David Mesiha is a, Toronto and Vancouver based, award-winning music composer, interactive designer, sound/video designer and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy in Vancouver. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. He is intrigued by the relationships between form and medium. His work utilizes multi channel immersive audio, interactive design and Digital Performance.

He has worked on shows such as Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy, and You Should Have Stayed Home by Spiderweb Show. He has been nominated and won Jessie Richardson Awards in multiple categories and has received a Dora award nomination for his sound design work on Oraltorio by IFT theatre.

David’s music has spans multiple mediums and formats such as video games, film, theatre and interactive media. David’s Same Difference by Theatre Conspiracy [An immersive performance installation] premiered in Vancouver in April 2022 and will be presented at The Theatre Center in Toronto Winter 2023. David is currently working with Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn on asses.masses, a video game performance and with Adelheid and Heidi Strauss on You Are Swimming Here, an AR mixed-Media piece.

Chosen credits: Theatre: Sound designer for The Humans (Arts Club Theatre), Antigone (YPT), Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille), You Should Have Stayed Home (VR Performance, SpiderWebShow), asses.masses (video game performance), 15 Dogs (Crow’s Theatre) and Szepty (Rumble/Pi Theatre).

Film & tV:+-40, Spirit Glitch, The Mission, Toward You, The Deluge.

www.davidmesiha.com

Contact David Mesiha at davidmesiha@conspiracy.ca

Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, producer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is based out of Vancouver: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a first generation Canadian, with roots coming from the five rivers of Punjab. She is a recent recipient of the Sam Payne Award for Most Promising Emerging Artist at the Jessie Richardson Awards.

Gavan’s play Himmat premiered in Vancouver at The Cultch in May 2022 and will be presented at the Surrey Civic Theatres in Spring 2024. She holds a double major from the University of British Columbia in Theatre and History, as well as a high school teaching certification. She has created work and directed for various local, national and international stages and has extensive experience in youth engagement, theatre education and workshop facilitation.

Select directing credits: Conspiracy Now (Theatre Conspiracy), Rishi & d Douen (Carousel Theatre), Danceboy (Tremors Festival/ Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse), Burqa Boutique (Revolver Festival), Marie’s Letters (Shift Festival), da’ kink in my hair and You Used to Call Me Marie (Envision Festival), The [Organization] (Unladylike co.), Disgraced (UBC Players Club). Assistant direction: Clean/Espejos (Neworld), Foreign Radical (UK tour), The Orchard [after Chekhov] (Arts Club), Victim Impact (Theatre Conspiracy), Men in White (Arts Club) and Bombay Black (Vancouver Fringe Festival). Select dramaturgy credits: Same Difference by David Mesiha, Isolation Suite by Tim Carlson, Danceboy by Munish Sharma. Upcoming directing: Catfished (May 2023, Alley Theatre), The Dynamics (Oct 2024, Theatre Conspiracy), SWIM (Feb 2025, Theatre Conspiracy & Pandemic Theatre).

Contact Gavan Cheema gavan.cheema@conspiracy.ca

Tim Carlson is a playwright, songwriter, journalist who co-founded Theatre Conspiracy and served as artistic producer from 2008 to 2022. He led the creation of Foreign Radical, which won the 2015 Jessie Award Critics Choice Innovation prize and a 2017 Edinburgh Fringe First Award. The script was recently published in Canadian Theatre Review. Most recent show is the podcast series, Isolation Suite, and he is currently writing The Dynamics, set to premiere in the 2024/’25 season.

Carlson’s documentary play, Victim Impact, premiered at The Cultch in Vancouver in June 2018. He also co-created, wrote the music for, and performed in Tanya Marquardt’s Stray, seen at The Tank in New York and SummerWorks in Toronto in 2018, as well as Vancouver in 2019. He was researcher/ interviewer for Berlin-based Rimini Protokoll’s latest show, Top Secret International, seen at the 2017 Under the Radar Festival in New York as well as researcher/ dramaturg for Best Before (Rimini Protokoll, @ PuSh 2010) and 100% Vancouver (Rimini Protokoll / Theatre Replacement, @ PuSh 2011).

The 2013 show Extraction, won the Rio Tinto Alcan Award, Canada’s largest prize for new play development. His play Omniscience (Talonbooks, 2007) was produced in Vancouver, Berlin, Lisbon and Chicago. He founded Club PuSh with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver and served as co-curator along with Veda Hille and Norman Armour from 2009 to 2016.

