Canada’s Next Chopped Model Minority

Which minority will mix, mash and mince their way to being Master of the Melting Pot?

Canada’s Next Chopped Model Minority

Co-Creators: Ajahnis Charley, Kimberly Ho, Zev Mair, and Kiera Publicover
Mentor and Program Facilitator: Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks

Part of the 2021 Festival

Jun 06 at 8:00pm
Jun 05 at 8:00pm

Paired with and Dragged by the First Nation.

Ajahnis Charley (he/they) is a comedy writer and performer delivering daring works that only a young debt-ridden gay could do. He wrote and directed the short documentary I AM GAY, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. He writes for satire site The Beaverton, CBC news comedy show Because News, and the CBC podcast Tony Ho. He also is an alum of Canadian Comedy Award-winning sketch troupe The Sketchersons. He has written and performed his own solo sketch show THOTS & PRAYERS and won the Producer’s Pick award at the 2020 Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. In 2020 he was a recipient of the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Queer Emerging Artist Award.

Kimberly Ho (何文蔚) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, and collaborator based on the unceded ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Tseil-waututh peoples, known as Vancouver. In her creative practice, she seeks to explore and decolonize the intersections of queerness, the physical body, and ancestral history and habits, primarily in the context of Chinese diaspora. Their work spans across various mediums, including their directorial debut of Dumplings / 餃子 presented at F-O-R-M (Festival of Recorded Movement) with an Honourable Mention for Scotiabank Dance Centre’s Most Moving Film Award, their play-in-development Pig Stomach Soup / 豬肚湯 with the mentorship of Makram Ayache in Shakespeare in the Ruff’s Young Ruffians Apprenticeship Program, and can be seen on-screen throughout various film festival including TIFF, San Diego Asian Film Festival and Vancouver Short Film Festival in Natalie Murao’s No More Parties. kimberly-ho.com

Zev Mair (they/them) is a multilingual, neurodiverse emerging artist from Toronto. With beginnings in classical music and dance, Zev now creates experimental theatre; aiming to challenge the implicit colonial structures and inaccessibility within the theatrical form. Co-founding boundary conditions / performance assembly, they assistant directed and performed in Operations (1945-2006): Movements (Nuit Blanche, 2018) and worked behind ARTSTAR!!! (Nuit Blanche, 2019). A continuing member of [elephants] collective, Zev creates and performs with them monthly in TELETHON TELETHON.

Performance credits include Dancing With Parkinson’s Intergenerational Dance Project (2016-17), The Weavers (RCPA, 2017), “Star Stuff” (Luna Li, 2017), “Century” (Feist, 2017), Bloom (dir. Alex Douglas, Toronto Queer Film Festival, 2018). Creative credits include choreography for Les Frères (dir. Abigail Whitney, U of T Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies, 2018), A Wake for Lost Time (Pi Theatre, 2020 – cancelled due to COVID-19), I Am Not a Chimera (Dandelion Theatre, 2020). bcpatoronto.com

Kiera Publicover (she/her) is a Queer multidisciplinary artist, theatre creator and actor from Kitchener, Ontario (Neutral, Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee). She is the co-Artistic Director of Arrowwood Theatre Company and a graduate of the University of Windsor’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program. Kiera’s creative interests live in exploring themes of family, femininity and the ways in which society performs gender. Her work involves discovering and experimenting with alternative forms of theatre creation, such as physical devising, collective creation, verbatim theatre and more. For Arrowwood Theatre Company: Icarus/Kiera in ICARUS (Toronto Fringe Fest.). Elsewhere: Gwyn in Morning Sacrifice (University Players), #8 in The Wolves (University Players), Barbara in Barbara on the Beach (Dark Crop Theatre Festival), and more.

Canada’s Next Chopped Model Minority

Canada’s Next Chopped Model Minority

Schedule