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Playwrights Canada Press is pleased to announce the editorial committee for 2023-24. A new initiative that commenced last year, the editorial committee recommends plays for publication by surveying the theatre landscape through their work as artists and creators. The purpose of the committee is to help ensure that more voices are represented in the consideration of plays for publication, an action that we committed to in June 2020.

Four members from last year’s inaugural committee will continue serving for 2023-2024, and we are welcoming a new member to the team: Davey Samuel Calderon! We’d like to express immense gratitude to Colin Wolf for all his work on the committee last year. Learn more about this year’s committee members by reading their biographies below.

The committee works separately from our existing submission process. If you have a play you’d like to send in for publication consideration, please review the full guidelines here.

Dian Marie Bridge is an award-winning theatre maker, writer, director, and creative producer. She is currently the artistic director of Montreal's Black Theatre Workshop, and was most recently the associate artistic director at Luminato Festival Toronto and artist in residence at Necessary Angel Theatre in Toronto.

Dian is the recipient of the inaugural Strombergs Family Realization Fund through Nightwood Theatre, the Stratford Festival’s Elliott Hayes Guthrie Award for Playwriting, and SummerWorks’s RBC Arts Professional Award. Dian was also a part of the Stratford Festival’s inaugural Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. Her mentorship experience includes the Paprika Festival, AMY Project, Speak Sudan, b current’s RaizinArtz, Only One You workshops, and the Boys and Girls Club of Vancouver.

Davey Samuel Calderon (he/they/siya) is a director, performer, writer, producer, drag artist, dramaturg, and settler on the unceded lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples. He is the co-founder of New(to)Town Collective, an experimental theatre collective. His work has been on stages (Big Queer Filipino Karaoke Night! and BQFKN! ONLINE), film (RUN, part of the shorts program of the 2018 Vancouver Queer Film Festival), and other mediums (contributor to Canadian Theatre Review, Drag! Vol. 185, Winter 2021, Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, Cormorant Books). Currently, he is Playwrights Theatre Centre’s Dramaturg, Public Engagement.

Select dramaturgy credits include God’s A Drag by Jessica Lemes da Silva (2023-24 Fringe New Play Prize Winner), The Frontliners by Zahida Rahemtulla (2022 Vancouver Fringe Festival, Fringe New Play Prize Winner), Before They Cut Down Our Tree by Karter Masuhara (2023 Vancouver Fringe Festival, VACT’s 2022 MSG 2 and 2021 MSG 1 programs), and it lives in my bedroom by Mily Mumford (PTC’s 2021-24 Associate). Current play in development: Deep Fried: A Pinoy Musical!, a show about Filipinx-Canadian and racialized service workers that serve us in our daily lives. Davey has worked with nationally recognized companies and individuals including Neworld Theatre, Alley Theatre, Paul Wong, rice and beans theatre, and the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association.

Santiago Guzmán (he/him) is a writer, performer, director, and dramaturg originally from Metepec, Mexico, now based in St. John’s, NL. He is the artistic director of TODOS Productions, the artistic associate for Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre, and the general manager of Neighbourhood Dance Works in St. John’s, NL. He is a proud member of The Quilted Collective.

His plays have been supported, developed, and/or produced by theatre companies and festivals across the country, like TODOS Productions (NL), Resource Centre for the Arts Theatre Company (NL), Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland (NL), Rising Tide Theatre (NL), Neighbourhood Dance Works (NL), Eastern Front Theatre (NS), Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre (NS), Ship’s Company Theatre (NS), Boca del Lupo (BC), Paprika Festival (ON), and the National Theatre School of Canada’s Art Apart program (QC).

He was the dramaturg for the Fundy Fringe Festival in NB in 2020 and he is currently working with Halifax Theatre for Young People as a dramaturg on a project about immigrants in Atlantic Canada. He recently participated in Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre’s 2021 Playwrights Retreat as lead and assistant dramaturg.

Jenna Rodgers (she/her) is a mixed-race director and dramaturg who gratefully resides in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), on Treaty 7 Territory. She is the founding artistic director of Chromatic Theatre, the dramaturg for the Playwrights Lab at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the board co-chair of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, and the director of theatre for Alberta’s Artstrek summer camp for teens. She is a passionate advocate for equity in the arts, a fierce supporter of new play development, and is learning how to juggle parenthood with an artistic career.

Jenna is a graduate of the NTS Artistic Leadership Residency (2020), the Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership Program (2019), and a member of the artEquity National Facilitator Training cohort (2018). She is a recipient of Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize and holds a MA in International Performance Research from the universities of Amsterdam and Tampere. Recent directing credits include Teenage Dick and Undressed at Alberta Theatre Projects, Little Women at Theatre Calgary, Hookman and The Green Line for Chromatic Theatre, Sherlock Holmes and the Vanishing Thimble at Vertigo Theatre, and Mary’s Wedding at the Citadel Theatre. 

Deneh’Cho Thompson (he/they) is a director, actor, and playwright and a displaced and dispossessed member of the Pehdzeh ki Nation. His artistic practice focuses on new plays and new play development. Acting credits include the world premieres of Iron Peggy by Marie Clements, Redpatch by Sean Oliver Harris and Raes Calvert, and Thanks for Giving by Kevin Loring. As Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Deneh’Cho oversees the wîcêhtowin Theatre Program, one of few Indigenous theatre programs at a Canadian university. Deneh’Cho’s research focuses on the development, naming, and centring of Indigenous pedagogies; new play development (in various roles); and Indigenous collaborations—centering the values of reciprocity, respect, and reflexivity. Deneh’Cho is also engaged in the (re)storying of personal family archives focusing on healing, resilience, and Indigenous storywork as a pathway towards the creation of new works of theatre.