Prime Mover Theatre Company announces distinctive guest speaker series featuring international theatre luminaries Jackie Maxwell, Kimberley Rampersad, and Tony Award-winner Alex Lacamoire
Toronto (Canada) - Prime Mover Theatre Company announced today the launch of a guest speaker series with a twist: Private Conversations/Public Spaces. Founding artistic director Ray Hogg hosts this intimate conversation series which brings North America’s most intriguing artists into your living room. Guests include Alex Lacamoire of Hamilton fame, NAC- English Theatre Artistic Director Jillian Keiley, prominent theatre creator Jackie Maxwell, disability arts advocate Debbie Patterson, and Shaw Festival Associate Artistic Director Kimberley Rampersad.
Prime Mover Theatre Company is Canada’s newest not-for-profit, professional theatre company dedicated to the advancement of marginalized artistic voices through advocacy, artist training, and large-scale co-production. Founded in June 2020, the imaginative company has been creating a stir across Canada thanks to its impactful work and national partnerships with Neptune Theatre, The Musical Stage Company, The Rose Theatre, Sheridan College, and more.
Private Conversations/Public Spaces are open to the public and invite listeners to sit in on what are typically private conversations between arts leaders about the artist's life-cycle, myth-making, creating access, post-pandemic reopening and leadership in the 21st century. This enlightening series begins March 30, 2021 and runs bi-weekly on Zoom through May 26, 2021.
“ I have the pleasure of regular conversation with some of the most inspiring artists and leaders in Canada. These conversations are usually private, usually one-on-one, and always surprisingly vulnerable. With this series we crack things open and give the general public unprecedented access.” - Ray Hogg, Founder & Artistic Director
As we come upon the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown of the theatre, these future focused conversations will provide a vital dose of the big-picture thinking and optimism needed to energize artists and audiences through the first phase of reopening plans in theatres across Canada.
“After a year in which we have suddenly had time to think about what we have done , question why or how we did it and wonder what comes next, I am thrilled to sit down and sift this through with Ray Hogg.” - Jackie Maxwell
We will be coming back to a newly imagined theatre - one that is familiar yet different. The Private Conversations/Public Spaces conversations will illuminate how arts leaders plan for and shape the future.
This pay-what-you-will series begins March 30, 2021 and runs bi-weekly on Zoom through May 26, 2021. This series is open to the public, but spaces are limited, so early registration on the company’s website is recommended.
For media inquires and passes to the speaker series, please contact:
Contact: Ray Hogg, Artistic Director (Prime Mover Theatre Company) | 416-427-9836 | ray@primemovertheatre.com
For more information visit:www.primemovertheatre.com
Instagram: @primemovertheatreco | twitter: @primemoverco | facebook: @primemovertheatrecompany
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ABOUT PRIME MOVER THEATRE COMPANY
Prime Mover Theatre Company is Canada’s newest not-for-profit, professional theatre company dedicated to the advancement of marginalized artistic voices through advocacy, artist training, and large-scale co-production.
Founded in June 2020, by award winning theatre director & choreographer Ray Hogg, Prime Mover Theatre Company seeks to redefine equity, inclusion and representation for the world stage by championing exceptional artists and their works, developing new live-performance work, and assembling production partners from flagship organizations across the country. In October 2020, the company developed its creative artist development program - The Legacy Project (which includes Legacy Fellowship, NoteWorthy, and the RBC Chrysalis project).
Prime Mover Theatre Company is proud of its partnerships with The Musical Stage Company, The Rose Theatre, Theatre Sheridan, University of Toronto, and Neptune Theatre.
ABOUT RAY HOGG
Widely celebrated for his rigorous commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion in large-scale production, Ray Hogg is the founder and Artistic Director of the Prime Mover Theatre Company, the Artistic Affiliate at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, and Deputy Artistic Director for The Musical Stage Company in Toronto.
He has over 20 years of artistic, educational and leadership experience in the most celebrated opera, dance, and theatre companies around the world. His work as a dancer, actor, master teacher, producer, director, and choreographer has taken him across Europe, The United States, and Canada. He has created for stages that range from Neptune Theatre in the east, The Arts Club Theatre Company in the west and many others in between.
From 2012-2017, Ray Hogg was the Artistic Director of Winnipeg’s 2,300 seat theatre, Rainbow Stage During his tenure at Rainbow Stage he ushered in an era of unprecedented artistic growth and excellence, forged acclaimed partnerships with flagship institutions such as the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and spearheaded the creation of twelve nationally recognized professional arts training programs.
