Cast & Crew
THE COMPANY
Astrid Atherly is thrilled to be performing in HANS! A University of Windsor grad in B.A Mus & B.M.A., she has been making people laugh, cry and winning their heart since the age of 4. She is currently in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Al Green Theatre. Her most recent offer was with Canadian Stage in As You Like It ,three summers ago, as Celia and Gary Coleman/Understudy for Kate and Lucy in Avenue Q at The Medley/ The Gayety! She has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center and other fine theatres in Canada. She would like to dedicate this performance to Rue!
Annie Luján (she/her) is a Latinx actor, clown and theatre creator from Toronto, ON. She is a graduate of the 2022 Soulpepper Academy and Concordia University with a BFA in Theatre Performance. Recent Credits include: MONKS (Crows, TO Fringe), King Lear, Peggy Pickitt Sees the Face of God (Soulpepper), Comedy of Errors (The Grove), Quest for the Moon (Capitol Theatre), Storybook Search (Bad Hats) and Last Landscape (Workshop, Bad New Days).
Adam Paolozza is an award winning performer, director, teacher, and producer. With Bad New Days Adam creates collaboratively-devised, imagistic theatre, guided by the belief that the live experience has the potential to activate unique ways of seeing the world. Bad New Days highlights: The Double; Flashing Lights; Paolozzapedia; and the five-time Dora award winning Italian Mime Suicide; and Last Landscape. Other highlights: As director: Finding Home (*Dora award nomination); The Cave (by Tomson Highway, John Millard and Martha Ross). Adam is a graduate of Ecole Jacques Lecoq and has a Performance Studies MA from York.
Craig Francis (he/him) is a writer, director, and multidisciplinary artist whose shows have toured Canada and the US, including Off-Broadway in 2016 and 2019. With The 20K Collective, Craig co-created Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Game of Clones, Jungle Book, and HANS: My Life In Fairy Tales with Rick Miller; and FRANKENSTEIN: A Living Comic Book with Miller and Paul Van Dyck. He co-authored Redwood Avenue with Andrea Friesen. New projects include CYNIC, and The Time Machine. Craig is a speaker on LGBTQA2S+ issues and has performed for Just For Laughs, CBC, CTV and Showtime.
Rick Miller is a Dora and Gemini award-winning writer / director / actor / musician / educator who has performed in five languages on five continents, and who Entertainment Weekly called “one of the 100 most creative people alive today”. Solo shows: BOOM, BOOM X, BOOM YZ, MacHomer, Bigger Than Jesus, and HARDSELL. With Craig Francis and Kidoons: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Jungle Book, FRANKENSTEIN: A Living Comic Book, and HANS: My Life in Fairy Tales. With Robert Lepage: Geometry of Miracles, Zulu Time, Lipsynch, and the film Possible Worlds. Projects in development: MONEY, and The Time Machine. www.rickmiller.ca
PRODUCTION TEAM
Jeff has a lifelong passion and vision for combining art and technology to develop original works. His projects are inspired by a love of storytelling and innovation. Through Kidoons theatrical productions, WYRD theatrical productions, and digital works on the Kidoons Network, Jeff's artist collaborators help organizations to tell their stories onstage and online. He works with Not-for-Profits and corporate clients across Canada and the United States with a vision to inspire and empower all generations. Jeff dedicates this show to his mother, Evelyn Lord.
Andrew is thrilled to be working with Kidoons again after previously being on the Jungle book team. Andrew’s recent Stage Management credits include: Dissonant Species with Theatre Gargantua at Factory Theatre, Every Brilliant Thing with the Orillia Opera House, Unwritten - The improv Show with Yonge People’s Theatre, Metamorphose With Theatre Smith Gilmore at Crows Theatre, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and 15 Dogs with Crows Theatre, The Cold War, with Video Cabaret at the Deanne Taylor Theatre,
Aidan Ware hails from Calgary, and is a graduate of the BFA Technical Theatre program at the UofA. After an 18-month lighting practicum at Banff Centre, Aidan moved to Toronto where his creativity and passion for bringing new technologies to live performance have led him to work for Canadian Stage, FFDN, Solotech, Moment Factory, and TOlive. He is currently part of a team designing a new state-of-the-art space for the BMO lab at the University of Toronto, focusing on emerging technologies and AI in performance. Credits with Kidoons/WYRD Production include the BOOM Trilogy (TD/LD), and MONEY (TD/LD).
Irina is a creative artist, graphic designer, and video production artist, for theatres and productions across Canada and the U.S. As a collaborator with Rick Miller and Craig Francis, she designed multimedia for MacHomer, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, and Game of Clones; and video for BOOM X and BOOM YZ, for which she was nominated alongside Rick Miller and Nicolas Dostie for the Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding Projection or Video Design. Irina is the multimedia designer for the family shows Jungle Book, FRANKENSTEIN: A Living Comic Book, and HANS: My Life in Fairy Tales.
