About Us
Vision
Imago imagines an equitable and empathetic world in which all people are free to explore, express, and celebrate their authentic selves. A world in which they are given full access to stories that reflect their communities.
Mission
As a professional English feminist theatre company based in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal since 1987, Imago centres intersectional feminist values through mentorships, artists programs and productions. Our work is a catalyst for conversation as we advocate for gender inclusive storytelling, empower diverse voices, foster community and increase accessibility in live performing arts.
Values
Imago strives to create art and the containers that hold it through respect, empathy, love, equality, transparency, and dignity. We value diversity and respect individuality. We acknowledge the richness of everyone’s lived experience, and we honour and respect the vulnerability that allows for sharing and creating. We will demonstrate these values through listening, open and compassionate dialogue, and collaboration. Read our full ethos here.
Feminist Aesthetic
We value the circle; an open, brave, equitable space to disrupt patriarchal models, celebrate diverse voices, and engage, with courage, in essential dialogue about vital social issues with artists and audiences.
Mentorship is at the core of our activities. We believe that mentoring invites us to share our experience, engage in two-way relationships and make intergenerational connections, empowering artists to find and value their voices.
We work to create a sense of belonging and community, to build bridges and to forge pathways for artists to realize their aspirations.
Community Context
Imago serves communities who want to think and feel together, be challenged, and who are looking for a space to belong.
We prioritize underrepresented people both on and offstage by developing and producing their work, providing opportunities for mentorship and learning, and making theatre accessible.
We are proud to engage with a curious and adventurous intergenerational audience of first and long time theatre goers, in our region and nationally.
Our Team
Imago is an artist-driven company, comprised of members with varied artistic backgrounds. They shares insights and knowledge, engaging in exchanging skills and ideas on practice that contributes to, and strengthen the welfare, values, and the impact of Imago.
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Danna-Rae Evasiuk (she/her/elle) is an audio artist from Nistawâyâw/Fort McMurray, Alberta now living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Québec. She graduated from Red Deer College’s Theatre Production and Design program, is a co-founder of Theatre; Just Because, was an Artist-Educator with the Royal Conservatory of music, and a playwright in Teesri Duniya’s Fireworks play development cohort.
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dannarae@imagotheatre.ca
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Dominique Ireland is from the Oneida Nation of the Thames Settlement, a member of the Turtle Clan, and identifies as a Deaf woman who uses Oneida Sign Language and American Sign Language. She has dedicated her life to her people, her language and her culture. She was involved with the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians (AIAI) youth council and trained as a cultural youth worker from the learning centre. She completed the University Consortium Year 1 Program Diploma from which she graduated in the Spring of 2019. However, she began her educational journey in Haudenosaunee Worldview, where she met many First Nations people through gatherings, workshops, and conferences, or Sharing circles . Meanwhile, she also learned the traditional ways of her people. She believes that storytelling, arts and values are historically rooted in her educational journey. Mostly, she is a self-taught artist who has a passion for drawing and expressing herself through her work. She has experience working on drawings, painting, and illustration. She has worked in the performing arts centre as an Indigenous coordinator. She has always enjoyed learning storytelling through the Indigenous worldview.
This Internship is made possible by the Arts Leadership Training Program from The Belfry Theatre, Persephone Theatre and the University of Regina, Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre.
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Krista Jackson (She/Her/Elle) in her fourth season as Imago’s AD/ED and has directed CRASH, The Wolves (META Award for Outstanding Direction) and The Retreat. In 2026 she directs The Importance of Being Earnest (Stratford Festival), Dracula: Comedy of Terrors (The Grand).
Recently, Krista has directed and dramaturged world premieres of The Diviners (Stratford Festival), Liars at a Funeral (Blyth Festival, TIP), Space Girl (Prairie Theatre Exchange), Dock Spider (Magnus Theatre).
She has served as Apprentice Artistic Director at The Grand Theatre, Associate Artistic Director at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and holds the Jean Gascon Award and the Gina Wilkinson Prize.
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krista@imagotheatre.ca
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Leni is a playwright, producer & dramaturg. She joined the Imago community in 2021 as an emerging artist in residence. She has worked with Miyawata Cultures Inc at the Poundmaker Performance festival (2019), was an artist in residence at Theatre Aux Ecuries with LaSerre Vivants (2019) and her play, The Runaway Game was produced at the Island Fringe Festival and the Montreal Fringe Festival. She is currently writing E-1027, a play about gender & privacy and is an Assistant Dramaturg with the National Playwrights unit at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.
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leni@imagotheatre.ca
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Person responsible for the protection of personal information
Danielle is a theatre artist based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal. She got her start in professional theatre as an assistant costume designer and assistant director while working towards her BFA in Design for the Theatre at Concordia University. She later apprenticed in stage management and theatre design at the Portland Playhouse in Portland, Oregon, where she fell in love with stage management as a craft, and as an approach to life in general. She earned her MFA in Stage Management from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and interned at the Public Theatre in New York, before returning to Canada. She has been a working stage manager in Montreal since 2017, and has been a member of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association since 2018. She has been the Managing Producer at Imago since 2022, and is also the founder of Interplay Performing Arts Agency, a touring agency aiming to connect Montreal theatre artists and companies with touring opportunities outside their local markets. She currently serves on the Montreal English Theatre Awards (METAs) Committee as a jury liaison. Dani is grateful to be a part of the Montreal theatre community, where she has had the pleasure of working with a variety of companies including The Segal Centre for the Performing Arts, Geordie Theatre, Repercussion Theatre, Porte Parole, Centaur Theatre, Imago Theatre, and Tableau D'Hôte.
