Supported by The Ontario Arts Council
2024/2025 Projects
A RACCOON SOLSTICE – ANIMACY THEATRE COLLECTIVE
Synopsis: A family-friendly, outdoor, winter show with original live music and vocal arrangements, A RACCOON SOLSTICE tells the story of five urban raccoons who must come together to save the Winter Solstice and bring peace, darkness, and rest back to raccoons and humans alike.
Bio: Alexandra Simpson is the co-artistic director of Animacy Theatre Collective and an interdisciplinary theatre artist. As mask builder and sculptor, Alexandra takes an embodied and place-based approach and uses design to explore social and ecological relationships. Her work as an artist reflects her experience in and passion for boundary blurring art practices and queer narratives.
Morgan Brie Johnson is an award-winning playwright, performer and theatre creator. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective, a physical theatre collective dedicated to strange, ecological, and feminist storytelling. She has also published creative fiction in several literary magazines and also holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from York University.
AIR INDIA – DALBIR SINGH
Synopsis: Performed in an airport hangar, this site-specific play about the 1985 Air India bombing (Canada’s deadliest terrorist attack) challenges Eurocentric narratives and explores innovative approaches to form and content. Air India will dismantle traditional theatrical conventions by encouraging new forms of audience exploration throughout the space; incorporating spectators into scenes as silent witnesses or active participants.
Bio: Dalbir Singh achieved PhD candidacy in Theatre at the University of Toronto and has edited several play anthologies. He’s also a playwright whose latest play was nominated for Canadian Play of the Year by the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and was a finalist for the Mario-Fratti award at Castillo Theatre in NYC.
BLOOD BROTHERS – BRIANNA RUSSELL & CATIE THORNE
Synopsis: BLOOD BROTHERS is an immersive site-specific theatrical adaptation of Julius Caesar set at the Delta Upsilon Fraternity on the night of a fraternity’s annual hazing ceremony. Brianna and Catie’s goal is to eventually mount a production that uses the idea of an “open world video game” to allow each audience member to choose their own narrative path throughout the night.
Bio: Catie Thorne (she/her) is a theatre artist based in Toronto. Her interest in experimental performance comes from her tenure as Eleven in Stranger Things: The Experience and BARD LUCK, a gamified reading of Macbeth. Catie has worked with Canadian Stage and produced for the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Brianna Russell (she/her) is a playwright/filmmaker originally from Newfoundland. Her plays ‘ICARUS IS FALLING’ and ‘The Virgin, Mary’ underwent workshop readings with both PARC/Shakespeare by the Sea and Doormouse Productions. She received the 2022 RBC Michelle Jackson Emerging Filmmaker Award and participated in the 2024 Whistler Film Festival Screenwriters Lab.
HOW MAY I HELP YOU TODAY? – KEVIN SHEA
Synopsis: Inspired by the playwright’s experience working in a call centre, HOW MAY I HELP YOU TODAY? invites audiences to experience both sides of a customer service phone call between an elderly, white, straight woman and a mid-30s, brown, queer man. Written in collaboration with and for the actor Qasim Khan, the play explores the surprising moments of connection that can occur through interactions as humble as a customer service call.
Bio: Kevin Shea wrote all nine episodes of the scripted podcast FEEDBACK, the plays Consumption Patterns, King George’s American Theatre, and The Lake House, the book for the musicals Teresa, A Misfortune, Hero & Leander, and the text and direction for the dance-theatre piece Cendrillon.
A RRA! TA! MA! CUE! – ERIN BRANDENBURG & HOWIE YUN-HAW SHIA
Synopsis: A staged adaptation of Howie’s illustrated picture book, RA! TA! MA! CUE! follows a group of children who form a drumline to rescue their parents from monsters. Inspired by performances like Kid Koala’s “The Storyville Mosquito” and Christine Fellows/Sherry Boyle’s “Everything Under the Moon,” RA! TA! MA! CUE! envisions a large-scale interactive multidisciplinary performance where music and visuals shape the narrative and the audience is an essential part of the storytelling. Accessibility is also a key priority; everyone is needed on this adventure.
Bio: Howie Shia is an illustrator, writer, and animation director. He has worked with Disney and Netflix, and his short films with the NFB have won wide festival acclaim. A lead story artist on Kid Koala’s new feature Space Cadet, Howie’s first children’s book Ra! Ta! Ma! Cue! is due fall 2025, from Annick Press.
Erin Brandenburg is a Toronto-based director, writer, and theatre creator. Her work has toured nationally and internationally, earning recognition for its innovation and commitment to inclusive storytelling. Recent projects include The Flin Flon Cowboy, a new musical about disabled artist Ken Harrower and the short film The Wreck of Harold Murphy.
2023/2024 Projects
YEAR OF RETIREMENT – AMANDA LIN
Synopsis: YEAR OF RETIREMENT will use storytelling, verbatim interviews, and participatory crafting to explore our current relationship to labour in Canada, and how it could change for the better.
Bio: Amanda Lin 林美智 (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese-Canadian multidisciplinary artist. She is interested in using art to cultivate compassionate and dynamic communities. Her play, BETWEEN A WOK AND A HOT POT premiered with Cahoots Theatre and received 6 Dora nominations in the Independent category. Amanda enjoys lying on the floor.