As a journalist, he worked on staff at the Halifax Daily News, Vancouver Sun and Georgia Straight. He holds an English degree from University of Regina, a journalism degree from University of King’s College, Halifax, and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Contact Tim Carlson at carlson@conspiracy.ca

Chelsea Macdonald feels fortunate to work across multiple areas of theatre – as the Operations Manager for Theatre Replacement, an actor, independent theatre creator, Ops Coordinator for The Chop, and as President of the Board at Theatre Conspiracy. She graduated from SFU in 2011 with a BFA Honours in Theatre Performance and a love for experimental work. In her artistic life, Chelsea has had the pleasure of working as an actor with Radix Theatre (on two iterations of acclaimed immersive performance TBD), Theatre Replacement, Leaky Heaven Performance Society, United Players, rice and beans theatre, The Troika Collective, The Arts Club Actors Intensive, and others. She is a co-founder of experimental performance collective, O, o, o, o., with whom she has built and created a number of original works, and experimental staging’s of beloved scripts. She joined the Conspiracy Board after connecting with Tim, who had seen one of O, o, o, o’s earliest works and offered generous early career advice, and an invite to check out what Conspiracy and a non-profit Board was all about. That spirit of mentorship and openness has kept her deeply invested in the work of the company.

Conner Singh VanderBeek is a mixed Punjabi-Sikh and American musician, pedagogue, media artist, and PhD candidate in ethnomusicology based at the University of Michigan. Their research engages diversity policy in Canadian arts and its relationship to the commodification and tokenization of Punjabi-Canadian artists. Their pedagogy challenges the Western art music canon and examines musical expressions by minorities and diasporic communities in North America, including South Asians and African Americans. They also work as a composer, noise musician, pianist, and media artist, exploring narratives of diasporic cultural identity, political polarization, and trauma. They are trained in classical and jazz piano, Javanese Gamelan, and Hindustani music. VanderBeek holds a BA/BM dual-degree (‘15) from Northwestern University, where they studied composition, musicology, and South Asian studies. They also hold a MA in South Asian Studies from University of Michigan (‘21), where their thesis work interrogates the anachronistic construction of North American Sikh identity politics. In their spare time, VanderBeek enjoys learning new instruments, embroidering, weaving, and sewing stuffed animals.

Jen Moss is an audio producer and radio host with nearly 20 years of experience writing plays, newspaper articles, radio scripts, and new media documentaries. She has created award-winning content for CBC Radio and The National Film Board of Canada’s Digital Studio. An enthusiast for alternative storytelling, Jen has written and voiced dozens of audio documentaries Among them is her 2016 production for the CBC podcast Ideas, The Dream of Brother XII. It takes listeners on an captivating journey into the strange life of a cult leader who lived near Nanaimo, BC early in the twentieth century. She’s gotten her hands dirty with a number of award-winning digital interactive projects including Bear 71 (NFB Digital Studio), Seven Digital Deadly Sins (The Guardian), Hyperlocal (CBC), Life on Hold (Al Jazeera), and The Last Hunt (NFB). She takes great joy in passing her experience forward as a teacher of Creative Writing for New Media and Podcasting at UBC.

Quinn Harris is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School and is a public-sector lawyer in Toronto working primarily in the area of affordable housing. Originally from Vancouver, Quinn also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre with a specialization in directing from the University of Victoria, and spent four years working in the non-profit arts community in Vancouver as a producer and director. She is a former artistic associate at Theatre Conspiracy and directed the first English language translation of Heiner Muller's Macbeth: nach Shakespeare (co-commissioned and co-developed by Theatre Conspiracy and GasHeart Theatre), so she is thrilled to contribute to Theatre Conspiracy in a new way on the board. Previously, Quinn served on the board of Generator, a Toronto-based mentoring, teaching and innovation incubator for independent artists and producers.

Amy Stewart is a strategic thinker who brings a global perspective to her work and has a passion for working with different individuals and teams. Amy was born in South Africa, raised in Latin America and has been studying, working and living in Vancouver since 2007. Through Amy's journey around the world she has learned the importance and impact of community. In her current role, as a Residence Life Manager at the University of British Columbia, Amy builds effective teams who strive to create memorable experiences, a sense of belonging and a safe space for engagement and learning for their residents. Amy has always been a fan of the theatre and enjoys productions that showcase stories that foster learning through meaning conversations.