Carmen Aguirre | Writer and Performer
Carmen is a Vancouver-based theatre artist who has worked extensively in North and South America. She has written and co-written twenty plays, including The Refugee Hotel, produced by Alameda Theatre Company and Theatre Passe Muraille, The Trigger, published by Talonbooks, Chile Con Carne, published by Blizzard Press, and collaborations with The Electric Company and James Fagan Tait. As a performer she has sixty film, TV and stage acting credits. She is a graduate of Studio 58. Her memoir, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, recently won CBC Canada Reads 2012.

Brian Quirt | Director
Brian is the Artistic Director of Nightswimming. Recent directing credits include Richard Sanger’s Whispering Pines, Pierre Brault’s The Shadow Cutter, and Jennifer Tremblay’s The List at Great Canadian Theatre Company, and Judith Thompson’s Such Creatures at Theatre Passe Muraille. His production of Brault’s Portrait of an Unidentified Man and 5 O’Clock Bells premiered in Ottawa and toured across Canada. He has created five of his own plays which have been presented in Canada and abroad. Brian is a past-President of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), a two-time recipient of LMDA’s Elliott Hayes Award, and has been nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards. He served as Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Associate Artistic Director for the 2010-11 season, and in addition to his work at Nightswimming, he is the Director of the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Playwrights Colony, and recently taught in the theatre department of the University of Ottawa.

Itai Erdal | Production Designer
Itai has designed over 180 shows for theatre and dance companies in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Tel Aviv, Berlin, London and New York. Itai has won the Associated Designers of Canada’s Jack King Award in 2005, Toronto’s Dora Award in 2007, The Dublin Fringe Design Award in 2008, Victoria’s Critics’ Choice Spotlight Award in 2011 and Vancouver’s Jessie Richardson Awards in 2003, 2009 & 2011. Itai co-wrote and acted in How to Disappear Completely (The Chop Theatre), which was nominated for Jessie and Dora awards for best touring production and can be seen this summer at the Stratford and Summerworks Festivals. He is the artistic director of  The Elbow Theatre, which produced White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at the Cultch last September. www.theelbow.ca, www.itaierdal.com.

Alia Stephen | Associate Lighting Designer
Happy to be back with Blue Box, Alia toured with the show last year to the UNO and Magnetic North festivals. Hailing from Vancouver, selected lighting design credits include Twelfth Night, Hello Dolly, The Crucible (Exit 22); The Duchess (UBC); and Supernatural Noir (Fugue Theatre), for which she was nominated for a 2011 Ovation Award. Assistant design work includes Itai Erdal on The Idiot (Neworld Theatre), Gerald King on Boeing Boeing (Arts Club). Alia has a diploma in Technical Theatre from Capilano University and a BFA in Theatre Production and Design from UBC.

Joelysa Pankanea | Sound Designer and Composer
Joelysa is a multiple award-winning composer, sound designer and percussionist. Originally from Kenya, East Africa, she has been composing, directing and performing her original scores for the theatre for the past decade, and more recently for film and animation. Joelysa has had the pleasure of performing live in all of Vancouver’s largest houses, various alternative venues across Canada, and several international festivals. Musical directing both musicians and actors alike, and teaching her scores to casts of up to 150 people, she has become one of the most acclaimed and respected professionals in her field. Having majored in composition, with focus on world music, jazz and classical, she fell upon the theatre world quite by chance. Within two years, she had won her first Jessie Richardson award for outstanding composition and cemented her place in Canadian theatre history as one of the youngest musical directors and composers.

Esther Howie | Stage Manager
Esther is a graduate of the U of R Stage Management Program and has worked on several Globe Theatre productions including The Wizard of Oz, Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story, Robin Hood, Copenhagen, Having Hope at Home, Metamorphoses, The Alice Nocturne, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Mom’s the Word. She has also worked on God of Carnage, Jacques Brel (Golden Apple Theatre), That Summer (Theatre North West); Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story (Persephone Theatre); Johnny Belinda, An Inspector Calls, Tons of Money, A Doll’s House (Montgomery Theatre/Theatre New Brunswick); Assistant Stage Manager: A Skull in Connemara, Berlin Blues (Persephone Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar (Citadel Theatre); Seussical: The Musical (Silvermist Productions); The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan); Anne & Gilbert (Victoria Playhouse, PEI).

Rupal Shah | Producer
Rupal recently produced the world premiere national tour of Carmen Aguirre’s Blue Box, which played in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. She is the Mentor/Apprentice Program coordinator at Obsidian Theatre, where she works with organizations such as the Shaw Festival, Tarragon Theatre and Young People’s Theatre to provide learning opportunities for emerging black theatre professionals. In 2009, Rupal co-produced DVxT Theatre’s multi-Dora Award-winning production of The Turn of the Screw. As a freelancer, Rupal has worked with Theatre Ji, Aluna Theatre,  Nightwood Theatre, Janek Khendry Dance Company, Small World Music, the Royal Conservatory of Music, Pleiades Theatre and inDANCE.