Rice Boy Cover.indd - Stratford Festival

The Company
deena Aziz – actor
Stratford debut: Auntie in Rice Boy. Deena Aziz hails from
Montreal, where she works as an actor, producer and story editor
for theatre and film. Stage credits include The Veil (One Light
Theatre/Fajr Festival Tehran), the award-winning production of
Anosh Irani’s Bombay Black (Cahoots Theatre Projects/Vancouver
Arts Club) and the Canadian premières of Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul (Dora
nomination; Mercury Theatre) and Rice Boy (CanStage). Over 15 years of play
development experience and varied skills have garnered work with companies
across the country, including the Centaur Theatre, Geordie Productions,
Rezolution Pictures, Infinithéâtre, BBR Productions, Nightwood, Nightswimming,
NAC, NFB and a brief stint on the short-lived CBC “daytime drama” North/South.
raoul bhaneja – actor
Stratford debut: Father in Rice Boy. Theatre credits include the
Montreal English Critics Circle Award-winner Hamlet (solo) (Hope
and Hell Theatre with Edinburgh Festival Fringe, PS122 New
York, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Banff Centre); The House of
Many Tongues, Bashir Lazhar, Helen’s Necklace, The Domino Heart
(Tarragon Theatre); Savage Sensuality (Shakespeare’s Globe, U.K. – Christopher
Plummer Fellowship); The School for Wives (Soulpepper Theatre); Hamlet
(Neptune Theatre); Standing Female Nude (Storm Collective); The Cherry Orchard
(Theatre Columbus/Smith-Gilmour). Selected film: The Sentinel, Weirdsville, Touch
of Pink, Ararat, Godsend, Extraordinary Visitor and A Wake. Selected TV: The Dresden
Files (Sci Fi), Runaway (CW), Train 48 (Global), The Summit, At the Hotel, Open Heart
(CBC). Raoul is a Gemini and Canadian Comedy Award nominee and a graduate
of The National Theatre School of Canada. You My People is his latest recording
with his Maple Blues Award-winning quartet Raoul and the Big Time.
robert blacker – dramaturge
Second season: Dramaturge for the Stratford Shakespeare
Festival. Dramaturge for Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and Rice Boy. Over 50 projects from Robert’s eight years as artistic
director of the Sundance Theatre Labs went on to production,
including I Am My Own Wife (Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize), The
Laramie Project and the Tony Award-winning musicals The Light in the Piazza and
Spring Awakening. He was interim chair of playwriting at Yale School of Drama
in 2004-5 and has taught playwriting and Shakespeare studies in the graduate
programs at Columbia, Iowa and Yale. He has dramaturged 12 productions of
Shakespeare for Des McAnuff and others. At Stratford he was dramaturge on
Macbeth (1983) and last season’s Romeo and Juliet and Caesar and Cleopatra.
Blacker was McAnuff’s associate artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse, where
he worked on The Who’s Tommy and Steppenwolf’s The Grapes of Wrath, and
participated in season planning. He was the first dramaturge at Joseph Papp’s
Public Theater (New York) and is a graduate of Cornell.
Marie fewer – assistant stage manager
Fifth season: Assistant stage manager of Macbeth and Rice Boy.
Previous credits at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival include
Romeo and Juliet, Caesar and Cleopatra, My One and Only, To
Kill a Mockingbird, The Duchess of Malfi, The Blonde, the Brunette
and the Vengeful Redhead and Noises Off. Other theatre credits
include That Summer (Theatre Erindale, University of Toronto at Mississauga);
Léo, Alice’s Affair, Bea’s Niece and Private Jokes Public Places (Tarragon Theatre); The
Babysitter (Theatre Direct Canada/Eldritch Theatre); Better Parts, Fish Eyes, Jamaica
Man and blood.claat (Stage3: word.sound.power, produced by Theatre Passe
Muraille/Obsidian Theatre Company); Wrong For Each Other (Bluewater Summer
Playhouse); and Fire (Charlottetown Festival). Marie is a graduate of the theatre
arts – technical production program at the Sheridan Institute of Technology and
Advanced Learning. “Immense gratitude goes to my parents and Michael for
their continued love and support.”
