Outside The March Our Team

Mitchell Cushman

Founding Artistic Director*

Mitchell Cushman (he/him) is a director, playwright, producer, educator and founding Artistic Director of Outside the March. As one of Canada’s leading immersive theatre artists, Mitchell’s work has been seen on stages as large as the Royal Alexander Theatre and the Stratford Festival, in spaces as intimate as kindergarten classrooms and living rooms, and in locales as far flung as Whitehorse, London, Edinburgh, Munich, Finland and Japan.

Directing credits for Outside the March include The Golem’s Mighty Swing, The Flick, The Tape Escape (Co-Creator), Dr. Silver, The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale, Jerusalem, Lessons in Temperament, TomorrowLove™, Mr. Burns, Vitals, Passion Play, Terminus, Mr. Marmalade, Oh the Humanity and other Good Intentions.

As a developer of new work, Mitchell has collaborated with some of Toronto’s most exciting theatrical voices, including Rosamund Small (TomorrowLove™, Vitals), Haley McGee (I’m Doing this For You, Oh My Irma) James Smith (Lessons in Temperament) and Britta & Anika Johnson (Brantwood, Dr. Silver). Mitchell is also the Co-Creator of BRANTWOOD (with Julie Tepperman), Canada’s largest immersive musical theatre experience, which received the 2015 Audience Choice Award for Best Production at the Dora Awards. Other favourite directing credits include: Treasure Island, Breath of Kings, Possible Worlds (Stratford); Hand to God , The Aliens (Coal Mine); Hand to God (MTC); The Curious Voyage I, Claudia, The Last of Romeo and Juliet (Talk is Free), Merrily We Roll Along (YES Theatre).

Mitchell has received numerous distinctions for his work, including a Dora Award for Outstanding Direction, three Dora Awards for Outstanding Independent Production, the Siminovitch protégé award, the Ken McDougal Award, and the Toronto Theatre Critics’ awards for Best Production and Best Director. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s MFA Directing program.

Katherine Devlin Rosenfeld

Managing Producer

Katherine (Kat) Devlin Rosenfeld (she/her) has been the Managing Producer for Outside the March since 2013. Her work has focused on bolstering the company’s operations in all administrative areas, including organizational structure, business development, fundraising strategy and financial management. In recent years, Katherine has been passionate about implementing care practices that better support artists and arts workers. She has produced a wide variety of productions and events for the organization including: Vitals, Dr. Silver, Jerusalem, The Tape Escape, The Flick, and Trojan Girls and The Outhouse of Atreus, amongst others.

Katherine worked as an Independent Artist Producer (2003 – 2009) and in 2009 she enrolled in the Arts Management program at the University of Toronto where she quickly affirmed her passion for theatre producing. Before working with OtM, Katherine worked with various performing arts companies including Crow’s Theatre, The Paprika Festival, Canadian Stage, Nightwood Theatre, and Dancemakers.

Griffin McInnes

Creative Producer

Griffin McInnes is a theatre maker. He is a director, playwright and dramaturg with a creation practice guided by the belief that form—how performance is experienced—is singularly powerful.

That approach has allowed Griffin to create multifarious projects like: The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, a phone-based, pandemic-responsive production performed in over 200 cities worldwide; The River of Forgetfulness, a Zoom-based collaboration with playwright Karen Hines and The University of Windsor hailed by The Toronto Star as “ingenious”; and his most recent project, Revelations, an escape room-inspired show about the End of the World, selected as Upintheair Theatre’s inaugural Updrafts Commission and produced in Vancouver in September 2021.

His work is often based in research-creation, a methodology he developed during a graduate program at France’s SciencesPo, collaborating with multidisciplinary artists from around the world. He is the recipient of Tarragon Theatre’s 2023 Bulmash-Siegel New Creation Development Award and Residency.

Griffin is also an experienced and passionate producer. He is a core team member and the Creative Producer at Outside the March, where responsibilities include directing, producing, dramaturgy and new work development, communications and season planning. He is the organization’s lead grant writer, responsible for $500,000+ in new grants for the charitable non-profit. He facilitated the company’s Artistic Accomplice apprenticeship program over two seasons and served as Associate Artistic Director in 2018-2019, supported by the Metcalf Foundation for the Performing Arts.

He is a white, cis-gendered, able-bodied man of Scottish, English, Irish and French descent. He mostly works from home, lives in a two-income household and graduated from his undergraduate degree debt-free because of intergenerational wealth. He is a husband, father, son, big brother, grandson, friend, collaborator, mentor and mentee.

He is grateful to split his time between the Ottawa watershed—the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation (Ottawa); and Tkaronto—the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit (Toronto).

griffinmcinnes.com

Laura McCallum

General Manager

Laura McCallum (she/her) is the General Manager at Outside the March. She previously worked with Theatre of the Beat, Studio 180 Theatre, The Shaw Festival, and Theatre By Committee. She is a graduate of Humber’s Arts Administration & Cultural Management post-grad, and the Theatre & Drama Studies program at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College. She enjoys volunteering for the Toronto Theatre Database and learning ASL at the Canadian Hearing Society.

