Chantal Bilodeau is a Montréal-born, New York-based playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative (formerly The Arctic Cycle) and over the past decade has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the US and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide-distributed theatre festival. Awards include the Woodward International Playwriting Prize as well as First Prize in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and the Uprising National Playwriting Competition. Her plays and translations have been presented in a dozen countries around the world and she had edited or co-edited three anthologies of short plays about the climate crisis. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.

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Keith Turnbull served as the artistic director of Theatre Arts programs at the Banff Centre for the Arts from 1993-1999 and was also the codirector of the Banff playRites Colony and director of the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program from 1997-2000. His career as a director, producer, designer and dramaturge is highlighted by a commitment to contemporary and new work in both theatre and opera. In addition, Turnbull has a particular interest in the pedagogy, performance practice and interpretation of the works of Shakespeare and of other language-based texts. He has directed over seventy plays at various theatres throughout the world. Turnbull also founded a First Nations theatre company from which emerged many of Canada’s most noted Native performers. He was the founding co-artistic director of the Toronto Theatre Festival, the president of the Toronto Theatre Alliance as well as a board member of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. He has taught at the University of Manitoba, the National Theatre School, the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

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Larry Tromblay, a three-time finalist for the Governor General?s Literary Award, is the author of the novels The Bicycle Eater, Piercing and The Obese Christ. He has written over 20 plays, which have been translated and produced in more than a dozen languages. Tomblay is also the author of numerous collections of poetry. He teaches at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

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