THE WOMEN OF THEATRE OUEST END (TOE)
"Theatre Ouest End believes theatre exists to provoke empathy, challenge apathy, and inspire change not only in its audience, but also in its performers, production team, and community."
Launched in the spring of 2019, Théâtre Ouest End (TOE) was founded by Ann Lambert, Laura Mitchell, Alice Abracen, and Danielle Szydlowski. These four women wanted to bring together an intergenerational community of experienced and emerging theatre artists who would bring timely and compelling work to people whose access to theatre is challenged by income, limited mobility, opportunity, and the perception that theatre is really about and for someone else. TOE is committed to making vital theatrical experiences more accessible to communities who traditionally cannot or do not participate and to mentoring young theatre professionals by giving them a place to begin practicing their craft and to encouraging new work. This model of seniors and youth working together is evident in our own founding members: we are two established theatre artists and two emerging theatre artists. We have recently added two more members to our team: Anissah Vanhorn and Ayesha Hasan.
Theatre Ouest End believes theatre exists to provoke empathy, challenge apathy, and inspire change not only in its audience, but also in its performers, production team, and community. We want to make theatre which takes the raw stuff of our lives and transforms it into spectacle which celebrates and affirms the universal. Therefore, TOE is committed to reaching across perceived barriers of every kind.
We believe we can achieve social change by offering opportunity and encouragement to all participants regardless of race, ethnicity, language, class, age, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability. TOE values work that reveals the spectrum of human experience and affirms life in all its diversity. We believe our inclusive model of theatre is a tremendous addition to the diverse communities of the west end ofMontreal.
We hope to foster creativity through theatrical productions that explore the core issues of these populations in a welcoming, safe, interactive community setting.
Theatre Ouest End is excited to continue meeting these goals through:
We believe we can achieve social change by offering opportunity and encouragement to all participants regardless of race, ethnicity, language, class, age, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability. TOE values work that reveals the spectrum of human experience and affirms life in all its diversity. We believe our inclusive model of theatre is a tremendous addition to the diverse communities of the west end ofMontreal.
We hope to foster creativity through theatrical productions that explore the core issues of these populations in a welcoming, safe, interactive community setting.
Theatre Ouest End is excited to continue meeting these goals through:
- Continuing our weekly generative writing workshops
- Hosting evenings of staged readings of new work
Ann Lambert has written over 25 stage and radio plays in the past 35 years. Her first play, The Wall, won first prize in the Ottawa Little Theatre National Playwriting Competition, and was produced at The Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. Self Offense won seven awards at the Quebec Drama Festival, then went on to production at Cucaracha Theatre in New York. She has written several dramas for CBC radio, including Force of Circumstance, which was broadcast in Australia in 1997. Her stage play, Parallel Lines, was featured at the fourth International Women Playwrights Conference in Galway, Ireland in 1997, and was produced at The University of Oklahoma that year as well. It was published in an anthology of plays dealing with refugee stories entitled Along Human Lines by Blizzard. Ann’s work is also featured in several other anthologies, including Another Perfect Piece, (Playwrights Canada Press) She Speaks (PCP) and 32 Degrees, (DC Books). Very Heaven was first produced at The Centaur Theatre in 1999, and received its European premiere at Focus Theatre in Dublin in 2004. It was published in 2000 by Blizzard publishing. Very Heaven and The Mary Project, (co-written with Laura Mitchell), were featured at the Fifth International Women Playwrights Conference in Athens, Greece, in 2000, at infinitheatre in Montreal in 2001. The Mary Project then went on to open at LA MAMA in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. Two Short Women (which she also directed) was produced by Right Now! in Montreal in 2007. It was featured in a double-bill with her very first play, The Wall, and enjoyed critical and popular success. The Assumption of Empire had a very successful workshop production in Montreal in 2009 at Mainline Theatre. Jocasta’s Noose, also directed by Ann, was named a Best Bet at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2012 and nominated for the Beyond the Mountain Award. Two Short Women was featured at the Women International Playwrights Conference in Stockholm, as well as at the Wildside Festival (Centaur Theatre) in 2013. Ann directed The Guest, written by her daughter, Alice Abracen, which was nominated for a Most Promising New Company award at the Montreal Fringe Festival.