Sébastien Heins

Associate Artistic Director, New Platforms & Initiatives

Passionate about multiple forms of storytelling craft, Sébastien Heins (he/him) is an acclaimed actor, playwright, theatremaker and filmmaker.

For Outside the March, Sebastien has written, directed, designed, and produced bold, high quality trailers and ad campaigns for the company since 2009. Outside the March acting credits include Oh, the Humanity, Mr. Marmalade, Vitals, That Synching Feeling and Mr. Burns: a post-electric play. Other credits include the Stratford Festival’s Breath of Kings: Rebellion & Redemption. Sébastien has worked with Canadian directing legend Bruce McDonald on CBC’s Cracked, has appeared on CTV’s The Listener, and SuperChannel’s Darknet.

Sébastien’s solo show Brotherhood: The Hip Hopera won the Best Emerging Artist Award at United Solo Festival in NYC. In 2013, he wrote and directed “Her Chance to Dream”, a 60 second love story, garnering him the City Stories Award. He directed the creation of Stratford’s first ever Virtual Reality Experience, Breath of Kings 360. He was chosen for the Stratford Playwright’s Retreat, and the Obsidian Playwright’s Unit. He enjoys leading workshops of “Vocal Masque”, the mime-driven- storytelling-style, for the TDSB, UrbanArts, CultureLink, b current, and the Thespo Youth Theatre Festival in India.

He is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.

Allie Wood

Communicatons Designer

Allie Wood (she/her) is a black artist and mental health activist living in Toronto, With a diverse background in both marketing and the arts. She currently works for the SummerWorks Festival as the Marketing Manager. In addition, Allie is the Creative Director of Amplify Collective, a wearable art, performance and advocacy company. Her work has been featured at the ROM, Harbourfront Centre, MMVA’s, Rendezvous with Madness, TIFF and more!

Jeff Ho

Company Dramaturg

Jeff Ho (he/him) is a Toronto-based theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong.

As a playwright, his works include Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land),
produced by Saga Collectif; Antigone: 方, produced by Young People’s Theatre; and
trace, produced by Factory Theatre/ b current performing arts. He has held residencies with the Stratford Festival, Nightswimming, Cahoots, the Banff Playwrights Lab, Factory Theatre, and the Tarragon Theatre. His works are published by Playwrights Canada Press.

Jeff is the Company Dramaturg with Outside the March. He is grateful to have been
honoured with a Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play (Iphigenia);
nominated for four Dora Awards, thrice for Performance (Box 4901, Prince Hamlet,
Hana’s Suitcase) and once as a Playwright (Iphigenia); the Bulmash-Siegal Playwright
Award (Tarragon Theatre); and a Harold Award (House of Nadia Ross). He is a
graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.

Nick Blais

Artistic Council - Head of Design

Nick Blais (he/him) designs across Canada in all manner of discipline and venue: from theatres, parks, abandoned buildings, schools, storefronts, living rooms and concert halls. As Head of Design for Toronto’s leading immersive theatre company, Outside the March, Nick specializes in assembling gifted teams, creating and facilitating thematic, impactful designs, and transforming unconventional spaces into immersive, dramatic environments.

Nick has received Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Toronto for both set and lighting design, nominated for the Virginia Myrtle Cooper award in costume design, and various other awards and nominations across the country. His design work was featured in 2011 at the Prague Quadrennial for Theatre Design, and was showcased in Professional Lighting Magazine for his innovation in off-the-grid lighting design and site-specific scenography. Nblaisdesign.com

For OTM : Mundane Mysteries, Golem’s Mighty Swing, The FLICK, Tape Escape, A Community Target, Dr. Silver, Jerusalem, Lessons in Temperament, TomorrowLove™, Mr. Burns: a post-electric play, Murderers, Terminus.

Select credits include: Oil, Human Animals, Dissidents, Pomona, Moment (ARC); Marjorie Prime, Hand to God, Aliens (Coal Mine); Glass Menagerie (Grand Theatre); Bang Bang (Factory); Unending (Convergence Theatre), Vespers (Royal Winnipeg Ballet); West Side Story (Citadel); Brantwood (Sheridan).

Anahita Dehbonehie

Artistic Associate* & Artistic Council - Resident Designer

Anahita Dehbonehie (she/her) is an Iranian performance designer, creator and installation artist. Currently based in Toronto, her practice is founded on the principle that truths are communicated most powerfully through evocative sensory experiences. She is drawn specifically to work that questions form and content while creating space for contemporary conversation.

Anahita’s work has been featured across Canada and internationally, including at the Prague Quadrennial, The Vilnius Capital of Culture, and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Since making Toronto her home in 2012, her designs have been recognized with a variety of nominations and awards, including two Dora Mavor Moore awards and eight nominations. She was a finalist for the Virginia Myrtle Cooper award in costume design in 2016- 2018 and was named one of Now Magazine’s top theatre artists in 2015 and 2019.

