Alameda Theatre Company

The Refugee Hotel
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Que Pasa?
Que Paso?

Cast

		FELIX BASAEZ Cueca Dancer Felix grew up in Temuco Chile. He joined the Catholic University of Termuco’s Company theatre in 2000. He was also part of the Municipal Folkloric Ballet of Temuco. Because of his experience in theatre and folkloric dances in Chile he was able to join Grupo Chile in Toronto when he moved to Canada in 2007. With Grupo Chile he performs Chilean and Latin American folkloric dances in Toronto and other cities.

		LEANNA BRODIE Social Worker Acting credits include: Carmen, The Balcony (Modern Times); Phae, Phae (Summerworks); Kris, Malaysia Hotel (Summerworks); Isabella, Measure for Measure (Shakespeare in the Rough). Playwriting credits: The Vic, For Home and Country, and Schoolhouse, Brodie is 4th Line Theatre’s Playwright-in-Residence. Her translation of Louise Bombardier’s Ma mère chien will be published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2010.

		TERRENCE BRYANT Receptionist Recent theatre credits include: My Fellow Creatures (Theatre Passe Murraile), Simply Told (Summerworks ‘07), No Man’s Land (Winnipeg Pinterfest), The Return of the Prodigal, His Majesty, Black ‘ell (Shaw Festival) and The Kabbalistic Psychoanalysis of Adam R. Tzaddik (Theatre Passe Muraille). Film and t.v. credits include: Testees, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Across the River to Motor City, This is Wonderland, and Walter and Henry.

		SALVATORE ANTONIO Manuel Recent stage credits include Melancholy, Hosanna and originating the title-role in Rosa Laborde’s, Leo . Recent television credits include guest-starring roles on Flashpoint, The Listener, and Murdoch Mysteries. He plays the series-lead role on Paradise Falls currently airing on SHOWCASE. A published and internationally produced playwright, Salvatore earned a Governor General’s Award nomination for his first play In Gabriel’s Kitchen.

		CHERI MARACLE Cristina Cheri is a multi-award nominated Mohawk actor/singer/songwriter of Six Nations Ontario. Selected Theatre credits include: Death of a Chief (The National Arts Centre and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre), The Only Good Indian (Tarragon Theatre), Buz Gem Blues (The Trinity Rep Theatre), & Ernestine Shuswap Gets her Trout (WCTC). Most recently Cheri starred in the one-woman show Paddle Song for Planet Indigenous at the Woodland Cultural Centre.

		PALOMA NUNEZ Isabel Paloma has studied and performed acting and improvisation for the last 6 years in Toronto. She has studied improvisation in Chicago, Los Angeles and in Toronto at Second City and the Impatient Theatre Co. She produces a monthly show, Key Party, swingers improv show, with her favorite person Kevin Whalen at the Comedy Bar, the last Friday of every month! Recent TV credits include The Border and The Listener!

		BEATRIZ PIZANO Flaca Beatriz is a performer, a writer/director, and founder of Aluna Theatre: a leading professional Colombian/Canadian theatre company in Canada with numerous Dora Mavor Moore Awards for their work. Her plays For Sale and Madre have been both nominated as Outstanding New Plays. Her recent acting credits include: Nohayquiensepa, Defenestration (a co-production between Colombia-Canada), Diplomatic Immunities, One Last. In January 2010 she will be directing La Communion, a play about girl soldiers at Buddies in Bad Times.

		PAULA RIVERA Manuelita Paula started her career in Canada. She will always be grateful to this country for allowing her to explore and grow in her artistic ambitions. Her credits include both guest starring roles in hot television shows like Flashpoint and wonderful theatre, like The Refugee Hotel. Paula Rivera also writes. Her one-woman show Every Girl Wants A Skirt Like Frida's was a success at the 2008 Toronto Fringe and has now been adapted into a Bravo Fact.

		MICHAEL SCHOLAR JR. Juan Michael is the Artistic Producer of November Theatre which has toured The Black Rider across North America. He produced and performed in this Dora nominated piece which ran at the Taragon Theatre last season. Other acting credits include: Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet (Bard on the Beach); Little Mercy’s First Murder, Life After God, (Touchstone Theatre); Cloud Tectonics (Vancouver Playhouse/Pi Theatre); Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night (Free Will Players); Currently, Michael is working on the stage adaptation of Hard Core Logo.

