JAPANESE PROBLEM

collaborator | producer

Yoshie Bancroft is a Japanese Canadian actor and theatre creator with a strong interest in the Japanese Canadian incarceration.  In 2015 she took a walking tour of Hastings Park, run by the Nikkei Centre.  Though vaguely aware of the incarceration history, suddenly the geographic proximity and magnitude of the transgression became immediate and tangible, while standing in an animal stall in the Livestock Building where women and children had once slept.  The experience motivated the creation of JAPANESE PROBLEM as she began to wonder how many people attend the PNE without knowing that the site processed 8,000 Japanese Canadians during WWII.  

Recent theatre credits include The Orchard (Arts Club), Griffin & Sabine (Belfry), Home Is A Beautiful Word (Sum Theatre/Persephone), SHIT (Firehall), The Double Axe Murders (Rusticate/Presentation House; Jessie Nomination), Lizzie in Pride & Prejudice (Chemainus Theatre Festival), Flare Path (Slamming Door), Ithaka (dream of passions/Excavation Theatre; Jessie Award), Tour (Universal Ltd.)-- a show she co-created with support from The Electric Company for Hive 3, and toured to Toronto for Summerworks.  Select Film/TV credits include Emily Owens M.D., The Flash, Bates Motel, Supernatural, Impastor.  yoshiebancroft.com 

collaborator | producer | director

Joanna Garfinkel started new play development collective Universal Limited in August 2011. Previously, she co-created and directed the pedicab adventure Tour for HIVE 3 with the Electric Company, Universal Limited, and the Cultural Olympiad. That site-specific escapade went on to the Firehall, was award-winning at the Fringe, and has since been reinvented for Victoria (Theatre SKAM), and Toronto (SummerWorks). Joanna is struck by the racially motivated societal patterns that keep repeating in Canada, and to troubling those waters through performance. Recent credits include co-curating, dramaturging and directing the Northern Play Reading Series in Yellowknife, NWT (Akpik Theatre). She was awarded the Pure Research grant for Nightswimming Theatre (Toronto), was nominated for the Jessie award for Innovation (Letters from Lithuania/Mortal Coil), and has received the Sydney Risk award for directing. She moved to Vancouver to get her MFA in directing at UBC, and her focus since has been primarily in new play development, multidisciplinary, and site-specific work. She has trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Upcoming: dramaturgy for Playwrights’ Theatre Centre, and VACT’s MSG lab.  joannagarfinkel.com

collaborator

Sindy Angel was born and raised in Cali, Colombia, where she began her professional theatre training. She co-founded an independent theatre company performing shows and workshops with and for communities facing complex barriers and systemic discrimination in South America. She started the first theatre program in the women’s prison in Cali. Since moving to Vancouver, in 2006, she has worked and collaborated as an actor with companies like New World Theatre and Urban Ink. Most recently, Sindy performed in Open fire, written by Carmen Aguirre. With a strong passion in social outreach, she has facilitated Theatre of the Oppressed Workshops for inmates, youth, women, people with physical, developmental and mental health challenges, immigrants and refugees. For the last eight years, Sindy has done extensive advocacy and outreach work with refugees from all over the world; her lived experience and her community work continues to inspire her creative journey to use theatre to address issues of racism and discrimination. 

composer | collaborator

Daniel Deorksen is a Vancouver-based actor, writer, composer and musician. A graduate of UBC with a BFA in Theatre, Daniel is a founder and Co-Artistic Producer of Seven Tyrants Theatre and a producer with Synergy At Play Productions. With Seven Tyrants Theatre he has created, co-created and produced over a dozen new Canadian plays and adaptations, including The Bucky Show, based on the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, and his most recent indie-opera The Water Seller. Theatre credits include Pride & Prejudice (Arts Club Theatre), Beggar’s Opera, A Good Woman of Setzuan (7T), TOUR (Universal Limited), Cocktails at Pam’s (Staircase) and A Room With A View (United Players). Daniel’s compositions have been featured in productions such as The Air Loom (you & i), Topdog/Underdog, Ebenezer, Mozart & Salieri (7T), The Devil and Billy Markham (Chutzpah Festival), Dog Eat Dog (Only Animal) and Bull in a China Shop (Felix Culpa) as well as the feature film Lawrence and Holloman. His funk-rock group Two Apple Tobacco was voted Runner Up Best Unsigned Band in The Georgia Straight’s Best of Vancouver 2016. Daniel is excited to be collaborating once again with Universal Limited on this important project.

collaborator

Alyssa Hirose is a Vancouver-based writer, improvisor and actor, and unfortunately is probably not related to Brent. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She is positively thrilled to be a part of this team. Alyssa also writes daily diary comics; you can find her work on Instagram at @hialyssacomics.