Melanie is pretty jazzed to be back for her third project with Kidoons. She is a Toronto based set and costume designer who has worked extensively with Eldritch Theatre (17 seasons), Theatre français de Toronto (14 seasons), and Videocabaret (over 20 seasons), amongst many others. She is also a Production Designer, Costume Designer and Art Director in the tv world. Melanie has received 3 Dora Awards, 8 other Dora nominations, and a Prix Rideaux Award. Melanie is a graduate of TMU (formerly Ryerson Theatre School), and a member of Associated Designers of Canada.
Acclaimed composer Alexina Louie has collaborated with leading Canadian and international soloists, ensembles and orchestras. Her orchestral works have been performed by the San Francisco, Montreal, BBC, St. Louis, Toronto, and Vancouver symphony orchestras, the NAC Orchestra as well as China’s NCPA Orchestra in Beijing. Her TV and film projects include the groundbreaking made-for-TV comedic mini-opera Toothpaste, the aware-winning Burnt Toast, and Mulroney: The Opera, commissioned by the CBC. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Alexina Louie has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates for her lifetime of music creation. www.alexinalouie.ca
Alex Pauk was inducted into the Order of Canada on September 23rd, 2015. Through founding Esprit Orchestra in 1983 and devoting the organization to new music, Pauk revitalized orchestral life for composers across Canada. In addition to his work as a conductor, Pauk has a prolific career as a composer, having written music for every kind of performing ensemble as well as dance, theatre, and film. Pauk graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Music in 1971. He currently resides in Toronto with his wife, Alexina Louie, who is his vital partner in the development of Esprit Orchestra.
Accordionist Matti Pulkki performs frequently with different ensembles and as a soloist around the world, interpreting music from a wide range of genres varying from classical and contemporary music to various global styles. He often engages in different theatre, opera and interdisciplinary productions as a musician and arranger. Pulkki’s currently active chamber music projects include an eclectic voice and accordion duo Sawtooth, classical-contemporary Freesound Performance Collective, and internationally acclaimed Canadian classical crossover ensemble Quartetto Gelato. Pulkki holds a Master’s degree from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Toronto.
Michael Bridge is a musical maverick. “A wizard of the accordion” (CBC), he’s a virtuoso performer on acoustic accordion and the digital accordion. His concerts and improvisations fuse the panache of stadium rock with the elegance of chamber music. It all began when Bridge was five, growing up in Calgary—his mom bought him a $5 accordion at a garage sale. He has performed throughout Europe, 25 US states, all Canadian provinces, and received his doctorate in accordion performance from the University of Toronto. He’s at home with classical, contemporary, jazz, and folk music and has premiered 60 new works. www.michaelbridge.ca
Paul is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and performer. He holds a BAH in Stage and Screen Studies from Queen’s University and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Paul is a past participant of the Neil Munro Intern Directors Project at the Shaw Festival, a past National Forum Representative of Quebec for the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and the founding Artistic Director of Rabbit in a Hat Productions. Paul has received the Playwrights Guild of Canada Comedy Award, the Montreal English Critics Circle Revelation Award, and the Montreal English Theatre Awards Outstanding Direction. He currently teaches playwriting at Bishop’s University.
Michael is the Artistic Director of November Theatre, where he worked on The Black Rider (National Tour); Hard Core Logo (PuSh Festival); Ana (Hive 3 / Cultural Olympiad); ILSA Queen of the Nazi Love Camp (Medicine Show Theatre); and Baby Fat (La MaMa). Directing credits include The Lightning Thief (Story Book Theatre), As You Like It (Studio 58); Uncle Vanya (Medicine Show Theatre, NY); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Colonial Theatre); Humanity and No (Persephone Theatre); I Love You You’re Perfect Now Change (Arts Club Theatre); Indian School (ASU); Fat Pig and Lungs (Mitch and Murray Productions); and Midsummer (Globe Theatre).
Past Cast and Crew Members
Heeyun Park 박희윤 is an actor, singer and creator based in Toronto. Select credits: Mary in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Madeleine Bejart in La Bête (Talk is Free Theatre), carried by the river (Red Snow), Lady Triệu in ANIVIA (Caminos), Morning After (a front company), Emily Brontë in Brontë (Timms Centre), Sally Bowles in Cabaret (NTS), Pamina in Die Zauberflöte (UofA Opera), HANS: My Life in Fairy Tales ( Kidoons and 20K Collective). Heeyun trained at the National Theatre School of Canada for Acting and has a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the University of Alberta. She is currently writing a modern retelling of the Greek myth of Arachne supported by Canada Council of the Arts.