		OSVALDO SEPULVEDA Joselito Osvaldo was born in Santiago, Chile before moving to Toronto, Canada at the age of 2. He is an award winning graduate from the Humber College Theatre Conservatory in Toronto. His most recent theatre/film credit is 'Troy' in Three Little Birds and ‘C. Chaplin' in Remnants of the Lost City. Osvaldo believes in theatre as a form of breaking socio-cultural barriers. He believes that acting, through the help of God, can inspire the way we look at life, each other and ourselves.

		TODD THOMSON Bill O'Neill Selected theatre credits include; The Patient Hour (Tarragon Theatre), My Acid Trip (Solo Collective), A Doll's House (Chemainus Theatre), The School for Scandal (Arts Club), The Bond (Pound of Flesh Theatre Co.), Metamorphoses (Citadel Theatre), Espresso (Pacific Theatre), The Shape of Things (Manitoba Theatre Centre), Kilt (Belfry Theatre) and four seasons with Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival.

		JUAN CARLOS VELIS Fat Jorge Juan Carlos has worked in theatres across Canada and the US, including The Tarragon Theatre, The Saidye Bronfman, The Kravis Center, Roseneath, The Philadelphia Children's Theater, The Red Barn, Festival of Classics, Factory, Coral Springs Theater, Lyric Stage, The Grand Theatre, Green Thumb, Second Best Bird and Soulpepper. He was a past member of Cahoot's Theatre Projects playwright's unit. For the stage he has written: "Further Beyond" (Acropolis / The Grand Theatre), “Borderlines”. He was Artistic Director of Acropolis Theatre Co., which produced the annual "Shakespeare on the Thames" in London.

Production

		MARILO NUNEZ Producer Marilo is a producer, writer and actor and the founder & Artistic Director of Alameda Theatre Company. She has worked as an arts administrator for Pleiades Theatre, Nightwood Theatre and The Theatre Centre. She has produced: The Refugee Hotel (workshop reading, Harbourfront Centre) Three Fingered Jack & the Legend of Joaquin Murieta (Summer- works), Chile Con Carne (Tarragon Extra Space), North East Side Story (Summerworks).

		CARMEN AGUIRRE Director & Playwright Carmen Aguirre is an award-winning theatre artist who has written and co-written fifteen plays, including Chile Con Carne, The Trigger, The Refugee Hotel and Blue Box. Carmen has over sixty film, tv, and theatre acting credits, and has been directing plays for fifteen years, most recently Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, (The Vancouver Courier's Top Ten Plays of 2007) Something Fierce, her memoir about her experiences in the Chilean resistance in the 1980s will be published in 2010 by Douglas & McIntyre.

		BRIAN QUIRT Dramaturg Brian is Artistic Director of Nightswimming and dramaturg for its City of Wine project, Ned Dickens’ seven-play cycle. Current commissions: Judith Thompson, Richard Sanger, Carmen Aguirre, Don Druick, Anita Majumdar. Plays include: The Death of General Wolfe, Blue Note (with Martin Julien), and adaptations of Jane Urquhart’s The Whirlpool, Michael Redhill’s Lake Nora Arms (with Jane Miller) and Aurash (with Soheil Parsa). Recent Directing: Pierre Brault's Portrait of an Unidentified Man (New Zealand tour)

		TREVOR SCHWELLNUS Set Designer Trevor designs sets, lighting, and video for theatre. He is resident designer at the Theatre Centre for 2009-10. He has recently worked with Cahoots (The Madness of the Square), Aluna Theatre (Nohayquiensepa; Madre), Nightwood (Bear With Me), Small Wooden Shoe (Dedicated to the Revolutions), La Corporacion Colombiana de Teatro, Dancemakers, Modern Times, Unspun, Independent Auntie, Obsidian, Jumblies, fu-GEN, among others.

		ITAI ERDAL Lighting Designer Itai has designed over 120 shows for theatre and dance companies in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Rotterdam, London, Berlin, New York and Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. He’s been nominated to 15 theatre awards, winning the Sam Paine award in '03, the Jack King award in '05, a Dora Mavor Moore award in '07, the best design award in the Dublin Fringe in ’08, and a Jessie Richardson award in 09.

