her first love, the classics, and was a Neil Munro Intern Director at the Shaw Festival and in 2016 was the Assistant Director on John Gabriel Borkman at the Stratford Festival, as part of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. New Play Development, however, kept pulling her back in and she was the Assistant Artistic Director at Tarragon Theatre from 2016-2018, where she directed the Canadian premiere of Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and also premiered the published version of Theory by Norman Yeung. She returned to Stratford in 2020 to assist Antoni Cimolino on his Richard III, but the pandemic had other plans. The Festival during that time began to embark on a culture shift and Esther was asked to join the Festival’s Anti-Racism Committee and become an Artistic Associate in Planning. She also took over the directorship of The Langham Directors Workshop. (https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/AboutUs/DirectorTraining).
Esther has been featured in NOW magazine’s Top Ten Artists to Watch (Fringe 2013 & Summerworks 2018) and was nominated for 2012 Pauline McGibbon Award, the 2017 & 2011 John Hirsch Directing Award and a Dora Nomination for directing Between a Wok and a Hot Pot for Cahoots Theatre. Her production of The Last Wife at GCTC was nominated for 7 Prix Rideau Awards 2017, including Best Production and Best Director. She won the Capital Critics award for Best Director. Girls Like That won the My Entertainment World’s Best Ensemble award in 2019. She also occasionally acts and originated the role of Janet in Ins Choi’s play Kim’s Convenience.
Esther also directed Kim’s Convenience at the Park Theatre in London, UK, The Great Leap at Cleveland Playhouse and Les Belles Soeurs, Cymbeline and Dangerous Liaisons at the Stratford Festival.
Elif Işıközlü | Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director Emeritus
On November 25, 2024, we lost our magnificent and magical co-founder, dear friend and colleague, Elif Işıközlü.
Elif was a PhD candidate a beloved member of the CDTPS community, a doctoral student, a research assistant, and a teaching assistant. Elif was also a beloved sister, daughter, aunt, friend, collaborator, and colleague. An accomplished theatre and film director, she was also a classically trained pianist, alumni of the Theatre Research Laboratory, Istanbul, a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, New York and co-founder of Directors Lab North, Toronto. She completed an MA Dance Studies (Laban Center London, UK) and an MFA Directing (University of Ottawa). She achieved candidacy in her doctoral studies in 2024.
Elif was an artistic force of nature with a brilliant mind and heart. She had a wit and humour unlike any other. She was also the truest artist we have ever met, creating boundary-pushing theatre and film. Her talent and passion were unmatched and we have lost a great mind and voice in our industry. Anyone who knew her was lucky to be in the vicinity of that unique genius of hers, not to mention her great beauty of soul. She was such a special and stunning human, full of incredible intellect and spirit, who impacted the world with her heart, mind and soul. She will forever be missed by us all. And we will honour her as long we are here. We are so proud to continue her legacy with the lab. We love you Elif.
You can learn more about Elif’s artistic endeavors on her website.
DLN Team
Bryn Kennedy | Associate Artistic Director
Bryn Kennedy (she/her) is a director, sometimes actor, emerging producer and reluctant writer. She is a scrappy, independent theatre artist whose favourite directing credits include a new interpretation of Vitals by Rosamund Small (Nominated Outstanding Solo Performance, My Entertainment Awards) and the new play Beneath the Bed (sold-out site-specific run at the Toronto Fringe Festival). She assistant directed A Bear Awake In Winter (Canadian Stage Workshop and Next Stage Theatre Festival), Hamlet and Ransacking Troy (Stratford Festival) and Rogers v. Rogers (Crow’s Theatre). She was a member of Paprika Festival Directors’ Lab and Director’s Lab North 2021. She was a member of Stratford Festival’s Langham Directors’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Jean Gascon Award for Emerging Director at the Guthrie Awards. She was also a member of the Tarragon Theatre’s Greenhouse Residency and is the Associate Artistic Director with Director’s Lab North. She can be seen very briefly on Coroner (CBC) and a little longer on V-Wars (Netflix). She is the co-producer of Save The Date, winner of outACTRAto’s Queer Your Stories Competition which premiered at the Inside Out Festival this May. She was also the Program Manager for the Musical Stage Company‘s pre-professional training program for youth age 13-19, One Song Glory. She recently directed “The Moors” with Riot King at the Theatre Centre. Bryn is currently the Assistant to the Artistic Director at Crow’s Theatre.
