3rd Annual
Decolonise Your Ears
New Play Reading Festival

Jahnelle Jones (she/her) is a Black queer Toronto based writer, actor, director, producer and winner of the “Most Well Rounded” student award (circa 6th grade). She’s been a member of the Toronto theatre community since 2014 and got her start doing various youth theatre training programs with professional companies like Tarragon, Paprika Festival, and Shakespeare in the Ruff. She’s a founding member of the indie theatre collective Rookies with Friends, an emerging artist collective that specializes in making shows that centre queer and BIPOC young adults. Aside from theatre, Jahnelle also creates and writes for short form series, tv, and film.

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Contact: jahnellejonesw@gmail.com

Danielle Boissoneau is a 2spirit femme, Anishnaabekwe from Garden River First Nation. Currently on loan to Hamilton Ontario, Danielle embodies her dreams of liberation and autonomy by collaborating with sound, ancestral language, the land and water. She invokes the practice of living artistically, by acknowledging miracles and then translating them into projects for the people. Danielle has performed her poetry at various venues, including Tipi Confessions (2019), the Ongwehonweh Storytellers Festival (2020) and the Born Celestial exhibition (2022). Her intimate relationship with sound and words goes back to childhood, she sees herself as a constant student moving from writing political essays, to sharing and publishing her poetry, and then being invited to write a screenplay for a soon to be released animated film. She is looking forward to sharing her first play during the Decolonize Your Ears Festival. Danielle is from the Old Turtle Clan.

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Contact: d.boissoneau@gmail.com

Helen Belay was born in Bedford, England and raised in Edmonton, AB. Recent credits include: The Wonderful (Caravan Farm Theatre); Queen Goneril & King Lear (Soulpepper); ren & the wake (Catch the Keys Productions); Jane Eyre, The Fiancée, Heaven (Citadel Theatre); Here There Be Night (WWPT); The Blue Hour (SkirtsAFire Festival); The Society of the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonious (Theatre Network); Cinderella (Globe Theatre); Vidalia (Teatro La Quindicina); Lenin’s Embalmers, All for Love, Middletown (Studio Theatre). FILM & TELEVISION: Dark Nature; Abracadavers; The Gauntlet; The Ugly Meadow; A Second Round of Seconds; Song of the Dead.  

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Contact: helbelay@gmail.com

Melissa Murray-Mutch is an actor, playwright and arts educator from the New York metro area living here in Hamilton. Melissa is a co-founder and serves as the artistic director of the Gritty City Theatre Company. She acted in, wrote and co-wrote two short films for her company, “Hammered- An Apocalyptic Comedy” and “Hammered part 2 Moonrocks vs. Moonshine” for the Hamilton Fringe Digital Exclusives category. Melissa’s play “Unwanted'' was selected for the first “Decolonize Your Ears Festival” and Theatre Aquarius ``Brave New Works Festival”. Her work as arts educator in Canada includes Theatre Aquarius Theatre School, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and Young People’s Theatre of Toronto and across the border in New York with Manhattan Theatre Club and the American Slavery Project.

Acting work on stage in Canada includes, “The Fertility Project” (co writer), “Vagina Monologues”, "Lost Lake", "Night Desk" and “The Vagina Monologues”. In the U.S- Off-Broadway: "Death of the Liberal Class" ( The New Ohio Theater), "Playboy of the West Indies", (Lincoln Center Theater) and “This” (Shaker Bridge Theatre) and her solo shows "Obnoxious" and "Meanie" at La Mama, ETC in NYC. Melissa’s film and television roles include “Cross”, “Ginny and Georgia” “Christmas Cookie Catastrophe”, “A Christmas Stray'', “Escalation”, "The Umbrella Academy", “Titans'' and “Law and Order: SVU".

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Contact: melmurraymutch@gmail.com

Priya A. Thomas, PhD is a dance/theatre historian, musician, and dancer/choreographer. Her scholarly and creative activities reflect a multidisciplinary critical practice that probes changing historical understandings of the human in dance and performance practices. Her research on historical configurations of the nonhuman/monster in transatlantic contexts of the long nineteenth century (1750-1913) has been recognized through publications in leading peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, international conferences, research awards, grants, and fellowships. Her polyvocal record of artistic creation spans a range of dramatic practices (Bharata Natyam, yoga, modern/contemporary, and more recently, flamenco), and includes a catalog of work as a musician/songwriter.

Until June 2021, she served as a tenure-stream assistant professor at Texas Woman’s University. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded book manuscript on monsters in theatrical performance, a Canada-Council funded fictohistorical performance project entitled, The Last of the Rhinestone Cowboys: Expo 67’s Sunset Years, and a new, full-length recording as a musician/songwriter. She currently serves as Book Review Editor of the peer-reviewed theatre journal, https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/tric (University of Toronto Press). She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University.

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Contact: pthomas2@brocku.ca

Paula trained at Ryerson Theatre School and has an MFA in Acting from York University.
She was recently the Assistant Director of “Transforming Stories/Driving Change” at McMaster University’s School of the Arts. This five year project used theatre to give voice to vulnerable populations in Hamilton.
Most recently Paula was the director of Life In Transit(ion) for Frost Bites Theatre Festival 2023.
Paula’s performing credits include the Shaw Festival, the Canadian Stage Company and Toronto Free Theatre.Paula’s performing credits include the Shaw Festival, the Canadian Stage Company and Toronto Free Theatre.
Paula is also part-time faculty at the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts and a private coach. She is the winner of the 2015 City of Hamilton Arts Award for Theatre.

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Contact: p.grove@ymail.com