Jo-Anne Bryan | Creator, Performer

Jo-Anne Anita Bryan is an Ottawa-based interdisciplinary artist experiencing life through the intersections of being Black, Deaf, Queer, and Woman. Her artistry includes American Sign Language (ASL) storytelling and performance. Jo-Anne is currently one-quarter of the Speaking Vibrations group. In 2022, in collaboration with Deaf Canadian artists Pamela Witcher and Theara Yimco, Jo-Anne created and performed Resonance, an extraordinary work of Signed Music, in response to Laura Taler’s solo exhibition, THREE SONGS and explores themes of loss, oppression, Deaf pride, home and transformation. Their performance was beautifully captured on film by Susannah Heath-Eves and premiered online in November 2023. Select credits include: ASL storytelling “ Where You Come From” at the Phenomena Festival (2019) and “400 Years” at the Sound Off Festival (2021). When not performing, she is writing a new play in the Dramaturgical Collaboration program with Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal (PWM).

Carmelle Cachero | Creator, Performer, Producer

Carmelle Cachero has lived her whole life in the arts world and tells her story through rhythm. Carmelle is a 2023 ThisGen Producing Fellow (NAC, Why Not Theatre) alongside mentor Michelle Dorrance of Dorrance Dance. She is a member and co-producer of a multi-disciplinary quartet, Speaking Vibrations, as the Rhythm Tap Dancer. In addition to Speaking Vibrations, she currently dances with the Ottawa Rhythm Initiative Ensemble and YOW City Tap.  Her passion for the art form of rhythm tap is a driving force to her pursuits. She co-founded the West Coast Tap Dance Collective, which promotes the art of tap dance and is looking forward to future projects currently in the works. Carmelle’s love for the arts extends into other aspects of her life working as a Sign Language Interpreter for theatre and performing arts.

King Kimbit | Creator, Performer

King Kimbit is a literary and vocal Hip-Hop artist based on traditional land of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. As a daughter of the Vietnamese Diaspora, King yearns to explore the roots of her journey as she expresses through art forms learned from an inner-city upbringing, some of which can be heard on her debut album, Life Lessons Poetically. King is passionate about empowering and encouraging youth, community care, and sharing love through writing, reciting, and the abolition of punitive, carceral institutions, and is currently working on her sophomore album, Healing Trauma From The Projects.

Jordan Samonas | Creator, Performer, Producer

Jordan is a performer, choreographer and producer of performance works and events, with an eclectic movement background (ballet, jazz, modern, rhythm tap, kizomba). Visionary and go-getter, Jordan has a background in indie self-production in ROOTED Contemporary Dance (2015-2019); NORTH OF MIND with Don Ross (2018) and as co-producer of Speaking Vibrations  a multidisciplinary, accessibility-centered performance; winner of April Hubbard Creative Access Award (Halifax Fringe Festival, 2023), the Corel Endowment Award (Ottawa Arts Council, 2023), nominated for two Best Direction & Best Design (Prix Rideau Awards, 2022), and Outstanding Ensemble Performance (Ottawa Fringe Festival, 2021).

Kat Wong | Stage & Production Manager

Kat Wong is a queer Hong Kong diaspora artist who works creatively and technically in live entertainment. Based in Ottawa, ON, her work can be found primarily in the professional theatre community with credits in stage management (Midsummer [a play with (pre-recorded) songs]), scenic painting (Macbeth, Bear & Co.), lighting, and performance (Suspense: The Radio Show, Plosive Productions). When not training to be an intimacy co-ordinator or advocating for better safer space policies and more diverse (and inclusive) practices, Kat is developing Illusions of Control, a play about espionage, love, and fighting a broken system, and being a bunny momma.

Jacqui Du Toit | Director/Dramaturg, Audio Describer

Jacqui Du Toit is an award-winning, actor, playwright and an internationally celebrated storyteller from Kimberley, South Africa. Jacqui received the 2019 Prix Rideau Award for Outstanding Female Performance in Drowning Girls and an Outstanding Female Performance nomination for her role in Omnibus Bill. She created The Hottentot Venus – Untold, a monodrama nominated for best actress at the 2017 Rideaux Awards and Capital Critics Awards. Jacqui has performed across Canada and the world. She serves on the Board of Directors of GCTC, Ottawa Storytellers and Tactic Indie Theatre festival. Jacqui is the founder and director of 8thGeneration Storytelling Company and the Co-owner and Creative Director of The Origin Arts and Community Centre.