Leora Morris | Artistic Associate
Leora is a director/creator who splits her time between Canada and the USA. She has collaborated with artists and theatres across North America, including the Public Theater, Coal Mine Theatre, O’Neill Theatre Center, Alliance Theatre, NYU Tisch, Olney Theatre Center, Small Wooden Shoe, Dancemakers, Volcano Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, Tarragon Theatre, Canadian Stage, and Nightswimming. Leora received her MFA in Directing at the Yale School of Drama, where she served as co-artistic director of Yale Cabaret. Leora was shortlisted for the 2020 International Rolex Mentor and Protégé Prize. She currently resides in Vancouver where she teaches directing and acting at the University of British Columbia. www.leoramorris.com
Jill Carter | Artistic Associate
As a researcher and theatre-worker, Jill Carter (Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi) works in Tkaron:to with many Indigenous artists to support the development of new works and to disseminate artistic objectives, process, and outcomes through community-driven research projects. Her scholarly research, creative projects, and activism are built upon ongoing relationships with Indigenous Elders, scholars, youth, artists and activists positioning her as witness to, participant in, and disseminator of oral histories that speak to the application of Indigenous aesthetic principles and traditional knowledge systems to contemporary performance.
The research questions she pursues revolve around the mechanics of story creation, the processes of delivery and the manufacture of affect. More recently, she has concentrated upon Indigenous pedagogical models for the rehearsal studio and the lecture hall; the application of Indigenous [insurgent] research methods within performance studies; the politics of land acknowledgements; and land-based dramaturgies/activations/interventions.
She is a member of the Indigenous Research Network at the University of Toronto and a member of the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Board (SSHE Panel C).
Apart from her teaching, theatre work and academic writing, Jill is a member of the Indigenous Dramaturgy Lab; works as a researcher and tour guide with First Story Toronto; facilitates Land Acknowledgement and Land-Based Creation workshops for theatre makers in this city; co-facilitates Treaty and Art-Making workshops with Kanien’kehá:ka multi-disciplinary artist Ange Loft; serves on the editorial board of Theatre Survey; and works with the Directors’ Lab North as Artistic Associate.
Laura Killeen | UK & European Outreach Coordinator
Heather Cant | Steering Committee
Heather is an accomplished theatre practitioner who has worked as an actor, director, playwright, and producer in BC for the past 18 years. She is a graduate of Gastown Actors’ Studio, and the Advanced Arts & Entertainment Management program at Capilano University. Continued training is a consistent pursuit and she has been fortunate to have attended Directors Lab North, and the inaugural years of both the Arts Club Actors’ Intensive and the Masterclass of Canada’s National Voice Intensive. Directing credits include: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, The Last of the Dragons (Project X); The House at Pooh Corner, The Velveteen Rabbit, Masterpiece Theatre: Redux (WCT), Penned (Burnt Candle Productions); Simple Machines (Upintheair), Associate Director: Don’t Dress For Dinner (WCT/Thousand Islands Playhouse/Gateway) Assistant Director: The Comedy of Errors, Peter and the Starcatcher, Educating Rita, Christmas Story, Noises Off, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Wit (WCT), The Rocky Horror Show, Twelfth Night (Project X); Alan and the Unbearable Lightness of Quarks (Upintheair). Heather is a former Artistic Producer for Project X Theatre, and A Defiant Theatre Company. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director of Western Canada Theatre.
Allegra Fulton | Steering Committee
Allegra Fulton is an award-winning actress and one of Canada’s most celebrated artists. Her professional life began at a young age and has led to work with extraordinary people in Europe, the US and Canada, garnering numerous awards and extensive critical praise. Known to audiences for her portrayals of outsiders, iconoclasts, and dangerous women, Allegra has received glowing reviews in leading roles in major theatres across Canada and the US including the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and SoulPepper Theatre, The National Arts Centre, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times, Soho Rep and A Noise Within, among many others. Her solo tour-de-force and haunting portrayal of Frida Kahlo in FRIDA K. by Gloria Montero, led to a Dora Award as well as multiple award nominations and international acclaim in Mexico City, Toronto, across Canada and in New York City, where the Village Voice hailed her work as “ One of the most extraordinary performances on the New York stage.” Ms. Fulton has also been nominated for ACTRA and Gemini awards for her work on screen and won a Genie award for The Hangman’s Bride in which she stars and shares a writing credit. In 2010 Ms. Fulton was called a “National Treasure” by the NOW Magazine.
