Lisa O’Connell, Artistic Director
lisa@patthedog.org
Lisa O’Connell is the founding Artistic Director of Pat the Dog Theatre Creation, the only playwright centre in Ontario open to theatre creators at all stages of their career. PTD playwrights’ work has been presented at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, SummerWorks Theatre Festival, MT Space Theatre, Sudbury Theatre Centre, Theatre Aquarius, The Grand Theatre, among others. O’Connell serves on the Advocacy Committee of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, the Artistic Practices Committee of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres and is a member of several Municipal Cultural Steering Committees. She is the recipient of a Special Jury Award (2015) and the Gowlings Literary Award (2010) from Arts Awards Waterloo and delivered the closing Keynote address at the Canadian Association of Theatre Researchers Conference in 2013. O’Connell has been published in Canadian Theatre Review, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, among others. She divides her time between her artistic homes in Waterloo, ON and Sudbury, ON with her partner Mark Walton.
Matthew Heiti, Artistic Associate
matthew@patthedog.org
Born in Sudbury, Matthew Heiti holds a BFA in Acting from Ryerson University and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. He is an award-winning playwright, a Genie-nominated screenwriter, and his first novel, The City Still Breathing, is published by Coach House Books. As Playwright-in-Residence at the Sudbury Theatre Centre, Matthew runs the Playwrights’ Junction, a workshop for developing writers. For Pat the Dog, he coordinates PlaySmelter, Sudbury’s festival of fresh, locally-rooted plays. In his down time, he works on old bicycles and explores new work in abandoned places with Crestfallen.
Taylor Graham, Artistics Associate
taylor@patthedog.org
Taylor is a writer, director, producer, and educator living in Cambridge, Ontario. She holds a BA in theatre from York University, an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph, and is a PhD candidate in School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She is also a partial load English professor at Sheridan College, a member of Pat the Dog Theatre Creation and Sonderlust‘s Playwrights’ Unit: The Women’s Room, and the artistic director of the indie theatre company Port Albert Productions.
Julia Appleton , Producer, Heels on the Diving Board
julia@patthedog.org
A lifelong songwriter, Julia Appleton is now bringing her impressive catalog spanning country, soul and pop to musical theatre productions like The Yellow Wallpaper. She lives and works in Kitchener, Ontario having transplanted from Nashville, Tennessee in 2017.
Morgan Anderson, Communications
morgan@patthedog.org
Morgan Anderson recently moved to the Kitchener-Waterloo area from Toronto. She is in the second year of her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University and hopes the Kitchener-Waterloo area will offer a peaceful study space away from the hubbub of the big city. Morgan has worked on community theatre projects in Midland, Kingston, Toronto, and Waterloo, but her commitment lately has been to the hobbyist juggling scene. She co-founded and organizes the Limestone City Juggling Festival in Kingston, ON every October and has performed at juggling festivals in Guelph, Kingston, and Arkansas. Her eventual PhD dissertation will look at the relationships between humans and objects in performance.
Sarah Dennison, E-Bulletin
Sarah Dennison is a props builder, illustrator, [graphic] designer and writer/playwright originally from Gananoque, Ontario and currently based in the Waterloo Region. She is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s Theatre program and is currently an artistic associate at Sonderlust Theatre Collective.
Erica Robinson, Project Designer Text + Tech
erica@patthedog.org
Erica Robinson was born in Peterborough, raised in Sudbury and now calls Kitchener-Waterloo home. A filmmaker and writer trained in literary studies with a B.A. in English from Laurentian University and an M.A. in Theatre from the University of Guelph, she has a keen interest in creation and interactive design. Erica’s been an Interactive Tour Designer at The Games Institute/Insitute for Quantum Computing (University of Waterloo) and a participant at the Copycat Academy (Luminato Festival, Toronto 2014) and Entrepreneur Bootcamp (Communitech, Waterloo, 2014). Erica began her career at PTD as an Artistic Associate in 2011.