The Playground is an opportunity for professional theatre artists, whether experienced or emerging, to muck around with Ruff’s incredible guest instructors and learn new creative skills. Formerly the Shakespeare Masterclass, the reimagined Playground offers training opportunities for writers, performers, directors, designers, and creators of all stripes.
Past Playground Instructors
2023 (Spring)
Blind Imaginings
A workshop that invites participants to de-centre visuality from experience and creative practice. What is revealed when you de-centre vision from your imagination? How is our relationship to space informed by our sense of hearing, smell, taste, touch? What does it mean to “see” with your feet? Led by blind artist Alex Bulmer, this immersive workshop, informed by personal and professional experience, combines elements of voice, movement, creative writing, mindfulness and sensory perception.
Alex Bulmer, award-winning writer, actor, director and educator, was named one of the most influential disabled artists by UK’s Power Magazine. She has over thirty professional years’ experience across theatre, film, television, radio and education. She is fuelled by a curiosity of the improbable, dedicated to collaborative art practice, and deeply informed by her experience of becoming blind.
Alex is co-founder and co-Artistic Director of The Fire and Rescue Team, is former artistic director of Common Boots Theatre, and recently curated CoMotionFestival 2022, an international disability arts festival with Harbourfront Centre. She is the writer of two award-winning short films, writer of award-winning BBC radio drama, writer of the Dora- and Chalmers-nominated SMUDGE, and co-writer of the BAFTA-nominated U.K. television series Cast Offs, featuring six lead disabled actors.
Alex has worked with numerous companies including Buddies in Bad Times, Nightwood, The Theatre Centre, Graeae Theatre, The RSC, Royal Court Theatre, and the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. She recently earned a best actor award at the Moscow International Disability Film Festival and played Friar Lawrence in R+J at the Stratford Festival. Currently, Alex is launching a blind-led digital arts space called Perceptual Archaeology, and is gearing up for her upcoming theatre production Perceptual Archaeology (or How To Travel Blind) at Crows Theatre in June 2023.
2022 (Fall)
Finding the Truth In Shakespeare’s Poetry
Irene Poole has worked in theatres across Canada, including nine seasons at the Stratford Festival of Canada. Shows include Little Women, All’s Well That Ends Well, Henry VIII, Mother’s Daughter, Julius Caesar, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Little Years, Three Sisters, and The Taming of the Shrew. In Toronto, she has performed at Factory Theatre, Tarragon, Buddies in Bad Times, and Soulpepper; as well as the independent companies Birdland Theatre (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot) and Canadian Rep (How Do I Love Thee). Along with roles at Stratford, favourite Shakespearean roles include; Beatrice, Lady Capulet, the Nurse, Gertrude, Celia, Titania, Lady Macbeth, Don John, and Elizabeth (Resurgence, Shakespeare by the Sea.) She is the recipient of multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Best Performance. Film work includes Frankie Drake Mysteries, Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, Killjoys, Cardinal, Salvation, Republic of Doyle, Murdoch Mysteries, and Rookie Blue. Irene has also ventured into directing, teaching, and new play development. She lives in Stratford with her husband and two children.
2022 (Spring)
Reimagining the Canon
Jeff Ho and Patricia taught a 3-day intensive titled ReImagining the Canon. Participants explored writing, moving, and adapting classical works.
Jeff Ho is a theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong. As an actor, he has toured as Ophelia in Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet across Canada and the United States over five years. Other credits include: Hana’s Suitcase (Young People’s Theatre, tour: Toronto, Montreal and Seattle); I Forgive You (Artistic Fraud/NAC); Orestes (Tarragon Theatre); trace (Remount – NAC/Factory Theatre); Box 4901 (Buddies in Bad Times); camera obscura (hungry ghosts) (the frank theatre/QAF – Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Production – Small Theatre); Kim’s Convenience (CBC); The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu); and Orphan Black (BBC America).
Patricia Allison is a Toronto based choreographer, filmmaker, educator, performer, and theatre creator. In 2018 she won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Director in Independent Theatre for a production of Mark Ravenhill’s Pool (No Water) which she co-created with Jill Harper and Cue6 Theatre. Patricia Studied (she/her) contemporary dance at ladmmi l’école danse contemporaine which she graduated from in 2007. She then went back to school to further her education in the field of dance and earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance from York University which she completed in 2019. For the thesis research and project Patricia studied canonical counter discourse and adaptation theory. This developed her passion of approaching the western classics (Shakespeare, Ballet, etc.) through her own feminist, queer, and disabled lens.