Her directing work has been in tandem with her acting career, and credits include: ALADDIN AND HIS MAGICAL LAMP for Crows theatre, OH YA and THE DOCTOR IS IN, 2 plays by Ken Garnhum at the Tarragon Spring Arts fair, PORN SHOP and BOOB SOUP, by Emma Roberts at Rhubarb Festival, Buddies in Bad Times and a third by Roberts, EXCELLENCE, ONTARIO, which was workshopped and performed for the On the Verge Festival at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. After playing leads in several of Michel Tremblay’s great works, she feels fortunate to have directed a production of his JOHNNY MANGANO AND HIS ASTONISHING DOGS which played in Toronto and then toured to St. John’s Fringe Festival. Another great honour was directing Yanna Macintosh in her very personal one woman play TRACE at the Toronto Fringe Festival which was “TOP PICK” of the Fringe Festival. Fulton recently returned from Europe, where she directed the Catalan premiere of LA LLISTA, (Jennifer Tremblay’s Governor General’s Award winning monologue that Fulton premiered in English as an actress in Toronto) at the prestigious Teatre Lliure in Barcelona, co-produced with La Brutal and starring the wonderful Spanish actress Laia Marull where it was universally acclaimed in the press and held over by popular demand.
Donna Marie Baratta | Steering Committee
Donna Marie Baratta is the Founder and Artistic Director of Superior Theatre Festival in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She is a director, choreographer, producer, dramaturg, educator and performer. She is also a core artist of [elephants] collective. Donna Marie’s career has taken her across Canada, the US and to Europe working in dance, drama, musical theatre, opera, and film. She has an MFA in Directing from the University of Alberta and has been a passionate Arts educator for the last 16 years at Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts. Selected credits include girls! girls! girls! (SummerWorks 2013), Medea (Studio Theatre), Living with Henry (Best of Fringe, Next Stage and NYMF 2012), The Murmuration of Starlings (New Works Festival), How I Learned to Drive (U of A), Death and the Maiden, Fool for Love (Playwright’s Project), Strange Mary Strange (SummerWorks 2011), Aftershock (SummerWorks 2010), Candide, Night Wings (STF 2016), A Wake for Lost Time (SummerWorks 2015) and Gone for a Dance (Samsa Films). She is a proud inaugural member of Directors Lab North, a member of Actors Equity, and a Past-President of CODE.
Shelley Meichenbaum | Steering Committee
Shelly has been a theatre educator for the past 18 years during which time she has directed and choreographed numerous plays and musicals. She is currently Assistant Curriculum Leader at Wexford Collegiate school for the Arts. Over the years, Shelly has had the honour of watching her students receive multiple honors for their participation in the Sears Ontario Drama Festival as well as earning top prize at Stratford Festival’s Shakespearean Challenge. Shelly has directed and assistant directed for Koogle Theatre Company at both the Burlington Performing Arts Centre as well as at North York Centre for the Arts. As a graduate of Sheridan College’s music theatre program, Shelly has enjoyed performing in Toronto and other parts of Ontario.
Dian Marie Bridge | Steering Committee
Dian Marie Bridge is an award-winning writer, director and creative producer who seeks to open spaces, provide platform, enrich community-bridge building, and to help others do the same.
She was previously Associate Artistic Director at Luminato Festival Toronto, Artistic Director intern at Obsidian Theatre, Artist-in-Residence at Necessary Angel Theatre, Founding Artistic Producer of Cric Crac Collective, and member of the Stratford Festival’s Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction.
Dian holds a degree in Theatre Arts and Dramatic Literature from Brock University and was enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s Theatre Arts and Dance program (Twin Cities).
Directing work includes Beloved: A Celebration of Toni Morrison and Black Women Writers (Luminato Festival Toronto), The Mountain Top (Persephone Theatre), Made In Congo (Theatre Row United Solo Festival), Aneemah’s Spot (Cric Crac Collective/Motion Live).
Dian is currently the Artistic Director of Black Theatre Workshop in Montreal.
Past Team
Members
Jen Quinn
Artistic Associate (2019- 2020)
Matthew Tiffin
Artistic Associate (2015- 2019)
Andrew Lamb
Steering Committee (2011- 2019)
Andrea Donaldson
Artistic Associate (2012- 2014)
Rupal Shah
Steering Committee (2011- 2013)
Stephanie Graham
Steering Committee (2011- 2015)