Artistic Team 2022
Danielle Irvine
Artistic Director, Perchance Theatre / Director: The Tempest
Artistic Director, Perchance Theatre / Director: The Tempest
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Danielle Irvine is a proud Newfoundlander who has had to travel a lot for her work. Highlights of her career include teaching and directing at the National Theatre School of Canada (most recently as the leader of their second year Shakespeare Project) ; Assistant Directing at the Stratford Festival of Canada (including being the first director to study in their Birmingham Conservatory); and winning such awards as the Canada Council for the Arts prestigious John Hirsch Prize for Directing, the ArtsNL BMO Artist of the Year, and the ArtsNL Artist’s Achievement Award 2019. Danielle was also a participant in the World Stage Festival 2000’s Masterclass for Directors; where she was honoured to study with such theatre greats as Peter Brook, Yoshi Oida and Polly Teale. In the fall of 2016, she was invited to participate in the inaugural Stratford Festival’s International Classical Directing Intensive. For almost 30 years, she has been directing theatrical productions of all sizes and types in all manner of venues. Her love and passion for NL culture combined with her theatre training inspired Danielle to co-develop a show with Anna Stassis which brought audiences through a theatrical experience on a bus, a ferry, around Bell Island and culminated 650 feet underground in a mine. This was listed by the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres as a Landmark Theatrical Event in 1997. She was one of the founders of the Shakespeare by the Sea Festival in NL, as well as the founding artistic director of Sweetline Theatre Company. She has also been a keynote speaker and workshop leader at various conferences over the years and is also a casting director for television and film. Credits include: CBC’s Republic of Doyle; the Netflix series, Frontier; the CBC Series, LittleDog; the CBC mini-series, Caught; the Citytv Series, Hudson and Rex; and the feature film, Maudie. Recently, she has been nominated a YWCA Woman of Distinction for Arts and Culture and a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Excellence in Casting for Frontier. Since 2014, Danielle has been bringing her love of Newfoundland culture and community, together with her passion for Shakespeare and other timeless theatre in her role as the Artistic Director of Perchance Theatre at Cupids.
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Michael Waller*
Director: Hay Fever
Director: Hay Fever
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Michael Waller is an award winning theatre artist who has been directing, acting and writing theatre for over twenty years. He has worked in theatres all over Canada and the United States. Directing highlights include Othello (Dora Mavor Moore Nomination-Outstanding Directing) and Much Ado About Nothing for Shakespeare In The Rough; Eric Wolfe’s Dear Boss (Dora Mavor Moore nomination-Outstanding Direction) Sideshow Of The Damned, Grendelmaus and The Babysitter for Eldritch Theatre; Sean Reycraft’s popsong (Chalmers Award Winner) for Theatre Direct and Dave Carley’s Walking On Water, Midnight Madness, A View from the Roof and Taking Liberties. Michael’s work in Newfoundland includes directing Romeo And Juliet for Perchance Theatre, Jim Cartwright’s Two for TNL, Benjamin Britten’s Turn Of The Screw for Opera on The Avalon and Meghan Greeley’s Kingdom and Hunger for White Rooster Theatre. Michael has also worked with Shadowy Souls on Tara Manuel’s Lady Of The Falls (ACC provincial tour and film) and Muskrat Dreams (RCA Theatre). Michael is a professor at the MUN theatre department where he has directed many highly acclaimed student productions. He has a BFA in Acting from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Directing from University of Ottawa. He is also a graduate from the Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival.
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Sarah Phillips
Director: Area of Uncertainty
Director: Area of Uncertainty
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Sarah is a producer, dramaturg, educator, administrator, and first and foremost a director. Born and raised in Ontario, Sarah has fallen hard for Newfoundland and is thrilled to be here working with Perchance!She was the Artistic Director and Producer of Festival Players of Prince Edward County for nearly a decade and has a deep commitment to new Canadian plays and playwrights. Past favourites include: Laura Secord by Sandra Cardinal, a show for young audiences about the Canadian hero of the War of 1812, A Splinter in the Heart adapted by Dave Carley from the Al Purdy novel of the same name about the nearly Halifax-explosion-sized disaster at a munitions plant in Trenton, Ontario in 1918, and Amelia: The Girl Who Wants to Fly by John Gray about...well...you know who!
Other highlights include: directing Test Drive (Dave Carley), The Notorious Right Robert and his Robber Bride (Sean Dixon), Harvest (Ken Cameron), Colours in the Storm (Jim Betts), and Salt-Water Moon (David French) for Festival Players of Prince Edward County, writing/directing Antigone (Dora Mavor Moore Nomination - Best New Play), Joan (Dora Mavor Moore Nomination - Best Ensemble), and directing Salomé (Oscar Wilde) for red red rose, work with the Shaw Festival, Stratford Festival, and formative years with the fine folks at Theatre Columbus and da da kamera. Sarah is a graduate of the University of Guelph, the National Theatre School of Canada (Directing program), and Queen’s University (Master’s in Arts Leadership). |
Bernice Morgan
Playwright: Area of Uncertainty
Playwright: Area of Uncertainty
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Bernice Morgan was born in 1935 in St. John’s, Newfoundland, the daughter of William Vardy of Random Island, Trinity Bay and Sadie Vincent Vardy of Cape Island, Bonavista Bay. She is best known for her first two novels: Random Passage and Waiting for Time, published by Breakwater Books. Waiting for Time won both The Canadian Author’s Award for Fiction and the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Both novels are concerned with Newfoundland’s cod fishery and the depletion of Atlantic cod. An eight-part television series based on these books was produced in 2001.
