I’m a performance artist, educator, and creator from Montréal. I went to theatre school at John Abbott College and hold a B.Ed from McGill University. I left Québec for New York City and took a writing class at the PIT. This was the start to the development of my one-woman show For the Love of Pie. The piece was nominated for Best Solo Fringe show at the Montreal Fringe and then Chicago where it was selected by Timeout Chicago as one of the 5 best bets of the Chicago Fringe 2016.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve collaborated with artists to craft performances/programs that challenge societal norms and amplify women’s voices. I’ve advocated and promoted leadership programs for teenage girls in NYC schools through the organization WET Productions and developed a monologue writing workshop for The Picton ROC Youth Centre.

I’m also the daughter of a French Québecoise. The nationalistic pride exuding from my mother has always been captivating. As a native French Québecoise living in a predominantly anglophone Ontario for the past 10 years, I yearn to be back in this idyllic version of Québec. However, I’ve begun reflecting on my beliefs, my identity and the hypocrisy surrounding Québec’s overarching nationalism. 

Lately, I’ve felt a pull to explore these questions and to re-shape my connection to theatre. 

Areas of research include Québec folklore, its cultural/religious and sociolinguistic history (with respect to immigration and the evolution of Québec women), new media narrative, and performance theory.
 

Geraldine MacDonald (she/her) is a graduate of Queen’s University, a former registered nurse, a writer and published author; medical-scientific translator (Spanish to English), executive administrative assistant, and mother of four [Queen’s alumni]. She recently completed a university certificate in Global Action and Engagement (GAEN) and seminars in Intercultural Awareness, both of which piqued her interest in pursuing cultural studies on an academic level.  

Ellen Furey is an experimental choreographer, death doula, and a Cultural Studies MA student at Queen's. Her academic research looks at the intersections of death care and performance practices to develop and support alternatives to spiritual sterility in both medicalized end-of-life care services in Canada, as well as in her art practice. 

Her research includes the application of dramaturgical approaches to meaning-making at the end of life, co-created performance in community-led vigils, consideration of palliative philosophies to navigating personal/institutional/societal change, and exploring respectful practices of curating/hosting artistic works in performance festival settings that are made through experiences of deep grief, loss, and upheaval. 

Since 2012, Ellen has built a dynamic career in experimental and contemporary dance primarily participating in discursive and collaborative, long-form processes. She uses the materials of virtuosity, a sense of spectacle and nonlinear narrative to create stage works that include elements of scored movement, paradox, irreverence, devotion, humor and solemnity. Her work has been performed across Europe, Canada, in the USA and the UK. 

Ellen is originally from Unama:ki/Cape Breton Island and is based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal on the unceded traditional territories of the Kanien'kéha Nation.