*Anahita’s position is funded with generous support from the Metcalf Foundation’s Performing Arts internship program.

Amy Keating

Artistic Council - Founding Member

Amy Keating (she/her) is a Dora award-winning actor hailing from Edmonton, Alberta. From a very young age, Amy knew that her happiness lay in performing, and she has pursued her passion with a dedicated tenacity and wild abandon. She brings a combination of clown, impulse work and Utah Hagan technique to her acting practice. Amy now calls Toronto home, and is one of the founding members of Outside the March—working to foster deeper connections between the company’s dozens of Associate Artists. Right from the company’s very first production, Oh the Humanity, Amy has been one of the leading voices of Outside the March, creating unforgettable characters in Mr. Marmalade, Passion Play, Mr. Burns and The Flick.

A regular fixture of the local theatre scene, Amy has collaborated with a number of companies in Ontario, including the Stratford Festival, Tarragon Theatre, Necessary Angel, Common Boots, Nightwood Theatre, Canadian Rep, the Harold Green Jewish Theatre, Talk is Free Theatre and Carousel Players. She is also a founding member of the Edmonton-based troupe The Serial Collective.

Ishai Buchbinder

Artistic Council - Founding Member

Ishai Buchbinder (he/him) is a writer, actor and an integral part of the Artistic Council for Outside the March. His love of the morbid, the comedic, and the absurd have led him to an eccentric profile as a theatre artist.

Before returning to Toronto in 2014, Ishai lived in Durham, North Carolina, where he explored the frontiers of immersive theatre. Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern. As a performer in Durham, Ishai’s favourite role was Alek Yelyuk, Ukrainian Badminton player in Tarantino’s Yellow Speedo with Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern. As a performer for Outside the March, his favourite roles include Mr. Burns, the radioactive boogeyman in Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, and Larry, the misanthropic five-year old dreamboat in Mr. Marmalade.

Ishai is currently writing Pets, a darkly comedic fable that investigates the plight of all the inhabitants of a suburban house: the pets, the pests, the plants, and the human in whose shadow they reside. Ishai’s first play, Apples and Oranges tells the story of a young couple marooned on a lifeboat who cannibalize their baby in hunger. On film, Ishai has written and played all eight characters in Traveling Medicine Show: Apocalypse, an absurdist story about the last surviving human living in a theatre with his increasingly outrageous imaginary friends.

Ishai is currently creating a program for youth that fuses adventure education with site-specific theatre creation, developing methods for implanting empathy through performance, and working on methods to game-ify audience participation.

Katherine Cullen

Artistic Council - Founding Member

Katherine Cullen (she/her) is an actor and playwright based in Toronto. Originally from Vancouver, Katherine trained in Montreal and Edmonton, before moving across the country once more to Toronto—following Mitchell Cushman and Amy Keating to Toronto so she could continue to make theatre with Outside The March (and because she just really likes hanging out with them and didn’t want to watch The Wire all by herself). Katherine has appeared in numerous Outside The March productions including playing a series of unstable maternal figures in Mr. Marmalade, a stuttering carpenter with dreams of flight in Passion Play, a post-apocalyptic Marge Simpson in Mr. Burns, and a paramedic in the midst of her own emergency in Vitals (Dora Award Nomination – Outstanding Performance).

Katherine continues to collaborate with Britta Johnson on Stupidhead!: A Musical Comedy, a show based on her experiences growing up with dyslexia, and her overall experience navigating and organizing the world. Stupidhead! originally premiered at the 2015 SummerWorks Festival, where it won the award for Best New Performance Text. The show then enjoyed a successful run as part of Theatre Passe Muraille’s ‘16/’17 season.

Michelle Yagi

Artistic Council

Michelle Yagi (she/her) is a producer and arts administrator with diverse experience working with cultural organizations in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. She graduated from Queen’s University with a degree in theatre before earning a certification in Digital Marketing from the University of Arts London, and a Masters in Arts Administration from Indiana University. She is also a recipient of the Queen’s University Arts Management Award. In the past few years, she has worked with organizations such as the Paprika Festival, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Canada’s Ballet Jorgen, Luminato Festival, Wild Space, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Steppenwolf Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Bloomington Arts Council, Buddies in Bad Times, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University Art Museum and CMart Worldwide Producers. She was thrilled to be Interim Managing Producer for Outside the March’s 2016/2017 season.

Alastair Cheng

Development Consultant

Alastair Cheng is an editor and (recovering) magazine person, who now consults for business and nonprofit clients. He worked for years at the Literary Review of Canada — which covers culture and public affairs, mainly through essays and nonfiction book reviews — starting as an editorial assistant and eventually becoming co-publisher. Alastair also spent time as a political staffer on Parliament Hill and studied philosophy and history at the University of Toronto.