The Return Home

Dima Alansari is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher.  She holds an MA from Goldsmith College, University of London.  Dima has a passion for both theatre and film and believes that they complement each other in ways that create wholeness, balance, and truth. Dima has been performing, producing, and directing internationally since 2001.  Most recently Dima directed Here, a verbatim theatre on stories of survivors who lost their homes, sometimes families, often hope – due to the August 4th Beirut Port Explosion. Dima currently lives in Kuwait where she mentors and empowers youth and women in schools and universities using theatre as a tool. Dima is married and has a one year old baby girl named Jude. 

Sharon Jinkerson-Brass is a member of Key First Nation in Saskatchewan.  Sharon was part of the “sixties scoop” but she reunited with her family in the 1980’s.  Sharon received her cultural teachings from her beloved Anishinaabe grandmother Rebecca, who was a midwife and traditional healer.  Sharon’s cultural heritage has inspired all of her art and way of living.  Sharon is currently working on multiple multi-media projects in the Indigenous community on topics related to health, re-matriation, and cultural healing. Sharon believes that a relevant, sustainable cultural foundation is the key for wellness for her people and all people.

Lopa Sircar started acting in high school, and has performed across Canada, Dublin, and Kolkata. She has a great love for contemporary storytelling that unearths truths about what it is be human, across timelines and generations. A physically-based actor, Lopa builds her characters from the inside out in the traditions of Grotowski and Chaikin. She often inhabits more than one character in a single piece, a skill that came in handy when embodying her grandfather in his various incarnations for The Vermillion Project developed through the Arrivals Legacy Project.  Lopa completed her MFA Acting and Graduate Diploma in Teaching Voice at York University in 2011. She also holds a Diploma in Physical Theatre from Tooba Physical Theatre Conservatory. Lopa coaches voice & speech, dialects, and presentation skills privately through her company, Lopa Sircar Voice. She is a certified Rolfer/ Structural Integration practitioner.

Natalie Tin Yin Gan (顏婷妍) is an independent choreographer and writer based in so-called Vancouver, on the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her practice squats (115 lb) at the intersection of spirit, somatics, and technology-induced melancholy. She has had the privilege of sharing work in Seattle, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and across Canada. Natalie is the Co-Artistic Director of company Hong Kong Exile that explores the historical and contemporary politic of the Chinese diaspora. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio and a certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®.  She publishes under a pseudonym and currently writes for indie video game company Sunset Visitor Studios. Natalie is a late sleeper, a late riser, a late bloomer, a latecomer, and a late-night snacker.

Dr. Honor Ford-Smith is Associate Professor Emerita, York University, Toronto.  Her publications include numerous academic articles as well as “Lionheart Gal: Life stories of Jamaican Women,” (with Sistren) Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 3 Jamaican Plays” Kingston, Jamaica, Paul Issa Publications; and “My Mother’s Last Dance” an anthology of poems available through the University of Toronto Press.  She has produced, co-created, taught, directed and acted in many plays, and performance interventions including Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine, Bandoolu Version, Domestics, Sweet Sugar Rage and the Letters to the Dead cycle.  Her most recent performance collaboration is a community based locative media project called Fi wi Yaad: Fi wi City/ Our city: Our home.