ABOUT JILLIAN KEILEY
Jillian Keiley is an award-winning director from St. John’s, Newfoundland and founder of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. Jillian has directed and taught across Canada and internationally. She received her BFA in Theatre from York University and was awarded Honorary Doctorates of Letters from both Memorial University and York University. She was the winner of the Siminovitch Prize for Directing in 2004 and the Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize in 1997. Jillian assumed her role as NAC English Theatre Artistic Director in August 2012, and her productions at the NAC have included The Neverending Story, Between Breaths, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, A Christmas Carol, Twelfth Night, Metamorphoses: Based on the Myths of Ovid, Tartuffe, Oil and Water and Alice Through the Looking-Glass. More recently, she directed Bakkhai, The Diary of Anne Frank and As You Like It for the Stratford Festival and her productions of Tartuffe (NAC) and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (Artistic Fraud) toured through Newfoundland and Labrador. Tempting Providence, her collaboration with Robert Chafe for Theatre Newfoundland Labrador, toured internationally for 12 years and will be the inaugural production at the launch of the Nurse Myra Bennett Theatre in Cow Head, Newfoundland in the summer of 2020.
ABOUT ALEX LACAMOIRE
Alex Lacamoire is an award-winning music director, arranger, and composer. He is best known for his work on Broadway's critically-acclaimed shows Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, and In The Heights, which have won him three Tonys for Best Orchestrations and three Grammys for Best Musical Theater Album. He won a fourth Grammy for producing The Greatest Showman soundtrack and won an Emmy for Outstanding Music Direction on FX’s mini-series Fosse/Verdon. Alex was also the recipient of a first-of-its-kind Kennedy Center Honors for his contribution to Hamilton, where the creative team was recognized for “a transformative work that defies category” — a distinction never before awarded by the arts institution.
ABOUT JACKIE MAXWELL
Jackie Maxwell is one of Canada’s most celebrated theatre artists who has directed, taught and dramaturged across Canada and in the United States. Recent Directing Credits Include:
Paradise Lost, Centaur Theatre, Stratford Festival (world premiere); August Osage County, Innocence Lost, Soulpepper Theatre; Dear Jack Dear Louise (world premiere), Junk, Arena Stage DC, The Humans, Canadian Stage/ Citadel Theatre; London Road, Canadian Stage (Dora Award)
She was Artistic Director of The Shaw Festival 2002-2016, where her productions included Uncle Vanya, Sweeney Todd, The Divine (world premiere), Major Barbara, Juno and The Paycock, Come Back Little Sheba, Ragtime, St Joan, Rutherford and Son, The Three Sisters, Picnic. She was Artistic Director of Factory Theatre 1987-1995.
Awards include Two Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Directing, The Queen’s Jubilee Medal, The Order of Ontario and two Honorary Doctorates.
The Shaw Festival’s Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre was named after her to celebrate her creation and progressive programming of this space.
ABOUT DEBBIE PATTERSON
Debbie Patterson is a playwright, director and actor. Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, she is a founder of Shakespeare in the Ruins (SIR), served as Artistic Director for Popular Theatre Alliance of MB, Theatre Ambassador for Winnipeg’s Cultural Capital year and as Artistic Associate at Prairie Theatre Exchange 2012 to 2018. In 2016, Debbie became the first physically disabled actor to play Richard III in a professional Canadian production with SIR. In 2014 she was selected for the United Nations Platform for Action Committee’s Activist Award and was honoured with the Mayor’s Making a Mark Award in 2017. She is a proud advocate for disability arts through her work as the Artistic Director of Sick + Twisted Theatre and as a disability consultant/dramaturge on numerous projects across Canada. She lives a wheelchair-enabled life in Winnipeg and in a cabin on the shore of Lake Winnipeg with her partner and collaborator, Arne MacPherson..
ABOUT KIMBERLEY RAMPERSAD
Kimberley Rampersad is a Canadian theatre artist, born and raised in Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba. As an actor she has appeared in various theatres across Canada including Mirvish, RMTC, Stratford and Shaw. She is a recipient of a Maud Whitmore Scholarship (Charlottetown Festival), a Guthrie Award (Stratford Festival), and was inducted into Rainbow Stage’s Wall of Fame as a performer in 2018. She was engaged as the associate choreographer for Hairspray – The Musical (NETworks) for the North American and Asian tours for four seasons. Her work as a choreographer has been recognized with two Dora nominations for Passing Strange (Musical Stage/Obsidian) and Seussical – the Musical (YPT), respectively and an Evie Award in 2019 for Matilda – The Musical (Royal MTC/Citadel/Arts Club). As a director, Kimberley was featured in the New York Times in July 2019 for directing a full-length production of Man and Superman at the Shaw Festival. Other directing credits include Routes (MTYP), hang (with Philip Akin, Obsidian), How Black Mothers Say I Love You (GCTC) (2018 Prize Rideau Award – Outstanding Production) and The Color Purple (Neptune and Citadel/ Royal MTC) which received Sterling and Merritt Awards for Outstanding Direction and Productions amongst others. She was the recipient of the 2017 Gina Wilkinson Prize for an emerging female director (Ontario Arts Foundation). She is currently the Associate Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
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