77 DAYS WITH DOG 33 – CULLEN ELIJAH MCGRAIL
Synopsis: Described as “wild and wonderful” and “barrier-breaking in the best way” by Apt613, in this new immersive experience from certified Type 1 Diabetic, Cullen Elijah McGrail, you’re invited to scrub in for the game of Operation of a lifetime.
Bio: Cullen Elijah McGrail is an immersive theatre creator and award-winning playwright from rural Southwestern Ontario. His work often explores the ethics and morals surrounding science and conservation in the 21st century and how they intersect with the contemporary rural Ontarian identity and experience.
SLUMBER PARTY – JULIE PHAN
Synopsis: Hello world!
Bio: Julie Phan 潘家雯 will fuck you up. If this McGill dropout is looking for you, run. She is a Toronto and Montreal-based, Viet-Hoklo multidisciplinary artist, arts manager and wholesome night dancer who barely graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in playwriting. She is best known for disappointing her father as well as her work with fu-GEN asian theatre company (double bill, fearless).
Untitled Steamship Show – Keavy Lynch
Synopsis: UNTITLED STEAMSHIP SHOW is an immersive experience inspired by family history, that brings the audience face-to-face with passengers on a 1920s transatlantic steamship, and asks what it means to live in search of adventure.
Bio: Keavy Lynch is a prodigal theatre creator and tv writer based in Toronto. She founded and ran indie company Empty Box Theatre for eight years, and is honoured to be getting back to her roots with OtM’s support on this project.
flip flop – Sydney Scott
Synopsis: FLIP FLOP is a poolside experience and audio play about childhood best friends discovering what it means to have a body in a world they would never choose to live in.
Bio: Sydney Scott is a trans-disciplinary artist from Toronto. They write sticky stories about bodies, twisted desires, and the moment a child’s perception of the world is changed forever. They want to explore what a playwright can ask of their audience and create art that dares people to care beyond themselves and their circle of loved ones.
2025 Submissions
Outside the March RGTC 2024/2025 Submissions – NOW CLOSED
Outside the March is pleased to participate in the Recommender Grants for Theatre Creators Program thanks to the support of the Ontario Arts Council. We welcome your wildest theatrical ideas: puppets at an aquarium, the circus in a closet, or whatever out-of-this-world dreams you’re cooking up. We support projects that align with our company core values of curiosity, connection, care, thrills, and immersion.
Our priorities for support are: diverse voices interested in immersive theatre, innovation in the form, and strong script-based materials.
We prioritize artists from OAC Priority Groups as well as other equity-seeking communities. Though we work in unexpected spaces and invite our audiences to participate in our shows in unexpected ways, our company often focuses on narrative-driven work. We are open to all theatrical ideas, but character and story are both strong areas of interest. Typically we award several micro-grants of $1000.
The application asks you to include:
- Information about you and your project
- A CV
- Support material:
This can be in a text document and/or as video or audio. Please focus on giving us as clear a picture of your proposed project as possible. One of the best ways to do this is through a script sample, but it could also be through a written proposal or through a video, an audio recording, a game—whatever will most effectively give us a feel for your piece.
If you don’t have any support material for your current project, and/or if it will help us understand your practice and your project, you may also include examples of past work.
The OAC Nova Portal allows you to submit a single document (usually a script sample, maximum of 15 pages in 1 PDF document—we strongly suggest limiting yourself to 10 pages) and/or a single video/audio piece (maximum 5 minutes).
Deadline: December 13, 2024, 1 p.m. EST
For more information about the RGTC grants across the province and further information about
submitting through NOVA, please visit the OAC website.
We have a strong history of crafting application supports and accommodations for applicants for whom the above requirements are a barrier to being able to fully express themselves. We’re also happy to chat if it’s your first time applying and you’re finding the application process unclear or challenging. For these or any other questions, please contact Associate Artistic Director Sébastien Heins at sebastien@outsidethemarch.ca
Application Tips
OtM Associate AD Sébastien Heins and Creative Producer Griffin McInnes hosted an information session on our RGTC program on November 25, 2024. Watch the captioned session here:
- The support material limits are maximums. Include as much material as you think will help us understand your project, but don’t include anything for the sake of reaching a page/minute limit. We suggest limiting yourself to 10 pages.
- The time you spend writing grants isn’t paid, and we totally get that you may submit to several Recommenders with pretty much the same application. That’s fine. But if you can, do tell us why Outside the March. Our successful RGTC-supported projects are usually able to articulate why their project is inspired by, an answer to, or in dialogue with OtM’s work, values and practice.
- On the flip side of that coin, don’t assume we love site-specificity or immersivity for their own sake. Answer the “WHY” about every aspect of your project. Why is it immersive? (Or: why is it important that it’s NOT immersive?) Why is it artistically imperative that audience members wear little helicopter beanies during the show? And especially: why is your project urgent/important? The best applications we read have a strong internal logic for what they’re doing and why. If you’re early in your process and you haven’t fully fleshed this out, tell us what questions you’re asking, why you’re asking them, and how you’re going to answer them.
- If you’re a younger or less experienced artist, don’t pretend to be more experienced than you are. We support lots of artists at the start of their journeys. Be honest about what you don’t know and want to learn, and tell us about how your project is going to help you do that. An effective way of telling us about yourself and your project—for any level of experience—is: “Right now I’m at X place in my practice. I want to get to Z. I believe Y (this project) will help me do that for these reasons: A, B, C.”