Joanna Garfinkel
Collaborator | dramaturg | Artistic director
Joanna Garfinkel is the co-founder of collectively and socially-driven play development company Universal Limited. She is the co-creator, with Yoshie Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration. Previously, she co-created and directed the pedicab adventure Tour for HIVE 3, produced by the Electric Company, Universal Limited, and the Cultural Olympiad. That site-specific escapade was reinvented for Victoria (Theatre SKAM), and Toronto (SummerWorks). Joanna is struck by the racially motivated societal inequities that keep repeating in Canada, and to troubling those patterns through performance. Recent credits include co-curating, dramaturging and directing the Northern Play Reading Series in Yellowknife, NWT (Akpik Theatre), dramaturgy for Gary Mok's i broke the ocean (VACT MSG lab), and for the multi-award-winning Poly Queer Love Ballad, which is touring in 2019. She has been nominated for three Jessie awards, winning one (Critics Choice for Innovation); was awarded the Pure Research grant from Nightswimming Theatre (Toronto), and has received the Sydney Risk award for directing. She moved to Vancouver to get her MFA in directing at UBC, and her focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Upcoming: dramaturgy for Night Passing and Mx.
Yoshie Bancroft
Collaborator | Artistic producer
Yoshie Bancroft (she/her) is an award winning Japanese Canadian actor and theatre creator based in Vancouver. Her artistic practice is rooted in advocacy, collaboration and community.
Recent theatre: God Said This (Pacific Theatre), Forgiveness (Arts Club/Theatre Calgary), Exit, Pursued by a Bear (Globe Theatre), The Orchard (Arts Club), Griffin & Sabine (Belfry); JAPANESE PROBLEM (Universal Limited/Soulpepper); Home Is A Beautiful Word (Sum Theatre/Persephone).
Select Film/TV: Superman & Lois, Emily Owens M.D. (CW); Bones of Crows (CBC); Alaska, A Million Little Things (ABC); Color My World, Christmas Under the Stars (Hallmark).
yoshiebancroft.com | @yoshiebancroft