She has been teaching at Dawson College since 1991, where for the last 12 years, she has written, directed and produced shows with The Dawson Theatre Collective which consistently play to sold out audiences. Her most recent show, A Midsummer Night’s Kickass Dream, opened in May 2018, and once again featured a cast of over 30 students. Ann is the former head of The Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Ann’s first novel, The Birds That Stay was published by Second Story Press in Toronto in February, 2019. It has recently been nominated for the Concordia University Best First Book Prize. Her second book in the Russell and Leduc series, The Dogs of Winter, will be published in the fall of 2020.
Ann is also the vice-president of The Theresa Foundation (www.theresafoundation.com), dedicated to supporting AIDS-orphaned children and their grandmothers, the education of Malawian girls, and alleviating food insecurity in several villages in Malawi, Africa.
She has been teaching at Dawson College since 1991, where for the last 12 years, she has written, directed and produced shows with The Dawson Theatre Collective which consistently play to sold out audiences. Her most recent show, A Midsummer Night’s Kickass Dream, opened in May 2018, and once again featured a cast of over 30 students. Ann is the former head of The Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Ann’s first novel, The Birds That Stay was published by Second Story Press in Toronto in February, 2019. It has recently been nominated for the Concordia University Best First Book Prize. Her second book in the Russell and Leduc series, The Dogs of Winter, will be published in the fall of 2020.
Ann is also the vice-president of The Theresa Foundation (www.theresafoundation.com), dedicated to supporting AIDS-orphaned children and their grandmothers, the education of Malawian girls, and alleviating food insecurity in several villages in Malawi, Africa.
Award winning actress Laura Mitchell (UDA, Equity, ACTRA), moved to Montreal from the southern U.S. after completing an MFA in acting at the prestigious Case Western University. Here in Montreal, she worked many years with TACcom, (a company that tailor makes corporate theatre) as writer, actor, and “animateur.” She is co-founder of Unwashed Grape, Right NOW! and TOE (Theatre Oust/west End). As founding member of the comedy duo “TITTERS’ she has performed in the Vancouver International Comedy Festival, in comedy clubs in and around Montreal, Seattle, and Vermont. As a writer, she has co-written (with Janis Kirshner): four cabarets: Female Bondage, Lashed But Not Leashed, Same Great Taste, and Put Another Monologue on the Fire. She has also co-written 2 films: one feature film, the quirky, dark comedy, World Without Men (Sheldon Neuberger co-writer, 7 th Art Production, commercial runat Cinema du Parc, many film festivals), and one documentary film, Unbuckling My Bible Belt (Patricia Tassinari, Pandora Film, commercial run at Excentris, Canal D, Montreal International Film Festival and many others festival). With Ann Lambert, and commissioned by GCTC, Laura co-wrote the full-length play, The Mary Project that has seen productions in Montreal, Athens, Greece, and Melbourne, Australia. She teaches English at Dawson College where she also directs The Showtime Troupe. Over the last 26 years, she has directed students in 20 plays and has written two of them: Lissy Walker is Going Home (based onThe Odyssey) and From Dio to Dawn (inspired by The Bacchae), as well as an adaptation of The Balcony and Biederman and the Firebugs. She also taught Dramatic Structure at the National Theatre School for two semesters. Laura has a keen love of story and of story telling and has performed as a storyteller at Blue Metropolis. Laura has participated in story telling workshops and is interested in using the skills she acquired there to work with the oftentimes marginalized communities of the elderly and teens, bringing them together and helping them give voice to their own stories. She continues to act in film, television and on stage. She lives in Montreal with jazz drummer, Eduardo Pipman and Kimba, the wonder dog.
Danielle Szydlowski was very pesky (or inventive as her mother would kindly put it). She would break things just so she could put them back together (or at least try to). She would make various concoctions that she would sell to her family if they didn’t explode in the microwave or freezer. Luckily, the most influential people in her life are playwrights, actors and directors, so they challenged Danielle to channel this "creativity" into theatre. At a very young age, she got involved in many theatre productions by organizing, sewing costumes, constructing sets and designing light and sound. After graduating from the National Theatre School’s Production program, Danielle moved on to work as a Production & Stage Manager as well as a Technical Director. She is now working as a casting agent at Ubisoft Montreal and is very excited to dip her toes back into the world of theatre by launching Theatre Ouest End with none other than the women who inspired her to pursue theatre.
