Cast & Crew
The 2008 production of Palais Oops has brought together many different strands of the Winnipeg Theatre Community:
Actors:
Erin Hammond
Erin Hammond is from Flin Flon and is a graduate of the University of Winnipeg’s Honours Theatre Program. She has been an actor, playwright, producer and Arts Educator for 8 years. Selected writing and performing credits include: Lake Maniwannagohome (in association with the Manitoba Association of Playwrights) and Fringe Festival hits Love, Hate and Lemon Pie and The Interview (“Best of Fest” winner) and Ordinary May’s Extraordinary Ways (“Best of Fest” winner; CBC’s Top Ten List).
Erin is a Theatre Instructor at PTE, MTYP and at the Community School of Music and the Arts in Winnipeg. She is also a senior artist with the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Learning Through The Arts program and is also an owner and one of the founding members of PushPlay Productions, a company whose focus is to develop theatre in rural communities. She has also acted as the head script-writer and the K to 5 Program Director at The Meeting Place and is currently a co-leader for their team of actors, playwrights and directors.
Erin is SUPER excited to be part of Green Kids. Let’s change the world together!
An honours graduate from the University of Winnipeg's Department of Theatre and Drama, Rachelle is an actor, producer, playwright, director, designer, musician, singer, and clown! Rachelle has produced and directed plays for Parks Canadas and the Winnipeg International Children's Festival, MTC's Master Playwrights Festival, the MayWorks Festival of Labour and Arts, as well as various International Fringe Theatre Festivals across Canada. An aspiring and award-winning playwright, Rachelle has previously been awarded an emerging playwrights grant from the Manitoba Arts Council, and placed first in the 2005 Carol Shields playwriting contest, professional division. Rachelle has been studying clown for the past two years with the Internationally reknowned Sue Morrison, and will continue her training this December with John Turner of 'Mump and Smoot'. Rachelle is also a vegan and cares a lot about the environment, so naturally she's pretty stoked about being involved with Green Kids! YAY! Loc Lu
Loc Lu has been a proud member of Green Kids since 2002. His first experience with the environmental group dates back further into his childhood where he can remember sitting in the audience and being entertainingly educated about the importance of the "3 R's." Loc has toured all over Canada with various Green Kid productions and has also been involved behind the scenes as Office Guy Extraodinaire. When he's not working with GK's, Loc enjoys teaching theatre and eating anything containing chocolate.
John D Houston
This is John's 16th year in the professional theatre. He has appeared onstage in England, the United States and throughout Canada. A member of the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan, John has made an interesting living "culturally misappropriating the lives of dead white males", playing Tommy Douglas, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens. He has just returned from the U.K. where he performed Prospero in "Tempus Fugit", a modern sequel to "The Tempest".
John's one man show, "Charles Dickens Presents, A Christmas Carol" regularly tours Canada, recently playing to full houses at Ottawa's National Arts Centre 4th Stage. His other solo shows run the gamut from English ghost stories, "Creeping Murmur; Poring Dark"; to Canadian tall tales, "The Flying Bull"; to the controversial "Shylock", by Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young.
Trisha Benjamin
Trisha began her performing arts training in dance at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. She trained full time in the disciplines of ballet, jazz, tap and musical theatre. At 15, she turned her focus onto acting, beginning her professional training with Fantasy Theatre for Children from 1996 through 2003 starring in the productions, "Charlotte's Web", "Tom Sawyer", "The Velveteen Rabbit" and "The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe". Trisha got her first exposure to television and film working as a background performer on numerous locally shot projects and took various on camera courses traveling to Vancouver, BC, to train at the Vancouver Academy of Dramatic Arts and at the William Davis Centre. She was part of the 2002 Green Kids cast "A Forest Is A Forest Does" as an understudy and is glad to be part of this year's "Palais Oops" performance as a main cast member.
Carolyn Gray
Carolyn Gray is a writer, actor, director, designer, and puppeteer. She is a founding member of Adhere and Deny, Winnipeg's only avant garde puppet theatre, which has been producing for over ten years. She has taught theatre to all ages at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, is director of the MTYP Shakespeare Company, and is part of the Artists in the Schools program. She won the Manitoba Day Award for her play The Elmwood Visitation, which was published by Scirocco Drama. She has been nominated for the 2008 John Hirsch Most Promising Writer Award.
Brian Richardson is a theatre practitioner. As an actor, a playwright, a poet, a storyteller, folk musician, and a creator of ethno-fusion theatre he has experienced a wide range of performance experience. Brian also applies his craft in a field broadly categorised as Museum Theatre. The centre of that network is a very dedicated woman, Tessa Bridal, whose work in the Science Museum of Minnesota began the connecting theatre artists working in the fields of re-enactment, recreation, and education, to exchange and share ideas in a commonality. The work Brian does with Green Kids stems from that commonality as well as many years in theatre, and a number of years with Green Kids. Daina Leitold
Daina's first real paying acting gig was with Green Kids in 1996. She went on to perform in three tours with Green Kids before moving into the office as the Executive/Artistic Director from 1999 to 2001. Daina has spent most of her time since raising her daughter, Sativa, as well as working as an actor, director and mime around Winnipeg. She was one of the co-writers for Green Kids' 2006 Tour, "Happy Birthday Rex", and is excited to get to work with Green Kids again this year. Green Kids combines her two favorite things on this planet: theatre and, well, this planet.
Writer/Director:
Brian Richardson
Road Manager:
Ron Moore
Ronald George Moore is an actor, writer, and comedian from Winnipeg, Manitoba. The 2008 Palais Oops Tour will be his second with Green Kids as Road Manager. Along with instructing classes at The Manitoba Theatre for Young People, he has been involved with the Winnipeg Fringe Festival for fifteen years straight. He would like to thank everyone involved in this year's production.
Tour Manager:
Daina Leitold
Teachers Resource Kit and Communications:
Alix Sobler
Alix Sobler is a playwright, performer and freelance writer/communications professional. In addition to her business and public relations writing, she has written many plays, including five solo shows which she has performed all over North America. In 2003 her play "Testimony" was chosen as a finalist in the Edward Albee Last Frontier Playwrighting competition (ten-minute division) and the same play was performed at the Looking Glass Theatre in NYC in 2006. In 1996 she won the National Conversation Essay Competition (USA) for her piece entitled "I Pledge Allegiance to MTV". Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire and Rhubarb Magazine. Her comedy can often be heard on CBC's Definitely Not The Opera. Alix Sobler is a graduate of Brown University.
Show Consultant & Image Programming:
Loc Lu
Dance Routine
Judy Cook
Clown Costumes:
Lorraine O’Leary
Thora lamont
Amanda Isaac
Scene Painting:
Andrea Steinwand
Props Maker:
Randy Woods
Imagery Direction:
Fiona Sanipelli
Please visit our Advisory Committee page for a complete list of our Advisors.