Mayor's Arts Award for Theatre
2017 recipients
Marcus Youssef
Honouree
Marcus Youssef's plays – many of which investigate questions of difference and “otherness” – have been performed across North America, Australia and Europe. Youssef is Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre. He sat on the City’s Arts and Culture Policy Council for five years, co-chaired the Coalition of Progressive Electors and co-founded the artist-run production studio, PL1422.
He's held international residencies and has served on the faculties of UBC, Concordia and Capilano Universities, where he implemented the country’s first multi-institutional Bachelor of Performing Arts degree. He has worked with many community groups and is currently a Canadian Fellow to the International Society of Performing Arts. Selected awards and nominations: Canada Council Lynch-Staunton Award for Artistic Excellence, Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, Chalmer's Canadian Play Award, Vancouver Critics' Choice Award, a Governor General’s Award nomination and numerous Jessie awards.
Conor Wylie
Emerging artist
Conor Wylie is a queer artist of colour attached to companies A Wake of Vultures and OOOO, and a close collaborator of Hong Kong Exile. He is a Jessie-nominated freelance actor. Most passionate about creating new, formally-experimental and interdisciplinary performance, he spent a year in residence with Theatre Replacement, and has worked closely with other members of the Progress Lab consortium, especially Radix Theatre and The Only Animal.
Wylie’s original works include eatingthegame, a satirical motivational keynote address about affordability and gentrification; Visitors from Far Away to the State Machine, an erotic multimedia space opera; #86, a list of speculative performances about imagination and mourning performed in the Boreal forest; and ALL THE WAY, a haunted interactive game-show. His works have been commissioned by and performed at PuSh, Magnetic North, Summerworks, rEvolver, UNOfest, and FUSE at the VAG. Wylie is a graduate of SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.
Jan Hodgson is a theatre and dance stage manager who has travelled with productions that were created and developed out of Vancouver, her hometown. She was trained and mentored by actor Antony Holland in a program at Vancouver Community College that eventually became the renowned Studio 58.
Nancy Bryant graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1983 and has enjoyed a career in the arts ever since. She began designing costumes for dance in the mid-80s, which led to design work in theatre, film, and opera. 
Marshall McMahen is a set, lighting, costume, and projection designer for theatre and opera. He earned a degree in theatre from the University of BC. Since graduating, he has been designing for theatres in Vancouver and around BC. Marshall is the recipient of a Jessie Award and two Ovation Awards for Outstanding Set Design.
Patrick McDonald has been the artistic director of Green Thumb Theatre since 1988, and was the artistic director of Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.He has directed over 75 productions for Green Thumb and has overseen the commission and development of more than 50 new plays. He has commissioned work from both emerging writers like Dave Deveau and Michele Riml, and established writers Morris Panych, Joan MacLeod, and George F. Walker.
Kyle Jespersen is a graduate of Studio 58 and recently received a Betty Mitchell Award for his portrayal of a BC gang leader in the rap musical Ash Rizin. This show, jointly produced by Green Thumb Theatre and Alberta Theatre Projects, marked Jespersen’s fourth collaboration with director Patrick McDonald.
Donna Spencer is the artistic producer of the Firehall Arts Centre and was one of the Firehall’s founding directors. She is the winner of the Jessie Richardson Outstanding Direction Award for Urinetown, the Musical and for Reading Hebron. Her many theatre directorial credits include Vimy, Einstein’s Gift, The Yoko Ono Project, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe and many others. Spencer has collaboratively created three plays – Walking the Tightrope, Mainstream and Opening Doors – as well as the contemporary adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People for the Firehall. 
Anita Rochon is a Vancouver-based director who has been involved in the development of more than 20 new pieces of theatre. She is co-artistic director of The Chop Theatre, which has produced numerous new works including Townsville, KISMET one to one hundred, and How to Disappear Completely, many of which have toured nationally.
Christopher Gaze is founding artistic director of Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival and has performed in England, the USA, and across Canada. Born in England, he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before coming to Canada where he spent three seasons at the Shaw Festival.
Anton Lipovetsky is a recent graduate of Vancouver's Studio 58 Acting Training program, where he received the Earl Klein Memorial Scholarship and the first ever Lloyd Nicholson Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Musical Achievement.
Norman Armour is the executive director of the PuSH International Performing Arts Festival. Since graduating from Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts in 1986, he has collaborated on over 120 works for the stage and other media.
Tanya Marquardt is a theatre/dance maker, writer, and deviser. This season, she worked with Jennifer Mascall, Jerome Bel / PuSH Fesival, Anatomica, Theatre Terrific, Proximity Arts, The Only Animal, Playwrits Theatre Centre, The Leaky Heaven Circus, and Nakai Theatre, among others.
Kim Collier has been working as a director, actress, producer, and theatre creator for 24 years. A graduate of Studio 58’s acting program, for the past 14 years she has been co-artistic director of Electric Company Theatre in Vancouver, which she co-founded with Jonathon Young, Kevin Kerr, and David Hudgins and with whom she has co-authored nine of their original plays.
Meg Roe is a well established and nationally recognized actor and sound designer, but emerged as a director last summer with The Tempest at Bard On the Beach and a recent production of The Miracle Worker at The Vancouver Playhouse.