2022 Awards

May 17, 2022

Jasmine Chen is a second-generation Chinese immigrant artist based in T’karonto (Dish with One Spoon Territory) and the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her work has engaged with communities across Turtle Island, including The Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Arts Club, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Persephone Theatre, Cahoots Theatre, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, 4th Line Theatre, Young Peoples Theatre, and Canadian Stage. At the core of her work is her dedication to community building, storytelling, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her passion for multilingual creation, audience interactivity, social justice, and diasporic narratives drives her artistic practice. Jasmine is a performer, director, arts educator, producer, writer, and creator. She is a recipient of the Gina Wilkinson Award, Stratford Festival Jean Gascon Award, the Toronto Harold Award, and is a Dora Award nominee. Her work has been featured in CBC Arts, NOW Magazine, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, Intermission Magazine, the Georgia Straight, and Fete Chinoise Magazine. Jasmine is the Artistic and Community Producer at Gateway Theatre in Richmond, BC. Website: msjasminechen.com

Julie Phan 潘家雯 feels empty inside. If this McGill dropout was a piece of art, she would be the 2004 Quiznos Sponmonkey Campaign. She is a Hoklo- Vietnamese writer, actor and pole artist based in Toronto and Montreal finishing her final year as a playwriting student at the National Theatre School of Canada and developing a solo show under Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Seeding Work initiative. She is best known for disappointing her father and her work with fu-GEN asian theatre company (double bill, fearless). Website: juliephan.art

Tuna Gümeli is an actor and creator who was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. After arriving to Canada to study acting, he found a passion to create and take part in art that has a universal and a humanitarian outlook and that people can relate to all around the globe, by making them laugh and break prejudices.

In his academic career, he has received training from many theatre practitioners, performers, and creators, including but not limited to Mark Wilson, Gwenyth Dobie, Allyson McMackon, Jamie Robinson, Niki Landau, Eric Armstrong, Tosha Doiron, Keira Loughran, Anita La Selva, and Laurel Paetz Smith. His years in the university, combined with many different workshops attended both in Turkey and Canada, provided him with experiences in clown work, Commedia dell’arte, physical theatre, improvisation, The Stanislavski System, Alexander Technique, Laban, Feldenkrais method, river work, Greek Tragedy, Shakespeare, contemporary, and classical scenes.

Tuna has previously appeared in the Theatre@York productions of Alice Birch’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (Dir. Mandy Roveda), Christopher Chen’s The Late Wedding (Dir. Jamie Robinson) and in Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s Everybody (Dir. Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster). He also took part in the playGround festival under Theatre@York as an actor in Piccolo’s Pasticcio and Finger Painting, and wrote and directed Good Morning. for the 2022 Festival.

Canadian Stage Performer

• Michaela Washburn
• Virgilia Griffith
• Catherine McNally
• Christopher Morris
• athena kaitlin trinh

Canadian Playwright

• Lee MacDougall
• Alison Lawrence
• Marcia Johnson
• Jeff Ho

Student at a Canadian Theatre School

• The faculty at Department of Theatre, School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University