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dani@imagotheatre.ca
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Based in Montreal since 2018, McNulty is passionate about feminist theatre, treats, sunbeams, and a fine knit sweater.
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The 2.0 Project Producer & Creators Circle Program Director
Murdoch Schon (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary director, dramaturg and digital innovator. Born and raised in Treaty One Territory (Winnipeg), they have been involved in the Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) English theatre scene for over a decade. As a multidisciplinary theatre maker, they use puppetry, movement and technology to build unique and immersive worlds.
Murdoch is fascinated by provocation, vulnerability, and the role of risk and failure in art making. They believe that theatre rises to its true power through the practices of ritual liminality, community and imagination.
They joined the Imago community in 2014 as the script Coordinator for the first year of the ARTISTA Program, which they are now the producer of.
Murdoch is a graduate of the Nation Theatre School Directing Program, and has a BFA, Specialization in Theatre and Development, from Concordia University. They founded Revolution They Wrote: Short Works Feminist Performance Festival.
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murdoch@imagotheatre.ca
Collaborating Artists
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Originaire de Mashteuiatsh, communauté ilnue, Soleil Launière vit et œuvre à Tiöhtià:ke – Mooniyang (Montréal). Artiste transdisciplinaire alliant le chant, le mouvement, le théâtre, l'installation et l’art performance, elle utilise sporadiquement le multimédia expérimental pour faire ressentir les entre-mondes spirituels.
Depuis 2008, Soleil a créé plusieurs performances dans le cadre de rassemblements et d’événements artistiques autochtones et allochtones, à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur des réseaux de diffusion traditionnels, et à travers les continents.
Umanishish, sa première production d'envergure, a été créée à l’Usine C en 2019. Cette même année, elle a joué dans Là où le sang se mêle sur les scènes du Centre national des Arts et du Diamant. L'année suivante, elle signe la co-mise en scène de la pièce Courir l’Amérique présentée au Théâtre Quat’Sous puis produit Sheuetamu au M.A.I à Montréal. En 2021, elle crée Meshtitau au Festival Trans-Amérique puis en 2022 Akuteu, son premier texte théâtral a été portée à la scène au Centre du Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui. En 2024, elle présente sa dernière création Aianishkat - d’une génération à l’autre, à l’Agora de la danse, une œuvre performative ancrée dans la transmission générationnelle, accompagnée de son bébé en bas âge et de sa mentore.
En octobre 2023, Soleil Launière lance son premier album de musique Taueu. Ce projet lui vaut d’être nommée Révélation Radio-Canada pour l’année 2024-2025 et de remporter la grande finale des Francouvertes 2024.
Soleil Launière s’inspire de son vécu, des mythes et de l'esprit des animaux. Elle crée des passages entre les mondes -visible et invisible- mais aussi entre diverses réalités telles que sa bi-spiritualité et sa double culture ilnu et québécoise. Sensible et puissante, sa présence comme sa voix et ses œuvres, ne laissent personne indifférent.
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An animal is hanging to bleed. Akuteu - “suspended” in Innu. Launière speaks about the vertigo of being constantly suspended between white and Innu cultures, between shame and pride, and between the worlds of the visible and the invisible. Is it legitimate to speak on behalf of one’s own? How can we untangle the inextricable knot that makes up identity?
Alternating fragments of personal stories, poetry, and confessions, Akuteu shows the deepness of the multiple facets of a person.
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Mishka Lavigne (she / her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and literary translator. Her plays have been developed and performed in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Haiti, and Mexico. In 2023, she was a finalist to the prestigious Siminovitch Prize.
Her play Havre, created at La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon) received the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2019. Copeaux, produced by Théâtre de Dehors (Ottawa) was also awarded the same prize in 2021, as well as the Prix Jacques-Poirier. Murs, first produced as a podcast by Transistor Médias, Créations In Vivo and the Théâtre Populaire d’Acadie, received rave reviews in France and was produced for the stage in 2023. It was also a finalist to the 2024 Michel-Tremblay Prize.
Mishka also writes in English. Her play Albumen, produced by TACTICS in 2019 (Ottawa), received the QWF Playwriting Prize. Her play Shorelines, produced on stage in Ottawa (TACTICS) in 2023, is a recent finalist to the Governor General Award, the QWF Playwriting Prize and the Carol Bolt Award.
As a translator, both in French and English, Mishka has more than twenty credited translations of theatre, prose and poetry.
Imago has commissioned Lavigne for the English translation of Akuteu.
