PGC members have been paired up with an international playwright to share their work and discuss the craft of playwriting with one another. You can tune into these live events and get a glimpse of what these theatre creators have been up to!

Craft Bites International is open and free to the public.

Please note registration is required one hour prior to each session.

Register HERE.

About the Playwrights:

Mercedes Isaza Clunie is a queer, Chilean-Canadian playwright and poet from Toronto.Her work blends poetic language, magical realism, and cultural specificity with humour and emotional truth. She is a philosophical writer drawn to plays that push formal boundaries while staying grounded in character and connection. 

Her play ‘Gringas‘ has received the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Tom Hendry RBC Emerging Playwright Award and was named in the Toronto Star’s Best Theatre of 2024. It has been presented at Toronto Fringe, Hamilton Fringe, Calgary’s IGNITE! Festival, and Aluna Theatre’s RUTAS Festival. Her other plays include VOLCÁN, between stars and sky, Pablo and Bill Make a Baby, and SUBURBIA. 

Mercedes was the RBC Emerging Playwright-in-Residence at Tarragon Theatre and is an alum of Paprika Festival’s Playwriting Unit and Factory Theatre’s Training Enhancement Program. She is the Artistic Director of First Born Theatre: a queer, immigrant-led company building bold, multilingual, community-centred theatre in Toronto. Her friends and family refer to her as ‘Meche’, colloquially. 

Amara/AJ Brady (She/They) is a generative artist & cultural dramaturg hailing from the Windy City (Chicago). Her artistic goals are to show the humanity and divinity of Black women and femmes and connect underserved communities with experiences that mirror their own. An alumnus of Penguin Random House’s Narrator Mentorship Program (2024), WP Theater’s Playwrighting Lab (2022-2024), The Public Theater’s Devised Working Group (2023-2024), and a MacDowell Fellowship- James Baldwin Fellow 2023. Favorite credits: Manic Pixie Dream Girls Aren’t Black* (Northwestern’s American Musical Theater Project 2024- Writer/Composer), the beautiful things are gonna kill you (Kilroys 2023; The Bushwick Starr; The Public Theater), Bernarda’s Daughters (Audible), “my dick is david duke”…or (Ars Nova’s ANTFest-Actor; Creator; Producer), This is Where We Go (MCC- Actor + Writer), NYT Critic’s Pick, Jillian Walker’s SKiNFoLK (Bushwick Starr- Assistant Producer). YouTube series, ‘Skinny & White’ Aren’t Character Traits. She currently resides somewhere between Brooklyn and Chicago, where she spends her days playing Just Dance, perfecting her coq au vin recipe, and hanging out with her Grandma. All Power to all people. Ashé. Learn more and follow Amara on her website. 

Our partner for this session is The Lucille Lortel Theatre. Learn more about them here.