Alice Abracen is an award-winning emerging playwright. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a BA in English and Religion and recently completed the Playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Her play Omission was featured in the Centennial Season of Alumnae Theatre in Toronto and her play The Covenant won the 2017 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition. She recently won the inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes as an emerging librettist along with collaborator and composer Maria Atallah for The Chair, which will enjoy its second workshop hosted by Toronto’s Tapestry Opera in March, and later see numerous public performances in cities across Canada. Her play The Tour recently received its US premiere with Underlings Theatre Company, whose 2019 season will feature her play What Rough Beast. Her work has been featured with the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club, the Montreal Fringe Festival and the Women Playwrights International Conferences in Cape Town and Santiago. She looks forward to the reading of What Rough Beast at the Centaur Theatre's Legacy series this spring. Alice is extremely thrilled to be launching Theatre Ouest End with her cherished family, friends, and collaborators.
Anissah Vanhorn is a Queer emerging actress and playwright. They started their journey in theatre by joining the Dawson Theatre Collective (DTC), founded by Ann Lambert at Dawson College. This collective is entirely composed of students who do not study professional theatre. Every year the DTC puts on a show that runs three to four nights in May and all proceeds collected from ticket sales go to organizations such as the Theresa Foundation. Anissah's first performance was in “A Midsummer’s Night Kickass Dream”, a modern rendition of Shakespeare's play “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”, where they landed one of the major roles. Their second performance was in “Being Verity”, another modern rendition of a classic piece by Oscar Wilde titled “Being Earnest”. Anissah continued with the DTC for the rest of her studies at Dawson working as an actress, assistant stage manager, stage and costume designer, and playwright. Their first co-written play, whose production was put on pause by the pandemic, is “The Long Shot” directed by Jeff Gandell.
Recent graduate of Dawson College in Community, Recreation, and Leadership Training and currently completing her B.Ed in Secondary English at McGill University, Anissah is a dedicated student and apprentice. For TOE, they have coordinated several online and in-person events, helped with administrative tasks and promotion, assisted in coordinating virtual writing sessions, and filled a variety of artistic positions in past and current TOE productions. Anissah hopes to soon facilitate writing workshops for at-risk youth through the TWC writing workshops.
Recent graduate of Dawson College in Community, Recreation, and Leadership Training and currently completing her B.Ed in Secondary English at McGill University, Anissah is a dedicated student and apprentice. For TOE, they have coordinated several online and in-person events, helped with administrative tasks and promotion, assisted in coordinating virtual writing sessions, and filled a variety of artistic positions in past and current TOE productions. Anissah hopes to soon facilitate writing workshops for at-risk youth through the TWC writing workshops.
Ayesha Hasan is a graduate of Concordia University's Journalism program and our newest addition to the TOE team! She worked for McGill University's School of Continuing Studies, coordinating linguistic and cultural immersion programs for students on language exchange programs. She currently works for Ubisoft Montreal as an Actor and Talent Management Specialist, a role which has her organizing recordings and shoots with actors in Montreal, and abroad. Ayesha is also part of the Montreal host committee for the upcoming Women Playwrights International Virtual Conference, bringing together theatre practitioners, scholars, and critics from all over the world.
TOE Partners
Writers Collective of Canada"The Writers Collective of Canada (WCC) was founded in 2012 by Susan Turk, a certified Amherst Writers and Artist facilitator to encourage voice and illuminate undiscovered strength in Toronto’s most vulnerable communities." - WCC
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Want to Become a TOE partner?Send us an email at [email protected]
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Special Thanks
NATIONAL THEATRE SCHOOL OF CANADA
A special thank you to the National Theatre School of Canada for awarding us two Theatre Engaging Community (TEC) grants which without which our writing workshop would not have been possible.
WESTMOUNT UNITED CHURCH
We would also like to thank the Westmount United Church for giving Théâtre Ouest End a home.
BEANDUCK
https://www.beanduck.com
A special thank you to the National Theatre School of Canada for awarding us two Theatre Engaging Community (TEC) grants which without which our writing workshop would not have been possible.
WESTMOUNT UNITED CHURCH
We would also like to thank the Westmount United Church for giving Théâtre Ouest End a home.
BEANDUCK
https://www.beanduck.com