- Written by Melissa Dorsey and Trevor Matheson Direction and Sound Design: Chris Stockton Producer: Savanna Harvey Stage Management: Meg Thatcher Set/Prop Design: Skylar Desjardins Costume Design: Yvonne Ustick
- Poster Design – Kelsi Kalmer
- Dramaturg – Caroline Russell-King Fight Choreography: Trevor Matheson Fight Captain: Jesselle Laurén Musical Direction: Melissa Dorsey GRACE: Haylee Thompson SERVER: Jesselle Laurén ACTOR 1: Mary Elizabeth Chisholm ACTOR 2: Jacob Lesiuk ACTOR 3: Benjamin Jones ACTOR 4: Megan Matthies
Producer
SAVANNA HARVEY is a gun-for-hire producer of the broke and beautiful. She is an organizer of secret midnight meetings, an instigator of resistance, and a recruiter of citizens. Her cause is art without permission. As a creator-performer, she has toured Canada with her weird little shows about garbage puppets and science ghosts. She is a loner and co-conspirator. She is a killjoy feminist, a recreational mad scientist, and a ruthless proponent of kindness. She has been nominated for the City of Calgary RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Vancouver Fringe Artistic Risk Award, and the Calgary Fringe Emerging Artist Award. She is a recipient of the New Works Festival Playwright Award. Savanna is Ghost River Theatre’s Producer, the Calgary Fringe’s Director of Artist Services, and the newly appointed Producer of the IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists. www.savannaharvey.com
Playwright and Musical Director –
Melissa Dorsey Melissa a multi-disciplinary artist often working with her real-life husband, Trevor. Most of her writing and co-writing has been on shows that are performed at Heritage Park in their Halloween, Christmas and summer programming. She has studied at the Banff Centre, The Boston Conservatory at Berklee University, The Company Of Rogues Actor’s Studio and Rocky Mountain College. Outside of playwriting, Melissa is also a singing instructor at Rogues, director, composer, sound & light designer, producer and private music teacher. She is also a performer during the school year in the nationally toured show The Secret Of Castle Alphabet with the company she co-founded called HeARTbeat Theatre Productions and this summer is touring with Trevor as Theatrically Obsessed in the show they wrote called Bushtits, Shih Tzus and Private Dicks: All’s Fur in Love and Noir. Check her out at: www.melissadorsey.me.Caroline Russell-King – Dramaturg
Caroline is a proud member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She has worked with hundreds of professional and emerging playwrights, through Alberta Playwrights Network and her own company Dramaturgy on Demand. (Dramaturgy on Demand sponsors the Best New Play Award for the Calgary CAT Awards.) Caroline is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Dramatist Guild of America. She has been short listed for Canada’s Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, nominated for a Betty Mitchell Theatre Award for Outstanding New Play for her play and she received a nomination from the Calgary Theatre Critic Awards for Best New Script. She is published by Frontenac House Press. Her work has also been published in anthologies four times by Playwrights Canada Press. Caroline is a theatre critic writing for the YYSCENE, Calgary’s online arts magazine. She sits on the Calgary Theatre Critics Award committee, has served on the Betty Nomination committee twice and adjudicated plays nationally. She has written over 30 plays and had 60 plus productions across Canada and the USA. For more information – www.dramaturgyondemand.com
Skylar Desjardins – Set Designer and Prop Designer
Skylar is a freelance Set, props, and lighting designer for the performing arts based in Calgary as well as a freelance technician and production manager. He has worked with such companies as Storybook Theatre , Cowtown Opera, SCPA, the Calgary Zoo, Vertigo, Lunchbox Theatre , Ghost River Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Handsome Alice Theatre, Grindstone Theatre, Theatre Encounter, Sage Theatre, Corps Barra and various small companies you likely haven’t heard of. He is happy to have gotten the opportunity to work on children’s theatre again (last seen at Wagonstage at the Calgary Zoo) in the charming City of Chestermere. Next up: Lighting and rigging for the Calgary Stampede. www.skydesjardins.wixsite.com/designMegan Matthies
is proud to call Chestermere home and is delighted to be part of The Sunshine Café! Holding diplomas in Speech Arts & Drama from Trinity College London, Megan spent many years as a drama teacher and has won several awards for her acting and speeches. Selected theatre credits include The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, Coal in your Stocking, A Ragtime Christmas, and The Prince’s Bride. She is also a frequent performer at various community events in Chestermere. Enjoy the show!
Mary Elizabeth Chisholm – Actor 1
Mary is an aspiring aerial acrobat, a softball enthusiast, an entertainer of the tiny humans, a passionate optimist, and a believer that all things that are meant to be will be. She’s also a Calgary-based actor who is ecstatic to be performing in such a fun, historical show. She has performed in some other awesome shows, with some other awesome people, and would love to tell you all about it in person, because aren’t human connections what this life is all about? Find Mary on Instagram: @mary.e.chisholm and say hi!Jeselle Lauren – Fight Captain and Server
Jesselle Laurén is an actor and performance artist born and raised in Calgary Alberta. Recently returned from a few years in Toronto they are delighted to be a part of The Sunshine Café team, and performing in Chestermere for the first time. Jesselle can next be seen as a part of the Dirty Laundry Ensemble Cast in Calgary’s only completely improvised live soap opera.
Christopher Stockton – Director
Chris grew up in Airdrie and is thrilled to be a part of the Calgary theatre community. Chris graduated from The University of Lethbridge in 2003 with a B.F.A. (Drama) w/distinction and a B.Ed. (Drama Education) Directorial credits include: The Phantom of the Opera, The Laramie Project, Rabbit Hole, Urinetown The Musical, The Norman Conquests Trilogy, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Goodnight Desdemona Good Morning Juliet, Les Miserables, You Can’t Take It With You, Sleeping Beauty, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Ugly Duckling, The 12 Days of Christmas, Grease, Shrek the Musical, The Commedia Princess and the Pea, The Three Little Pigs in The Ghost of the Big Bad Wolf, Big Fish, Monster and The Drowsy Chaperone. In addition to directing, Chris has written The Distance Between El, Oh, Vea and Eee and Things Never Heard (book, music and lyrics). Both received multiple awards at the AHSDFA Provincial Showcase. He has been an assistant director for The Drowsy Chaperone at Theatre Calgary and for Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily at Vertigo Theatre and is one of twelve playwrights accepted into the 2017 Alberta Playwrights Network RBC Emerging Artist Playwright Mentorship Program. He was the 2017/18 RBC Emerging Director at Lunchbox Theatre and currently leads the team at Bert Church Theatre in Airdrie.Trevor Matheson – Playwright and Fight Choreographer
Selected theatre credits: A Thousand Splendid Suns, (Theatre Calgary). Julius Caesar, Richard III, Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare: Land of the Dead, Love’s Labour’s Lost (The Shakespeare Company). The Outsiders, The Hobbit and Where Words Once Were (Storybook Theatre). Rapunzel (Birnton Theatricals). Outside of this theatre, Trevor adventures to the world of 1910 spearheading the street theatre activities at Heritage Park. Up next Trevor can be seen as a Mountie fighting crime in 1910 at Heritage Park!
Benjamin Jones
Halee Thompson