MELISSA MAJOR (Director)

Melissa Major is double-jointed in her fingers. Over the past 12 years, Melissa has been involved in over 65 productions.  Selected theatre credits : Writer / Performer of Wanda T. Grimsby: Detective Extraordinaire (Lower Ossington Theatre) , Director of Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco (Hiroic Productions), Director of Kid Cosmic (Cheshire Unicorn), co-writer/actor in Floozy: The Musical (Mellow Brown), writer of Even Burning (Razz Interactions, New Ideas Festival & Stagecrafters / Baldwin Theatre- Michigan), writer/actor of Unicorn Horns (Cheshire Unicorn at Nuit Blanche; IDEA 2007 World Congress of Theatre- Hong Kong; & Theatre Passe Muraille), writer/director of Kicking and Smiling (Cheshire Unicorn at Nuit Blanche and Squiggfest) and writer of Art is a Cupboard (The Sweat Company). She is the Artistic Director of The Cheshire Unicorn theatre company and can smell an MFA in playwriting that will be fully baked mid-August. www.cheshireunicorn.com

CASSIE BEECHAM (Playwright)

Cassie Beecham is a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of Guelph.  Her previous theatre works have been read at Uvic's FIND Festival and Toronto's Fresh Blood . Her short film "Birthday Surprise" won Best Comedy at the 2007 Sunscreen Film Festival . She is insanely excited to be part of SummerWorks.

JUSTIN BOTT (Bently)

Since graduating of the Canadian College of Performing Arts in 2006, Justin has bounced to the Yukon and back, twice; to Canmore to Niagara Falls, and most recently, a year in Osaka, Japan. 

Selected stage credits : The Wedding Singer (Stage West), Wanda T. Grimsby (Little Monsters), The Blues Brothers (Universal Studios, Japan), Kid Cosmic (SummerWorks'08), Macbeth; Romeo & Juliet (Classical Theatre Project).

NOA MAY DORN (El)

Noa May Dorn is a Toronto-based francophone actor/playwright. Since graduating from the George Brown Theatre School, she has appeared at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Citadel Theatre, Luminato, Cross-Currents and Rhubarb Festivals. She was last seen in The Women of Troy at the Festival of Ideas and Creations at CanStage.

Her most recent creation Rock Me Sweet  was staged in the spring 2010 Buzz festival at Passe-Muraille.

Upcoming :  Noa May will be appearing in the cabaret "Vivement l'automne" at l'Alliance Française in September.

RYAN FISHER (Alex)

Ryan Fisher hails from small-town Michigan, but having graduated the joint-acting program at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College he lives and works as an actor in Toronto. You may have seen him testing his range earlier this summer in Eastside Players absurd comedy Beyond Therapy , or more recently in the Toronto Fringe Festivals dramatic Being at Home With Claude in his acclaimed role as The Hustler. You can see him again in the early Fall at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in the workshop production of The Judy Monologues.

CATHY GORDON (Rita)

Over the past fifteen years, Cathy has created over forty original pieces from one minute to twelve hours, intended for audiences of one to many thousand. She has buried herself in earth, crawled across the city, created choreographies on beaches, in traffic, on cars, in trees, on rooftops and various places indoors too. Her installation-performances have been presented by The Theatre Centre, Studio 303, Toronto Free Gallery, Music Gallery, The Drake Hotel, The Queen West Art Crawl, Hysteria Festival, DNA, Lab Cab, Buddies In Bad Times.

Cathy is the winner of the Ken McDougall Emerging Director Award and a Harold for her contribution to the Independent Theatre community; she is also a three-time Dora Award nominee for Best Space Design and once for Best Production; two-time nominee for the K.M Hunter Award; and nominee for the 2005 Canadian Comedy Awards.

As of June 30, 2001, Cathy will be the former Managing Director of The Theatre Centre and co-curator of Free Fall. She is now the co-Artistic Director of hub14 performance works along with Meagan O'Shea, Heidi Strauss and Jeremy Mimnagh.

LAURA COURNOYEA (Stage Manager)

Laura works as a Freelance Stage and Production Manager in Toronto and beyond - trying to find organization in the world of creation. Recent credits include: Biome (random acts of dance), Killing Game (Redhanded Theatre), The 25th Putnam County Spelling Bee (Fallen Rock), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Ghostlight Productions), The Right Road to Pontypool (Fourth Line Theatre), Series 808 (Toronto Dance Theatre).