Pamela Witcher | Deaf Culture Director

Pamela E. Witcher | Artist, director, interpreter, translator and cultural mediator. Pamela’s artistic expertise includes visual art, videography, and signed music. Pamela proclaims “When Deaf communities create information through art and documentation, our existence becomes concrete, known and valued.” Pamela’s implications have contributed several artistic projects, among others: Dyers Gallery, Retrospective 2001-2011, Solo Exhibition 2011 and Écomusée du fier monde, People of the Eye, 160 years in the history of the Deaf community, 2014-2016.  Pamela received a Diploma in Applied Museum Studies, Collège Montmorency, 2013 and a Bachelors in Social Work, McGill University, 1998.

Emilio Sebastiao | Lighting Designer

For more than ten years, Emilio has been designing projects and offering freelance technical services with a focus on lighting and set design. From January 2018 to the present he has been the lighting and set Designer for W.I.S.E. Productions. Lighting design credits include: Lawrence (Laboratory); Toqaq Mecimi Puwiht for Théâtre de la Vielle et Productions Ondinnok; Speaking Vibrations, Speaking Vibrations Productions (GCTC), The Sting (GCTC Lawyer Play, 2022.); Eau, Productions Effect Papillon; Deluge, Skeleton Key Theatre; Bang Bang, GCTC; State of Mind, Propeller Dance; Néon Boréal, Théâtre du Trillium et Sous la Hotte; and Le lilas africain, Théâtre de Dehors. Emilio is the recipient of the 2019 Prix Rideau Emerging Artist award for lighting design; and a Certificate of Artistic Excellence, É.S.P. De la Salle, for Cinema & Television and Visual and Multimedia Arts in 2012.

Lesley Marshall | Projection & Video Designer

Lesley Marshall is an award-winning filmmaker and intermedia artist. Projection art by Lesley has been performed at the National Art Centre, Montreal Jazz Fest, CentrePHI and in galleries in NYC, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and the Netherlands. Lesley is the founder of MAVNetwork (@mavnetwork Instagram) a production, media and marketing agency for audio visual design and presentation. In 2021, with collaborator Ashley Bowa, Lesley presented Green Gazing projection immersion project of plants and experimental movement at Ada X, Montreal, Workman Arts, Toronto, and at DARC, Ottawa.

Jim Ruxton | Vibrotactile Specialist (VibraFusionLab)

Jim Ruxton has a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ottawa and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design . He works as an artist and engineer in installation, performance, theatre, dance and film and collaborates with many other artists to realize their technically ambitious projects. As a member of Vibrafusion Lab he has been developing new systems to help bring vibrotactile technology into the world. Jim was co-founder of the Subtle Technologies Festival, a Toronto based event bringing together artists and scientists to share their techniques, tools and concepts.

David Bobier | Vibrotactile Specialist (VibraFusionLab)

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled Canadian media artist whose art practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. This work led to his establishment in 2014 of VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario, a creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre that has gained a reputation as a leader in accessibility for the Deaf and Disability Arts movement in Canada and abroad. As a practicing artist his exhibition career includes 18 solo and over 30 group exhibition projects across Canada, in the United States and the UK. VibraFusionLab is now situated outside of London in Thorndale, Ontario.

Drea | Accessibility and Audio Description Consultant

Drea is a theatre creator, dramaturge, access consultant, audio describer, disability scholar, producer and stage manager. Her masters focused on disability representation on the mainstage in Canada. Employing disability dramaturgy and knoweldge, she endeavours to adapt, shift and challenge current theatrical practices ensuring disabled people are considered and included from the inception to the reception of theatrical productions. Her work strives to shift the physical and attitudinal barriers that are present on- and off-stage. She is currently the Access Manager at GCTC. Select work credits: In Tents: TYA Creator Incubator– Ottawa Children’s Festival (2023), 12 – 100 Watt Productions (2021, 2023) &  NeoStalgia: Fempocalypse- Nightwood Theatre (2022).

Dr. Jess Watkin | Accessibility and Audio Description Consultant

Dr. Jess Watkin finished her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance studies. Her research focuses on Disability dramaturgy, care-full approaches to performance creation/production, and Disability related activism. She is a Blind artist-scholar living in Toronto, who loves making tactile art and showing up as the Disabled artist in many creative spaces to ensure care is prioritized for all.