Who is C’est La Vie?

Sarah Mahoney – Artistic Director

Sarah is an international theatre practitioner involved in creating theatre on four continents. She has five years of professional experience directing, teaching and producing theatre in Australia, Canada, Holland, Tanzania and the UK.

Jenna Gogan – Project Coordinator

Lucas Michalopoulos – Outreach Coordinator

Season 1 Contributors

Writers

Sterling Lynch- Playwright – Prisoner’s Dilemma

Sterling is an author. He authors a blog, plays, poetry, songs, philosophical essays, performances, theatrical productions, and community. His one-act, The Root of All Squares, co-written with Sam Varteniuk and the winner of the the 2001 Toronto Fringe Festival New Play Contest, has been produced sixteen times, by four different companies, and had its New York premiere in the 2007 Frigid Festival. Home In Time won the Ottawa Little Theatre’s 69th National One-Act Playwriting Competition. His book, Social Media Set The Stage, which features his one-act Tangelico and a play inspired by it, is available on Amazon.
www.sterlinglynch.com

Pat Gauthier – Playwright – 8 Words That Ruined my Relationship

Patrick Gauthier is an Ottawa-based playwright and director whose recent writing credits include Airport Security (a comedy of paranoia) (Gruppo Rubato); Tourist Things (Magnetic North Theatre Festival / Theatre la Catapulte / Festival Zones Theatrales); The Churchill Protocol (Gruppo Rubato); 8 Words That Ruined My Relationship (Brave New PlayRites); and The Man Who Went to Work One Day and Got Eaten by a Bear and Dawn of the Dad (both with Gruppo Rubato).

Patrick is a multiple Ridau Award winner, as well as the recipient of the 2005 Magnetic Words Playwriting Award and the 2010 Council for the Arts in Ottawa RBC Emerging Artist Award.  He is the Artistic Director of Ottawa creation-company Gruppo Rubato and an Artistic Associate and Producer of the undercurrents theatre festival at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.

Nadine Thornhill – Playwright – Oreo

Nadine Thornhill is an award winning playwright, actor and spoken word poet.  She honed her theatre  skills amongst the freaks and geeks at the University of Waterloo.  Upon graduating, she moved to Canada’s capital where she has been living, loving and working ever since.   By day, she is the Program Co-ordinator for Planned Parenthood’s Insight Theatre.  In her spare time, Nadine enjoys running, an occasional triathlon, playing dress up and the antics of her husband and son.

Joel Fishbane – Playwright – In the Yichud Room, Actor – He in 8 Words That Ruined My Relationship, David in Oreo, Billy in Redshift

Joel Fishbane is an author, playwright, actor and columnist. He has a diabetic cat and sometimes plays the clarinet. For more information, you are welcome to visit him at www.joelfishbane.com.

Jim Burke – Playwright – Bestiary

Originally from Manchester, England, Jim Burke is now resident in Montreal where he runs his own company, Funhouse Theatre. His award-winning adaptation of Moby Dick toured the UK on a theatre ship, and was subsequently performed in Germany (on dry land). Other stage plays include Cornered, Arise, The Man Who Would Be Bing, and an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground. He has also had several plays broadcast by BBC Radio, including Bestiary, which was subsequently performed at Montreal’s Theatre Ste-Catherine, and now has the particular honour of being podcast (podcasted?) by C’est La Vie. Jim Burke has also worked as a dramaturg, theatre critic, newspaper columnist, film lecturer, creative writing teacher, and obscure punk singer.

Ed McNamara – Playwright – Redshift

Ed McNamara is a poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist, singer, actor, debaucher, and dandy. His one-act play This Must Be the Place was produced this year for the SIPA festival. He is currently working on Sorella, Sorella!, a play with radically-feminist themes, rife with sex and violence. He is also currently working on a novella called Hydrophilia, a story about a man obsessed with water, for The Trapshot Archives. His series “Headache Music” was published in The Void this past winter, and a portion of his ever-unfinished novel Buzzsaw was published in The Gleaner a few years back. He has acted in numerous leading roles – Mark Cohen, Billy Flynn, Danny Zuko – and his onstage work continues to greatly influence his work as a playwright. The two crafts of writing and acting, to Ed, are inseparable. He also fronts a Maritime-themed folk band, The Superior Provinces.

Tabia Lau – Playwright – Zip & Wick #72:Endings

Tabia Lau is a native of Montreal and a current playwriting MFA candidate at Columbia University. She has written and been produced in both the Montreal and Toronto Fringe Festival. Still developing as a playwright, she enjoys exploring issues of gender, identity, sexuality, love and duty.

