Alisa Palmer is an award-winning theatre director, playwright, and producer and has developed, premiered, and toured provocative and award-winning theatre creations for over twenty-five years. Her work crosses genres, including the classics, contemporary plays, collaborative creations, musicals, and operas and is characterized by vivid performances, a bold use of music, and a passionate commitment to the body politic. She is the recipient of numerous awards both in Canada and internationally, including multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards, two Floyd S. Chalmers Awards, the Robert Merritt Award, and a Harold Award for her contribution to independent theatre. She is a three-time finalist for the Siminovitch Prize and a recipient of the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. She was the artistic director of Nightwood Theatre, where she oversaw the commissioning and development of landmark plays including Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears and Smudge by Alex Bulmer, the first professional play by a blind playwright. She has spent eight seasons at the Shaw Festival and three seasons at the Stratford Festival, where she directed the world premiere of Hamlet-911 by Ann-Marie MacDonald, developed through Vita Brevis Arts. Ms. Palmer was Executive Artistic Director of the National Theatre School of Canada and Director of the Acting and Artist Residency Programs between 2013 and 2024, where she led the revitalization of the English Section through the creation of new programming and pedagogy focused on accessibility, equity, and, sustainability of artistic practices, for which she was honoured with Les prix Mosaïque from the Union des artistes. Ms. Palmer is Artistic Producer and Founder of Vita Brevis Arts. She is married to author Ann-Marie MacDonald, with whom she has two children.
Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed playwright and TV writer. She has been described as “Canada’s most prominent playwright” by the Globe & Mail, “the dark angel of Canadian theatre” by the Toronto Star, and “the wunderkind of Canadian theatre” by the CBC. Hannah’s work has been widely produced across Canada and around the world. She has written sixteen plays, including East of Berlin, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, and This is War, and she’s been honoured with numerous awards for her stage work, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award, and the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize administered by the Beinecke Library at Yale. Hannah’s music-theatre hybrid Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan) became a TimeOut and New York Times Critic’s Pick, won both the Herald Angel and a Scotsman Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, received six Drama Desk Award nominations in New York, and has toured the world since 2017, recently crossing the 400 performances line. In television, Hannah is Co-Creator, Executive Producer, and Head Writer of Little Bird alongside showrunner Jennifer Podemski, on CTV/Crave and APTN Lumi in Canada and PBS in the USA. Little Bird has garnered a landslide of awards and critical praise, including the Prix Public at the international Series Mania TV festival in Lille, France, and thirteen Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Drama Series. Most recently, Hannah was Co-Executive Producer on Season One and Season Two of AMC’s hit series Interview With The Vampire. She spends her time between Halifax and Los Angeles.
Ann-Marie MacDonald is an award-winning novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. Her writing for the stage includes the plays Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Belle Moral: A Natural History, and Hamlet-911, along with the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for the musical Anything That Moves. She is the author of the bestselling novels Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, Adult Onset, and Fayne. Ann-Marie is a graduate of the acting program of the National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of her contribution to the arts and her LGBTQ2SIA+ activism. She is married to theatre director Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.