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Adjani Poirier (she/they) is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who currently lives and writes in their hometown of Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
She is interested in creating work that explores the beauty and the ugly of the human experience, is drawn to stories that reveal the complexity of navigating a world where systemic inequalities oppress, yet love and connection still seep through the cracks, strong and fierce, giving us life. Their writing uses magical realism to explore ideas of home, queer desire and how the subconscious influences our relationships to each other and our physical surroundings.
Adjani is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada where she studied playwriting and has a BFA from Concordia University in Theatre and Development.
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Montreal, present day: a young man stands in the ruins of his trashed apartment, he’s been illegally evicted and threw a party to celebrate. Africville, 1967: A woman refuses to leave her family home as bulldozers hum outside, threatening to tear it down. Suddenly – a rift in time, an undoing of space, a shift in reality, the two worlds merge.
Historical fiction meets magical realism in a play that explores the connections between the historic Black community of Africville, urban renewal, the civil rights movement, the current housing crisis in Canadian cities and QTBIPOC activist movements of the 2010-20’s.
One Spectacular Moment is a celebration of those who resist in the face of systemic discrimination and the complexity that goes into this kind of activism: the determination, the exhaustion, the bravery, the necessity, the grief, and the hope.
Thank you to the Cole Foundation Intercultural Conversations Commission Grant, the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting the development of One Spectacular Moment, and to The Feminist Art Residency for nurturing the very first stages of this project.
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Hailey Verbonac is an Afro-Indigenous (Red River Métis) visual artist and theatre designer. Originally from Inuvik, NWT (on Inuvialuit and Gwich’in land), he grew up surrounded by culture and Indigenous people who owned the land they stood on in a European sense. The importance of preserving stories was emphasized throughout his life and it remains one of the most important parts of his practice. Hailey was the first Indigenous person to graduate from the National Theatre School of Canada’s technical program and since graduating has had many opportunities to be involved in the development of Indigenous plays. In his visual art, he often explores wahkotowin and the circular, flowing relations between the physical, the natural, and the spiritual that exist within it. Through his attempts to understand how it can be implemented and observed in life now as it is, he hopes to impart some of it to others.
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Verbonac is creating a series of portraits of Indigenous Women in Canadian theatre, to be exhibited during an upcoming Imago Theatre production.
Our Collaborators
Caroline Lemay - Ombudsperson
Meky Ottawa - 26/27 Season Illustrator
Imago Theatre’s Board
2025\26
Andrew Katz, President \ Professor, Dawson College
Joyce Boro, Vice President \Professor, Université de Montréal
Amanda Perry, Secretary \Professor, Champlain College-Saint Lambert
Rachade Hmamouchi, Treasurer \ Strategic Consultant, AIgile Innovations
Julianna Duholke, Member \Lawyer, MMGC
Krista Jackson, Member \ Artistic and Executive Director, Imago Theatre
Rachel Jean-Pierre, Member \Digital Marketing Manager
Clare Schapiro, Member \Former Artistic Director, Imago Theatre
Lauren Weaver, Member \Lawyer, McCarthy Tétrault
Micheline Chevrier, Advisory Committee \Director, former Artistic and Executive Director, Imago Theatre
Viviane Dohle, Advisory Committee \Production Director, Festival TransAmériques
Peter Roberts, Advisory Committee \ Producer
Our Policies
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(Anti-Harassment \ Anti-Racism Policy)
Imago Theatre is committed to advocating for safer and healthier creative theatre work spaces that are accountable to abuses of power of any kind.
We have a vision of a theatre community that is completely free of all harassment and we will continue to actively work to make that vision a reality.
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Imago Theatre is committed to prioritizing and fostering a culture of care: a workspace that acknowledges the importance of life/work balance while encouraging compassion and transparency.
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A national anti-harassment and respectful workplace program working with engagers across disciplines, developed by the Canadian Actor's Equity Association. It seeks to ensure safe working conditions for all professionals working in live performance across the country.
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Imago Theatre is a member of the CGA - an organization that bridges the gap between sustainability, climate change action, and theatre.
Branding Designed by Eric Dizon
Awards
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Best Use of Liquids Award \ CRASH (water)
Out of Body Performing Arts, OOBIE Awards
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Best Art of 2025-26 \ CRASH
Out of Body Performing Arts, OOBIE Awards
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The Innovation Award \ Nested Circles
24/25 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Ensemble \ The Wolves
24/25 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Direction \ The Wolves
24/25 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Emerging Artist - Performance \ Scorpio Moon (Bénédicte Bélizaire)
24/25 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding PACT Production \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Direction \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding New Text \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Supporting Performance (Lucinda Davis) \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Costume Design \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Emerging Artist (Jawon Kang - Set Design) \ Redbone Coonhound
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Set Design \ Foxfinder
2022/23 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Sound Design & Composition \ Okinum
2021/22 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Lighting Design \ Persephone Bound
2019/20 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Contribution to Theatre (Aerial Circus) \ Persephone Bound
2019/20 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion \ ARTISTA
2019/20 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Direction \ Intractable Woman
2016/17 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Lead Actress \ random
2014/15 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Sound Design \ random
2014/15 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Professional Production \ If We Were Birds
2013/14 Montreal English Theatre Awards
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Outstanding Sound Design \ If We Were Birds
2013/14 Montreal English Theatre Awards