The Topography of Love, a collection of short stories revolving around life in wartime St. John’s, was published by Breakwater in 2000. In 2007 Random House published her novel, Cloud of Bone. It won the 2007/08 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award as well as the Heritage and History Book Award from the Newfoundland and Labrador Historic Sites Association and was one of three books short-listed for the 2008 Atlantic Fiction Award. In 2015 her novella The Dragon’s Song was published by Running the Goat Books and Broadsides. Her latest book, Seasons Before the War, has been described as “a picture book for the old at heart”. This book, also published by Running the Goat Books, depicts free-range children in pre-war St. John’s. In 1996 Bernice Morgan was named ‘Artist of the Year’ by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and in 1998 was awarded a honourary degree by Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003, and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. |
Robert Chafe
Dramaturg: Area of Uncertainty
Dramaturg: Area of Uncertainty
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Robert Chafe is a writer, educator, actor and arts administrator based in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). He has worked in theatre, dance, opera, radio, fiction and film. His stage plays have been seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and in the United States, and include Oil and Water, Tempting Providence, Afterimage, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, Everybody Just Calm the Fuck Down, and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (adapted from the novel by Wayne Johnston.) He has been shortlisted twice for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and he won the award for Afterimage in 2010. He has been guest instructor at Memorial University, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and The National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University. He is the playwright and Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud.
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Alison Helmer
Season Set Designer
Season Set Designer
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Alison Helmer is a multidisciplinary artist who has been deeply and continuously influenced by her studies and experience working on the east coast. Born and raised on the prairies, she began her theatre education with the Stagecraft program at Grenfell college before completing the Scenography program at the National Theatre School of Canada. She approaches the world of both set and costume design through a lens of fantasy, history, and the tradition of storytelling. She is excited by Theatre that pushes the boundaries between conventional and experimental, and that seeks to fulfil our human search for truth, escape, and shared connection.
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Tucker Ellis
Season Costume Designer
Season Costume Designer
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Tucker Ellis is a costume and clothing designer based out of St. John’s, NL. Tucker grew up in a small community in central Newfoundland, and has had an active interest and training in musical theatre from an early age. After wandering from home and landing permanently in St. John’s, Tucker attended the Textile and Apparel Design program at the College of the North Atlantic and graduated with first class honours, returning for a third year of extended study focusing on pattern construction. Since leaving the program they have played an active role in the St. John’s theatre, fashion and craft communities. Tucker is excited to return to the Perchance Theatre team for their fifth summer to help bring back to life the roaring twenties, if only for a couple of hours at a time.
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Barry Buckle
Costume Design Assistant
Costume Design Assistant
Jodee Richardson*
Season Sound Design and Composition
Season Sound Design and Composition
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Jodee Richardson is one of Newfoundland and Labrador's most diverse and dynamic performers. A renowned singer/songwriter, actor and playwright, Jodee enjoys traveling the province writing about the people he meets and the places he visits. He is dang thrilled to be with working with Perchance again, with this brilliant cast and crew and really, just so happy to be out of the house. Slava Ukraini
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Nicole Hand
Music Composition and Arrangements
Music Composition and Arrangements
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Nicole Hand (B. Mus) is a woodwind instrumentalist from Conception Bay South, Newfoundland. Specializing in multiple genres, she is a long-time member of both the Newfoundland Symphony and Opera on the Avalon Orchestras as well as ECMA-award winning saxophone group Ouroboros. Nicole studied bassoon at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Wilfrid Laurier University and works as a freelance musician in St. John's.
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Owen Van Houten
Additional Tempest Instrument Research
Additional Tempest Instrument Research
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Owen has lived and worked as a theatre artist in many communities in Newfoundland, and he is happy to return to Perchance for a third season!
Recent Theatre credits include: Touchstone - As You Like It, Laertes - Hamlet (Perchance, 2021), Caesar - Julius Caesar, First Waiter - The Servant of Two Masters (Perchance 2019), Vlado - Abyss (Atlantic Repertory Company, 2019) Check Owen out on Youtube/IG! @owenvanhoutendrumbox |
Lynn Panting
Movement Director
Movement Director
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Lynn Panting is a Newfoundland-based artist, arts educator, and arts advocate known for creating innovative and accessible dance works. Lynn is deeply committed to the growth of creativity and self-confidence through movement and holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Memorial University as well as a Master of Humanities concentrating in performance, dance and the body.
Recent collaborations include Hamlet, As You Like It, Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing (Perchance), The Mirror, The Life and Times of Mommy Butt (Persistence Theatre), Pursuit (LPD), and Four Parts (Untellable). Upcoming projects include Untellable Movement Theatre's Eli and the Death Curse, and, the dance film, The Dress. Lynn is the owner and Artistic Director of Lynn Panting Dance, the Artistic Director, Producer of Untellable Movement Theatre, and a founding member of Ladies Who Lunch Productions. lynnpantingdance.com |
*The participation of these Artists is arranged by permission of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association under the provisions of the Dance-Opera-Theatre Policy (DOT).