Past Shakespeare Technique Instructors
2021
André Sills
André is a Toronto based Actor, Director, Producer and Writer.
He has spent most of his career working in the Theatre across the country. This would have been his sixth season at the Stratford Festival where he was set to play Henry VIII in Wolf Hall and Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing before the theatres shut down due to COVID-19. He also played the title character in the 2018 Stratford hit Coriolanus directed by the World Renowned Robert Lepage, and was in the top 10 shows of 2018 in the Washington Post and The Globe & Mail and more.
In addition he spent four seasons at The Shaw Festival where he played Tom in The Glass Menagerie and received a My Entertainment World Best Actor Award for his work in An Octoroon and a Dora Award & Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best Actor for his work in Master Harold and the Boys.
He has also worked at Soulpepper Theatre where he toured with Kim’s Convenience across the country, and also played Othello at The St. Louis Black Rep, and many other companies across the country. He is a Resident Artist with The Actors Repertory Company (ARC).
2020
Jamie Robinson
Jamie has been a Toronto-based professional artist since 1997 as an actor, director, producer and teacher. Jamie holds a Masters Degree in Theatre Directing/Teaching from York University, and is a professor of acting at York University and University of Toronto Mississauga.
Select Credits: Copy That (Tarragon), Scotian Journey (Black Theatre Workshop), 365 Days/365 Plays (U of T), She Stoops to Conquer and Romeo & Juliet (Guild Festival Theatre, also as Artistic Director), Much Ado About Nothing and Measure For Measure (Canadian Stage in High Park), Risky Phil (Young People’s Theatre), Gas Girls (New Harlem Productions), and four seasons at the Stratford Festival.
2019
Nigel Shawn Williams
Nigel Shawn Williams is the former Co-Artistic Director of Factory Theatre. He is a four-time Dora Mavor Moore Award winner as an actor and director, with numerous nominations for MECCA and Betty Mitchell Awards. His theatre credits as an actor include six seasons at the Stratford and four seasons at the Shaw Festivals, as well as performing in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. Nigel is also heavily active in new play development and has helped develop over 40 new plays in Canada, either working as an actor, director or a dramaturge. He is also an educator, having taught at York University, University of Windsor, and the National Theatre School of Canada.
2018
Benedict Campbell
In his 43 year long career, Benedict Campbell has performed all across Canada. One of Canada’s finest and most sought after actors, he’s worked with companies such as Stratford, Shaw, Theatre Calgary, Bard on the Beach, The Grand Theatre and the NAC. He has also worked extensively in film and TV.
2017
Kate Hennig
Kate has over 35 years of experience as an actor including seasons on Broadway, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mirvish and with the Shaw and Stratford Festivals. She originated the role of Mrs. Wilkinson the dance teacher in Broadway production of Billy Elliot. She is the recipient of the 2015 Christopher Plummer Award for Excellence in Classical Theatre.
2016
Seana McKenna
Seana McKenna has performed across the continent, and 24 seasons (and counting) with the Stratford Festival. At Stratford, she has played every leading female role you can think of in Shakespeare—Viola, Kate, Portia, Lady Macbeth, as well as a critically acclaimed turn as Richard III.
2015
Tom McCamus & Chick Reid
Genie, Gemini, ACTRA, and Dora award winning performer Tom McCamus is a staple of Canadian theatre. He has performed across the country and around the world along with 15 seasons playing leading roles at the Stratford Festival.
Chick Reid has performed everywhere form Stratford to Shaw to Broadway to Tarragon and everything in-between. At the same time she has maintained an extensive leadership in education and is a long time teacher for Queen’s University.
2013 & 2014
Diane D’Aquila & Jeffrey Wetsch
Multi-award winning actor, Diane D’Aquila has performed at Soulpepper, American Repertory Theatre, Nightwood Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Shaw Festival, 15 seasons at the Stratford Festival and yes, Slings & Arrows. She directed Shakespeare in the Ruff’s production of Richard III and she is a force to be reckoned with.
Jeffrey Wetsch is a veteran of television and theatre. A classically trained actor who has put those skills to the test many times with 6 seasons at the Stratford Festival and many other theatres in canada over the years. Along with acting, Jeffrey was Co-Artistic Director of Shakespeare Link Canada, while helping to create Signing the Bard: Romeo & Juliet, and taking a group of actors to Mozambique to create a production of The Winter’s Tale. In the last 15 years, he has taken his love of this craft and turned his skills to explore actor training in Canadian and American universities, as well as mastersclasses along the way, while continuing to work professionally.