simon fon – stunt coordinator
Stratford debut: Fight director of West Side Story and stunt
coordinator of Macbeth, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to
the Forum, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Rice Boy. Simon is
an award-winning stunt coordinator, executive producer (AOF
Festival California – Best Martial Arts Sequence) and a member of
Fight Directors Canada as a fight master, teaching thousands of people in stage
combat over the past 18 years. Recently, stunt coordinator on Cooper’s Camera
with Dave Foley, Disney’s Power Rangers In Training and Marvel’s Spiderman
(the DVD training spot). Stunt performing credits include series stunt double
(season III) for the character of Jesse on the TV series Mutant X, Hemingway vs.
Callaghan for CBC, Earth: Final Conflict, Prince Charming (HBO) and Tracker for TV/
Film. Simon also worked on the Genie Award-winning short Hangman’s Bride
(fight director and actor). In theatre Simon has worked at CanStage, Soulpepper,
Factory Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, YPT/Lorraine Kimsa,
Grand Theatre (London) and Theatre by the Bay (Barrie).
Anita Majumdar – actor
Stratford debut: Tina in Rice Boy. A graduate of the National
Theatre School of Canada, Anita holds a degree in English,
Theatre and South Asian Languages from the University of
British Columbia. She is a classically trained dancer in Kathak,
but has also studied Bharatnatyam and Odissi. She is also
Nightswimming Theatre’s 2009/10 Playwright in Residence. Theatre credits
include Shakuntala (Pleiades Theatre/Harbourfront Centre Theatre), The Misfit
(self-written, PuSh Festival/Theatre Passe Muraille), Bombay Black (Cahoots
Theatre Projects/Arts Club Theatre), Fish Eyes (self-written, Dora-nominated,
Theatre Passe Muraille/The Other Festival, India) and Tales from Ovid (Centaur
Theatre). Film credits include Diverted (CBC/Shaftesbury) and Murder Unveiled
(CBC/Force Four), loosely based on the true life story of Jassi Sidhu, for which
Anita received her first acting award at the Asian Festival of First Films in
Singapore. Upcoming: Aisha n’ Ben (Theatre Ji) and Hindi Cinema Gave Me
Unrealistic Expectations About Men (working title) (Theatre Ji).
Araya Mengesha – actor
Stratford debut: Fleance in Macbeth, Tommy in Rice Boy and
appears in Julius Caesar. Araya Mengesha is a 2009 graduate
of the Ryerson Theatre School program and has been acting
professionally for more than 10 years. This will be his first
appearance on the Stratford Shakespeare Festival stages. Past
credits include hosting the Gemini-nominated Mystery Hunters, seasons one
through four (TV), Official Toronto International Film Festival selection Nurse.
Fighter.Boy (film) and the Canadian première of Disney’s The Lion King (stage) as
well as numerous TV series and commercial roles. Araya would like to give a
special thanks to his mother, Selamawit, for her endless love and support.
sam Moses – actor
Third season: Grandfather in Rice Boy. Sam was born in India. He
is a twin, and the youngest of 11 children. He began his career
dancing with the National Ballet of Canada and has worked in
most of the major theatres in Canada, including the Shaw and
Stratford Festivals. Theatre includes Twelfth Night, Bent, Kilt, A
Chorus Line, Over the River and Through the Woods, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
and Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Film work
includes Ghostbusters, Moscow on the Hudson, Adventures in Babysitting and
16 Blocks. TV work includes This Is Wonderland, The Newsroom, Nikita and Due
South. He can currently be heard in Monsoon House on CBC Radio 1 on Thursday
mornings. Sam is married to Anne, a former National Ballet dancer, and has two
sons, a daughter and three wonderful grandchildren. He is thrilled to be back in
Stratford – where he won a Guthrie Award in 1974!
6