Joanna Garfinkel:

Artist for Hire

Joanna Garfinkel began dramaturgically-driven play development company Universal Limited. She is the co-creator, with Yoshié Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, which premiered in September 2017, which will be back to Hastings Park September 2018, and on tour 2018-2019 (japaneseproblem.ca). Previously, she co-created and directed the pedicab adventure Tour for HIVE 3 produced by the Electric Company, Universal Limited, and the Cultural Olympiad. That site-specific escapade has since been reinvented for Victoria (Theatre SKAM), and Toronto (SummerWorks). Joanna is struck by the racially motivated societal inequities that keep repeating in Canada, and to troubling those patterns through performance. Recent credits include co-curating, dramaturging and directing the Northern Play Reading Series in Yellowknife, NWT (Akpik Theatre) and dramaturgy for Gary Mok’s i broke the ocean (VACT MSG lab). 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’s Fringe New Play Prize