2025-2026 RGTC Recipients
Ameer Idreis
Project Title: Ships in the Night
Ships in the Night follows Omar, a Palestinian man navigating Toronto’s queer dating scene, whose romance with Isaac, a Jewish photographer, is shaped by inherited histories of the Nakba, settler colonialism, and a parallel story from 1948 Haifa. As Omar recounts their dates to his close-knit friends, the play explores the limits of romantic desire alongside the messy, sustaining love of chosen family.
Bio:
Ameer Idreis is a Palestinian–Canadian writer and urbanist telling stories about our connections to the land and one another. His work has won a PGC Tom Hendry Award and the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition. Ameer is currently an Emerging Playwright in Residence at Tarragon Theatre and an Artist-in-Residence at First Born Theatre.
Ameer is also the co-founder and Creative Director of in draft co.—an arts collective supporting emerging writers—and works as the Planning Manager for the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation. When he’s not writing, he’s curating niche playlists, cooking his favourite Palestinian meals, and exploring Toronto’s neighbourhoods.
Connor Lafortune
Project Title: Maa Ndayamin Geyaaba
“Maa Ndayamin Geyaaba / We Are Still Here” tells the story of a young boy from the Okikendawt (traditional name for Dokis) First Nation named Migisi-Agaaming (Eagle Across the River). Drawing on historical events, personal narratives, and anecdotes gathered along his journey, author Connor Lafortune weaves the story of an Indigenous boy trapped in the residential school system. Inspired by Gord Downie’s “Secret Path,” Connor adopts an Indigenous theatrical approach to explore the experiences of a child during that era. As the play unfolds, the audience is invited to grow alongside the boy as he travels this secret path. Divided into two figures, young and old, he attempts to travel thousands of kilometers to return to his community, unsure of the path that lies ahead.
Bio:
Connor Lafortune is from Dokis First Nation; he combines the written word with beadwork and sewing to recreate the stories of colonization, showcase resilience, and imagine a new future. In 2023, he released a single in collaboration with G.R. Gritt titled “Qui crie au loup? ft. Connor Lafortune.” He recently co-editing A Thousand Tiny Awakenings with Lindsay Mayhew through Latitude 46 Publishing. Above all else, Connor is an activist, a shkaabewis, and a compassionate human being. Visit nmkns.ca for more information!
Nam Nguyen
Project Title: The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse
Adapted from the memoir by Vinh Nguyen, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse retraces one family's escape from Vietnam & their father's disappearance following after them.
Bio:
Nam Nguyen (he/him) is a playwright & lyricist of Viet descent from Mississauga. Theatre writing credits include A Perfect Bowl of Pho, CAEZUS, and Quiz Icarus.
Marie Beath Badian
Project Title: Titania Presents: Oberon, The Good Husband and Other Myths
Oberon did her dirty. Now Titania is finally spilling the truth about her long, complicated union to The King of the Fairies - love, power plays, loyalty, and an open marriage. A comedy of reckoning and an ode to wrath.
Bio:
Marie Beath Badian is an award-winning, Filipino-Canadian writer and playwright based in Toronto. Her plays include The Waltz, Prairie Nurse, The Best Friend Blanket Fort Show, The Making of St. Jerome, Mind Over Matter, and Novena.
She is a two-time alumnus of The Banff Playwrights Lab, and was the Banff 2024 Playwright in Residence. She has developed work in the playwright units of Cahoots Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, Soulpepper Playwrights Circle and The Factory Theatre. She was the Playwright-in-Residence at fu-GEN Asian-Canadian Theatre Company, Project:Humanity and The Blyth Festival.
Her plays Prairie Nurse and The Waltz are part of a multi-generational trilogy spanning fifty-years, set in rural Saskatchewan. The third play, The Cottage Guest, is in development.
missjakieana
Project Title: baby daddy
Baby gets free access to his recording-studio. Daddy has ulterior motives. A play and live concert about sisterhood, talent, and a girl losing her way.
Bio:
missjakieana is a Toronto-based performer and musician intent on creating live performances that are joy and laughter and rage outlets for trans women - that reckon with their dehumanization and celebrate their magnificence. She uses her classical training in theatre, voice, and piano to twist canonical works and subvert cisnormative and heteronormative expectations. For the past 10 years, missjakieana has worked with (and snubbed) some of the largest presenters in Canada’s performing arts scene as an actor, composer, and drag artist.
Kaylie Kreatrix
Project Title: Sticks and Stones
Exploring the raw and primal one-ness of humans and the forest.
Bio:
Kaylie is a performing artist born in Ottawa, who has specializes in circus, story telling, and physical theatre. She is passionate about creating meaningful performances that are healing for both herself, her bloodline, and the audience. Her unique relationship to objects is ever-present in her works; juggling, balancing, and even sword swallowing are just some of the ways she entertains audience members.
Nassim Abu Sarari
Project Title: Bilal
Bilal centers on a Palestinian muezzin facing erasure and internal betrayal in the face of state violence. Devising nonlinear scenes, poetic narration, and real events, the play investigates themes of religion, violence, father-son conflict, and responsibility within the theatrical space.
Bio:
Nassim Abu Sarari is a theatre practitioner, writer, and researcher who earned an MA in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at York University. His thesis, “Staging Sovereignty: Sudanese Theatre and the Possibility of Arabo-African Modernity, 1880–1930” (2024), examined the integration of African, Arab, and Islamic cultural elements in early Sudanese theatre under Anglo-Egyptian rule. Currently a PhD student in Art History and Visual Culture. His essays and cultural criticism—written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English—have been published in Palestine/Israel, the United States and Canada.
afrakaren
Project Title: The Wide and Curvy Cartography of the Goddess Country
The work centres how a black/female body navigates a world inside of herself in spite of the world around her, her body a map and she on the quest to #re-member the self dismantled by colonization. In this mythology of a #blackbody, the audience bears witness to an unravelling as yet to be determined: chaotic or calm... to #congregate like church free of its religion.
Bio:
afrakaren is a creative/thinker/writer/artist whose work/word/art/thought is deeply informed by a relationship with our ancestors and our guides tethering her to the spiritual within the universe.
She crafts narrative from metaphor/analogy/archetype/folklore/mythology that enable bridging between the mental, emotional and physical intellects of the body.
The end game of her work is to provide #medicine and serves to #midwife the political and personal revolutions of #theblackbodypolitic.