collaborator

Brent Hirose is an actor, writer, director and improviser based out of Vancouver, BC.  An honours gratitude of the University of Winnipeg Theatre and Film Program, he is a founding member of Winnipeg's Theatre by the River. He was recently appointed the Co-Artistic Director of Vancouver's Instant Theatre, with whom he regulator performs, directs and instructs cutting edge improv comedy & narrative. Recent theatre credits include the Western Canada premiere of Sea Wall, Ithaka (Excavation Theatre), Heathers: The Musical (Frolicking Divas), Cocktails at Pam's (Staircase Theatre) and A Few Good Men (MTC/Citadel). He was also delighted to play the lead in a workshop production of Tom Pinkerton (VACT) this fall, a rare opportunity for a half Japanese actor to play a character of the same ethnicity.   brenthirose.com

collaborator

Nicole Yukiko is a Vancouver-based performer and creator. She has earned a BFA in acting from UBC as well as a diploma in performance studies from Mount Royal University. Nicole's focus as a storyteller is on sharing the experiences of underrepresented communities. She is proud to be part of the ensemble with JAPANESE PROBLEM in honour of her family & generations of Japanese-Canadians.  In Vancouver, you may have seen Nicole in: Pride & Prejudice, Ubu Roi, The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Theatre UBC), or The Girl with No Face (VACT MSG Lab Series). She is co-developing and will be featured in the upcoming indie film "Slump”. Follow her errant ramblings @nicoleyukiko

puppet designer

Shizuka Kai is a Vancouver-based theatre artist known mainly for her work in set design and puppets, as well as masks, illustrations, costume design and more. Select puppetry credits include Zoetrope (Studio 58), The Pipeline Project (Itsazoo), Lupinland (Big Chip Media), "Max" (SaskTel), Hamelin -A New Fable* (Axis Theatre) and Medea -Rokujo(Yayoi Theatre Movement). Recent design credits include King Arthur's Night (Neworld Theatre), The Out Vigil (Theatre Newfoundland Labrador), L'Élection (Théâtre la Seizième), Troilus & Cressida (Studio 58), Go, Dog. Go!** and On My Walk** (Carousel Theatre for Young People). Shiz was hailed by Vancouver's theatre critic Colin Thomas as “an emerging star of theatrical design. She is a graduate of Studio 58. To see more of her work please visit: www.shizuka.ca

*Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Design Concept & Execution

**Jessie Richardson Nomination and Ovation Nomination for Outstanding Design

set designer - touring set

Andrew Duffy is a graduate of the Phoenix Theatre Program at the University of Victoria. He is a Vancouver based Set Designer, Scenic Carpenter, and Scenic Painter working in both film and theatre. He is currently working as a Painter for the Vancouver Film Industry; his film credits include X-Files Season Eleven, Zoo Season Three, and No Tomorrow Season One. His recent Theatre credits include Antagonist (Little Mountain Lion Productions) and Prof. (Metro Theatre Victoria).

With contributions from:

Originally from Toronto, Laura Fukumoto is a Vancouver-based costume designer and wardrobe professional and has been working in theatre and film since graduating from The University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre production and design. Recent costume design credits include Trembling Void Productions’ feature film The Iron Sixth, Up in the Air Theatre’s The North Plan, and Bright Young Theatre’s Crimes of the Heart. As a dresser, she has worked with Robert Lepage and Ex Machina on their Vancouver production of 887 and has just completed her third season with Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival.

Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian Vancouver-based poet and playwright. A graduate of UBC, her plays have been presented professionally by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, and by Ruby Slippers Theatre as part of the inaugural Advance Theatre reading series at the 2015 Vancouver International Fringe Festival. Her poems have been published in Ricepaper, Room, and The Puritan, among other publications, and are also forthcoming in EVENT. She has also performed in a number of community-based theatre productions in Port Moody, and most recently in the multimedia piece Umizoko for the 2016 Vancouver International Fringe Festival.

Cecile Roslin has been collaborating with Universal Limited since the company's inception. Studying with both the SITI company in New York and One Yellow rabbit in Calgary has shaped and refined her love of site specific theatre. As a collaborator on both Sorry Now and several iterations of Tour with Universal Limited, she writes, “I find myself most interested in finding the shred of hope that gets our heroes through their journey. What I love about this company is that we tell the stories of Canada's silenced and forgotten people in many different forms, and this story is one that I am very much looking forward to exploring. As a Caucasian passing Cree woman, I have spent my life wading in “other.” The story of what happened to these families so closely mirrors what happened to my own, that I am eager to add my voice and help our new heroes find their hope.”

on site mental health professional

Carmen Ostrander MA, RTC, MACA (Square Peg Therapy) Universal Limited was fortunate to have Carmen on site at Hastings Park during our performances, to facilitate our after-show community conversations, and serve as an on-hand mental health professional for our audiences, and for our team. The ethic of care developed that supported audiences and performers to engage with this difficult and powerful material was informed by her own practice as a former theatre maker and current orientation as a Narrative Therapist. www.carmenostrander.com