Ten authors have authored Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous, French- and English-speaking men and women. They are: Jean Marc Dalpé, David Granger, Laura Lussier, Alexis Martin, Andrea Menard, Yvette Nolan, Gilles Poulin-Denis, Paula-Jean Prudat, Mansel Robinson, and Kenneth T. William
Active in the Saskatoon theatre community for the past decade, David Granger studied set design at the Université du Québec à Montréal, then expanded his skill set to include lighting design, acting, and most recently writing and directing, with Shadows of a Dancing Moon. He designed the sets and lighting for Gilles Poulin‑Denis’ play Rearview and the sets for Madeleine Blais‑Dahlem’s La Maculée. A longtime associate of La Troupe du Jour and a sessional lecturer in drama at the University of Saskatchewan, he has worked for numerous theatre events and companies, including Zones Théâtrales, Persephone Theatre, and the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festival. David Granger lives in Saskatchewan.
Bilingual and multitalented, Laura Lussier has worked as an actor, director, producer, writer, theatre workshop facilitator, and TV personality. Trained as an actor, she has appeared in over thirty productions, then later branched out into directing in 2009. For the Théâtre Cercle Molière, she directed the world premiere of Rébecca Déraspe’s Plus (+) que toi and Danielle Séguin‑Tétreault’s Et que ça saute!
Since 2011, this energetic artist has also been involved in children’s theatre, as the founding artistic director of Théâtre p’tits bouts d’choux.
Talonbooks published her co-written play Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show in 2021.
Alexis Martin’s list of accomplishments is impressive. A graduate of the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal, he has appeared in more than 40 stage plays and several movies and TV series, including Les Boys, Beaux Malaises, and Les Parent, and worked with such outstanding directors as Robert Lepage, Pierre Falardeau, Luc Picard and Denis Villeneuve. Co‑artistic director (with Daniel Brière) of Montreal’s Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental since 1999, this compelling and disciplined artist is the author most recently of the trilogy L’histoire révélée du Canada français, 1608 à 1998 (whose first instalment, Invention du chauffage central en Nouvelle-France, was presented at the NAC in 2012), Animaux, Sounjata, and EXTRAMOYEN, splendeur et misère de la classe moyenne.
Andrea Menard is a singer–songwriter, writer and actor. A passionate advocate for reconciliation and unity among nations, she conveys the richness of her Métis culture through her live performances, recordings and television appearances. She has released four award-winning albums: The Velvet Devil, Simple Steps, Sparkle and Lift. Her one-woman show The Velvet Devil, which toured across Canada, was adapted for TV in 2006 and earned Andrea a Gemini nomination for her performance. Unreservedly engaged with the world, she has expressed her ideals in song to royalty, prime ministers, ambassadors and governors general.
Originally from Saskatchewan, Gilles Poulin‑Denis is a writer, translator, director and actor. He is a graduate of the acting program at UQAM’s École supérieure de théâtre. His first play, Rearview, premiered in 2009 by La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon), was a hit at Zones Théâtrales 2009 and on tour. It was published by Dramaturges Éditeurs, won the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and was staged in English and French across Canada and in Belgium. His second play, Statu quo, was workshopped at Zones Théâtrales 2011 and presented by NAC French Theatre as part of its series for young audiences, and toured across Canada.
As NAC French Theatre’s playwright in residence from 2008 to 2011, under the artistic directorship of Wajdi Mouawad, Gilles developed his third play, Dehors, which was given staged readings at, among other events, the Festival du Jamais Lu (Montreal), the Carrefour international de Québec, Dramaturgie en Dialogue and most recently during Zones Théâtrales 2015. The production was part of the 2016-2017 programming of Théâtre Cercle Molière, Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui and NAC French Theatre. In 2015, he presented his fourth play, Straight Jacket Winter, a text written with Esther Duquette presented at the Carrefour international de theatre and NAC French French Theatre among others. Gilles participated in the development of Après la peur by Armel Roussel / (e)Utopia3 (Brussels), coproduced by the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui (Montreal) and Les Tanneurs. He is a founding member of the theatre collective Les petites cellules chaudes, with which he cocreated the iShow, presented at Zones 2013.
He is one of nine playwrights with Jean Marc Dalpé, Alexis Martin and Yvette Nolan that developed Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show, a NAC French Theatre coproduction about the Métis struggle in Western Canada, which was presented at the NAC in October 2017. His latest, Ce qu’on attend de moi, developed with Philippe Cyr, was presented at Théâtre Aux Écuries, Usine C, Théâtre la Seizième and Théâtre français du CAN.
Gilles is currently based in Vancouver, where he is the artistic director and cofounder of Productions 2PAR4. He is the new Artistic Director of Zones Théâtrales.
PJ Prudat was born in a fierce snowstorm in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory. She is a proud Half-Breed of Cree, Saulteaux, Scandinavian, French and Métis Nation (ancestral to Batoche and Red River) blood. She is a playwright, poet and writer of stories. Indigenous people and stories of this land incite her as an artist. She was Playwright in Rez at Native Earth Performing Arts (2013/14 ), a playwright with Factory Theatre’s NRCG writer’s unit (2015) and a recipient of a Shaw Festival 2017 Christopher Newton Award for playwrighting.
She has been a company actor for both the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre Ensemble (2015/16) and the Shaw Festival Theatre (2017). Theatre and Storytelling has gifted PJ the invaluable experience of performing and writing in sacred and vast-reaching communities across the nation. PJ is a recipient of the 2017 REVEAL Indigenous Art Award and a finalist for both the K.M. Hunter Award and the Cayle Chernin Award.
Mansel Robinson lived in Saskatchewan for more than 20 years; nowadays he hangs his hat in a little cabin in northern Ontario, not far from his home town of Chapleau. A graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Concordia University, this unconventional artist has written short fiction and poetry (his anthology Slag was published in 1997). His voice has also been heard across Canada through his plays, which have been staged in Calgary, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal; three of them – Ghost Trains (Trains fantômes), Spitting Slag (Slague. L’histoire d’un mineur) and Two Rooms (II [deux]) – have been translated into French by Jean Marc Dalpé. Mansel has received numerous awards and was shortlisted for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize in Theatre for playwriting.
Kenneth T. Williams is a Cree playwright from the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan’s Treaty 4 territory, and is the first Indigenous person to earn an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Alberta. His plays have been produced across Canada; they include Care, Café Daughter, Gordon Winter, Thunderstick, Bannock Republic, Suicide Notes, and Three Little Birds. He teaches in the drama department of the University of Alberta. He lives in Edmonton, where he puts his personal and professional experience to good use as an active member of the local theatre community.