		ANDJELIJA DJURIC Costume Designer Andjelija recently designed Katherine Mansfield for Theatre Smith Gilmour and she is currently designing Ibsen's Brand for George Brown Theatre School. She is a graduate of The National Theatre School and Central Saint Martins School Of Design. She is a recepient of The Pauline McGibbon Award and has Dora Award nominations for costume design for The Game Of Love and Chance and Triumph Of Love produced by Pleiades Theatre. She is a founder of My Artlab, a creative studio for kids.

		NANO VALVERDE Sound Designer A graduate of the Royal Conservatory and York University, his musical background is a blend of Andean folk with classical. Recently: The Jaguar Project, Rivers of Blood Flows On (choreographer Alejandro Roncería), Veins of Copper, music for documentary War is not a Game. Compositions include: Deepti Gupta’s Quanta (The National Arts Centre), score for Johnny Greyeyes (Sundance Film Festival), Tobacco Ties (World Indigenous Dance Festival), Latest CD Water, 2009.

		DOUG MORUM Production Manager Previous theatre companies Doug has worked for include: Volcano Theatre, Obsidian Theatre, Modern Times Theatre, Adonis Productions, Factory Theatre, Blyth Festival, RBC festival of Classics, Fringe of Toronto Festival, Summerworks Festival, Exchange Rate Collective, Acting Upstage Theatre Company, The Company Theatre, Theatre Panik, Actors Repertory Company, Crows Theatre, Theatre Smash, Theatrefront. Doug is the Production Manager for George Brown Theatre School.

		ANDREA SCHURMAN Stage Manager Recently: SM of The Middle Place (project: Humanity), Pobby & Dingan (LKTYP), Toronto the Good (Factory), Born Ready (Obsidian) and The Pillowman (BirdLand/ Can. Stage); ASM of Of the Fields, Lately and A Raisin in the Sun (Soulpepper), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Misery (Can. Stage) and Intimate Apparel (Obsidian). Elsewhere: Theatre Passe Muraille, Nightwood, Tarragon, Marquis Ent., Mirvish, Stratford Festival, The Grand Theatre, Tapestry New Opera.

		WENDY LEE Assistant Stage Manager A graduate of the Technical Theatre Production Program (Humber), she has apprenticed or assisted on: Collected Stories (MeaCulpa), Falstaff and The Snow Show: The Great Forest of 1608 (National Arts Centre), The Sheep and the Whale (Theatre Passe Muraille, Cahoots Theatre Projects, Modern Times), Stage Managed: Canwest Cabaret (Young Centre for the Performing Arts) Someone Is Going to Come (One Little Goat Theatre Company), and Teacht I dTir: Voices from Ireland Park (MacKenzieRo).

		ALEX CASTILLO Assistant Director Alex Castillo is a proud member of Canada's ever-growing community of Latin American theatre artists and has worked steadily in film and television as leads and guest stars for more than a decade. A Chilean immigrant herself, Alex never did live in a refugee hotel, but when she and her family arrived in Toronto in February 1976, they spent a few weeks living in the now demolished Walker House Hotel on Front Street, famous for having hosted Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during his production of Camelot in 1960.

		SIGRID VELIS Assistant Producer Sigrid is a graduate of the Humber Theatre Performance Program where she played Feste in Twelfth Night, and the Jailor in The Five Vengeances (Humber). Most recently, She Soothes in The White Bone (SummerWorks), Trafalgar24 (Driftwood Theatre) and Alameda Theatre’s De Colores Festival.

		BARBARA ROWE Head of Wardrobe Barbara has been working in wardrobe, sharing her time between theatre and film and television, for the past decade. Most recently, Barbara’s work was nominated for a Dora Award for Outstanding Costume Design in Eternal Hydra (Crow’s Theatre). Some of her theatre design credits include, The Glass Menagerie (Can Stage 2005) (The Saidye Bronfman Theatre 2002), Measure for Measure (Resurgence Theatre), and Romeo & Juliet (Resurgence Theatre).

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