Actors

Megan Stewart – Actor – Sarah in Prisoner’s Dilemma, She in 8 Words that Ruined my Relationship, Sariana in Redshift

Originally from Charlottetown, PEI but now based in Montréal, Megan Stewart graduated from McGill University in 2010 with a BA in Theatre and Art History. While at McGill, she performed in numerous plays and musicals, including the titular role in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice; Teenage Greek Chorus in How I Learned To Drive; and roles in AUTS’s productions of Urinetown and Little Shop of Horrors. She also designed costumes for two McGill productions.

Since graduating, Megan has mounted and performed a one-woman show, Life Science, by Morris Panych; she acted in a children’s pantomime production of Aladdin; and she recently rediscovered her passion for puppetry…knitted, tap dancing chickens, especially. She has enjoyed being involved in C’est La Vie’s Podcast Series and hopes to continue exploring the world of voice acting.

When she’s not dreaming up her next theatrical confection, Megan works as an arts critic, graphic designer, and event coordinator for The Rover, an online magazine of Montréal arts and culture. She also works for Montreal’s Imago Theatre.

Scott Humphrey – Actor – Sutler in In The Yichud Room, Monkey in Bestiary

Scott, a recent graduate of Concordia University’s Theatre Performance program, is thrilled to be working with Sarah and the C’est La Vie Theatre team on this project! When not recording podcasts (and loving it), Scott works as an actor, dabbles as a director and playwright, and contributes to Astra Theatre and the ArtHere! series. He was recently seen at Mainline Theatre in Jesus Jello: The Miraculous Confection.

Rebecca Babcock – Actor – Amy in In The Yichud Room, Sidney in Oreo

Rebecca is a McGill Student studying English Drama and Theatre and English Literature. Earlier this year Rebecca played Charlotte Corday in The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. This is her first audio podcast and she has really enjoyed playing the different characters in the two podcasts. She would like to thank Sarah and the C’est La Vie Theatre Team for the great experience!

Olivia Blocker – Actor – Kaye in Oreo

Olivia Blocker, 18, is an American-born, internationally raised university student and aspiring functional adult. She has lived mostly in West Africa, but also parts of the United States, East Africa and Europe. She is a first year McGill student majoring in English Literature, a degree of which she is obstinately confident will get her far.

She has acted in various plays and skits including: Marat/Sade (Rossignol), Who’s on First (Abbott), and Anne Frank (Peter). Also, in sixth grade, she landed the lead in “Time 2 Time,” a student written play about a time travelling diary. It remains the highlight of her acting career.

In her off-time Olivia manages to be fantastically adequate in her studies and silently wishes – as her picture would suggest- she were some kind of detective from an old pulp novel. She has been living in Montreal for a couple months now and thinks it’s a hell of a town.

Spencer Thompson – Actor – Male Customers in Oreo, Chesterton in In the Yichud Room, Additional Voices in Bestiary

Spencer is a student at McGill majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Drama and Theatre (strange combo n’est-ce pas?). This is his first time in an audio-play but he has been heard over the student radio airwaves a few times before. His voice acting role model is H. Jon Benjamin.

Spencer would like to break the fourth wall for a moment, and remind everyone that he’s writing this, despite it being in third person. My what a bizarre world we live in.

Jayda Fogel – Actor – Someone Else in 8 Words That Ruined My Relationship

Jayda is an actor, a writer, eternally a student, and an avid cook. While appearing most recently in AUTS’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, her last community performance was as Aunty Ah in Heather Robinson’s adaptation of Woman and Scarecrow. She is always on the look-out for a good book, but rarely takes recommendations.

Season 2 Contributors

Writers

Natalie Gershtein – Playwright – Jump

Canadian born, Natalie Gershtein is currently attending Columbia University, where she is working towards her MFA in Theatre Management and Producing. Natalie is the founding producer of Beautiful City Theatre in Montreal, producing Godspell in January 2013. Her play Jump won the 2012 Nettie Award for Best Play in the One-Act Network Festival in New York City, and the Clark Lewis Award from McGill University. Select Montreal playwriting credits include: Awakening and Truth Be Told (both produced at Players’ Theatre). Select directing credits include: Songs For A New World (Players’ Theatre), A Dream Play (Moyse Hall), Ashes to Ashes (TNC Theatre), and Twelve Angry Men (Players’ Theatre).

Directors

Liz Truchanowicz – Director – Jump

Recent directing credits include: The Butler Did It produced by Lakeshore Players, Dreaming in Autism produced by La Tigressa Productions, nominated for the Chapter’s Best Anglophone Script, MainLine Theatre Next Stage Award, and won the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier Prix Fred-Barry for Best Production Design at the 2012 Montreal Fringe Awards; 4.48 Psychosis produced by theatre In Actu, nominated for a 2009-2010 MECCA Montreal English Critics Circle Award) Best Director Best Actress, Best Lighting Design, and won for Best Sound Design, Home/Chez Moi for the Journées de la Culture 2011, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead produced by Unicorn Theatre and others. She holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Ottawa and is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors Lab.