The 2023/24 Annual Women’s Caucus Meeting Panel Event

Alexis Diamond (she/her) – Based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal, Alexis Diamond is a theatre artist, opera and musical librettist, translator, dramaturg, and theatre curator working in both English and French. Her works, created for a wide range of audiences, have garnered awards, residencies, and attention at home and abroad. Playful, poetic and profound, her texts and performances break open the stories we inherit and the myths we perpetuate to spark some kind of collective epiphany.

Current and upcoming works include: NZINGA, co-written with Marie Louise Bibish Mumbu in collaboration with Tatiana Zinga Botao, which premiered last November at Montreal’s acclaimed Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui; Mars: Signs of Life, an installation-opera about the “colonization” of Mars with composer Tim Brady; the translation of Tout inclus (All-inclusive), François Grisé’s probing and poetic documentary-theatre investigation into ageing; Are You Feeling Lucky?, a large-scale installation-performance with Finnish contemporary-circus artist Marjukka Erälinna; and a couple of musicals.

Alexis has translated award-winning plays by Audrey-Anne Bouchard and Marc-André Lapointe, Pascal Brullemans, Alexia Bürger, Marie-Hélène Larose-Truchon, Érika Tremblay-Roy ,and Marie-Claude Verdier. Alexis was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Award for her translation of Pascal Brullemans’ plays for young audiences, Amaryllis and Little Witch (Playwrights Canada Press). Many of her works can be found at the Canadian Play Outlet.

Photo credit: Ron Diamond

Mishkla Lavigne (elle): Mishka Lavigne est autrice, scénariste et traductrice littéraire. Ses textes ont été produits et développés au Canada, aux États-Unis, en Europe, en Australie, à Haïti et au Mexique. Elle était finaliste au prestigieux Prix Siminovitch en 2023.

Son texte Havre, créé à la Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon) a remporté le Prix du Gouverneur Général en 2019. Copeaux, produit par le Théâtre de Dehors (Ottawa), a remporté ce même prix en 2021 en plus du Prix Jacques-Poirier. Murs, produit en format balado par Transistor Médias, Créations In Vivo et le Théâtre populaire d’Acadie s’est attiré des honneurs en France, a été porté à la scène en 2023.

Mishka écrit aussi en anglais. Son texte Albumen, produit par TACTICS en 2019 (Ottawa), est récipiendaire du QWF Playwriting Prize et on a récemment pu voir Shorelines (TACTICS) en 2023.

En tant que traductrice, autant vers le français que vers l’anglais, Mishka signe près d’une vingtaine de traductions de théâtre, de prose et de poésie.

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Mishka Lavigne (she / her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and literary translator. Her plays have been developed and performed in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Haiti, and Mexico. In 2023, she was a finalist to the prestigious Siminovitch Prize.

Her play Havre, created at La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon), received the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2019. Copeaux, produced by Théâtre de Dehors (Ottawa), was also awarded the same prize in 2021, as well as the Prix Jacques-Poirier. Murs, first produced as a podcast by Transisor Médias, Créations In Vivo and the Théâtre Populaire d’Acadie, received rave reviews in France and was produced for the stage in 2023.

Mishka also writes in English. Her play Albumen, produced by TACTICS in 2019 (Ottawa), received the QWF Playwriting Prize, and her play Shorelines was recently seen on stage (TACTICS) in 2023.

As a translator, both in French and English, Mishka has more than twenty credited translations of theatre, prose and poetry.

Photo credit: Marianne Duval

shalan joudry (she/her): shalan joudry is a Mi’kmaw mother and multi-disciplinary artist. For over twenty years shalan has been bringing Mi’kmaw stories to a new generation of listeners, as well as recounting personally crafted narratives that follow Indigenous storying methodologies as an oral storyteller. Her play, Elapultiek, was produced twice by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre (2018, 2019) and more recently her one-woman play, KOQM (with Ken Schwartz as director and Ann-Marie Kerr as mask coach) toured Nova Scotia in 2022. shalan is currently creating a new piece of dance theatre, Winter Moons, with Mi’kmaw choreographer Sarah Prosper and with the guidance of cultural grandmothers. Keeping her stories grounded within her culture, she and fellow artists shared a workshop performance of Winter Moons around an artificial fire in a yurt in her community this past December. shalan lives with her family in their community of L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation).

Photo credit:  Dan Froese

Katia Café-Fébrissy (she/her): Based in Toronto, bilingual multidisciplinary artist Katia Café-Fébrissy is a multi-award-winning director and screenwriter, playwright, and stage director working in both English and French. Also, she hosts the DGC PODCAST.  She is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC), the Canadian Media Guild, the Société des auteurs de radio, télévision et cinéma (SARTEC), and the Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD). She is a graduate of the Creative Women Workshops Association’s Women in the Director’s Chair program, the Academy Women Director Program, and of the Directors Lab North.

Katia is the co-Chair of the DEI Committee of the Directors Guild of Canada Ontario Board. She is also the Vice-President of the Francophone Media Arts Centre in Toronto (LABO). She holds an M.A. in documentary filmmaking from Ateliers Varan, France, and an M.A. in literature and languages from Université Paris VIII, France.  Her plays include Nona’s Malaika (2020) and the solo show, Ça Rime avec Vinaigre (2023).

Photo Credit: Johann Bonna