Concordia University

Faculty & Alumni

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  Noah

  Associate Professor, Chair of Concordia’s Department of Theatre

  Noah Drew is an "all-terrain theatre artist" originally from Vancouver. He has worked across North America, and in Europe and South America, as an actor, composer, sound designer, writer/director/dramaturge, and teacher. He is the co-supervisor of the Acting for the Theatre (ACTT) program at Concordia. He’s a Certified Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and has taught dozens of workshops around the world in this radical approach to voice training. Noah has taught several times in the Fitzmaurice Voicework Teacher Certification programs in New York and Los Angeles, and is the former Director of Conferences for the Fitzmaurice Institute. He’s a co-artistic director of the theatre and new media company Jump Current Performance and is a founding member of the research cluster LePARC MILEUX.

  Noah’s sound designs and music for theatre and dance have been performed on four continents, and have been honoured with six Jessie Awards (19 nominations total) and a Siminovitch Prize nomination. Noah’s projects have included work with the National Arts Centre of Canada (Ottawa), NeWorld Theatre (Vancouver), The Arts Club (Vancouver), Bard on the Beach (Vancouver), The Belfry Theatre (Victoria), Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre (Ottawa), Little Swan Pictures (Philadelphia/Portland), Theatre Tribe (Los Angeles), and White Pines Productions (Philadelphia), as well as many others. Prior to joining Concordia in 2012, Noah taught at Vancouver Film School, Temple University, Douglas College and various private schools/studios in Canada and the U.S.

  Noah's research and research-creation focuses on exploring strategies for catalyzing and cultivating heightened states of presence in performers and audiences. Noah's work draws on aspects of sensory immersion and sensory dramaturgy; (auto)ethnography and a dynamic interplay between true lived experiences and fiction; gamified theatre, and somatic practices.

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  Robert Reid

  Full-Time Faculty, Associate Professor

  Robert Reid is a director based in Montreal. He teaches mainly performance/acting, stage/theatre directing and the translation of text analysis into stage dynamics. He is the co-supervisor of the Acting for the Theatre (ACTT) program at Concordia.

  His artistic work and his research focuses on the links between ancient or traditional forms and contemporary stage practices; and more recently on experiments around the common and new forms of “popular performances”. His past and current artistic projects involve works by Le Groupe de poésie moderne, Edward Bond (The War Plays), John Mighton (Body and Soul), Witold Gombrowich (Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne), Tankred Dorst (Fernando Krapp m’a écrit cette lettre), Roland Schimlepfennig (Arabian nights),Martin Crimp (Face au mur), Eduardo de Filippo (l’Art de la comédie). He also collaborated on various devised projects involving Beijing opera and Western Theatre.

  Influenced in his research and practice by the work of V. Meyerhold, he’s been a long time student of Gennadi Bogdanov. Considered in Canada as a specialist of the use of Theatrical Biomechanics in contemporary performances, he created in 2017 an international research group that focuses on this topic in collaboration with l’université Grenoble-Alpes (France), MicroTeatro (Italy) and Mime Centrum (Germany). He published various articles on this subject,was editor of an issue of L’Annuaire Théâtral on “La tradition et le contemporain”. He also occasionally translated plays.
  Robert Reid gave lectures and workshops at various international institutions. Among them L’ÉcoleNational Supérieure (Paris), Università di Bologna, The National Academy ofChinese Theatre Arts -NACTA- (Beijing), TheCentral Academy of Drama (Beijing), l’université Grenoble-Alpes (France) and l’université Laval (Québec).

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  Menka Nagrani

  Full-Time Faculty, Assistant Professor

  Menka Nagrani is a multidisciplinary artist who weaves together theatre, dance and music. As a performer, she has acted and danced in several venues including in the IV Jeux de la Francophonie, held in Lebanon. She studied contemporary and traditional forms of dance, explored several acting techniques, learned classical piano and participated in numerous choir ensembles. She completed a Master’s degree in Theatre at Université du Québec à Montréal.

  Menka seeks unique and socially engaged artistic adventures. She founded Les Productions des pieds des mains in 2004, one of the very first inclusive dance theatre companies in Quebec. Her interdisciplinary creations are at the crossroad of experimental theatre and contemporary dance and also include other art forms such as singing, video or percussive dance. She as created numerous socially engaged and acclaimed productions both in Montreal (Tangente, Théâtre LaChapelle, Théâtre Prospero…) and internationally (France, Belgium, UK, Japan). She has also produced several short films acclaimed in international film festivals.

  Menka has won several awards for her work: Cochons d’or, Prix Janine Sutto, Prix de la Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse, Prix Essor, and a Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec Award for her artistic career. She was appointed Member of the order of Canada for her “extraordinary contribution to the Nation”.

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  Leslie Baker

  Part Time Faculty

  Leslie Baker, a graduate of the Experimental Theatre Wing of NYU's TISCH School for the Arts (BFA), Missouri State University (MA) and Towson University (MFA), has worked as a director, assistant director, acting and movement teacher, movement coach and performer in both theatre and performance art; working internationally since the mid-1990’s. She loves working in traditional arenas as well as site specific performance installations, exploring performance in theatrical contexts while simultaneously working with interventionist experiences. In these various capacities, Leslie has had the opportunity over the years to work with Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Emma Tibaldo, Tedi Tafel, Peter Bottazzi, Micheline Chevrier, Leeny Sack, Mary Overlie, Ruth Madoc-Jones, Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre and Bettina Hoffman amongst others.

  Leslie’s specialty is devised physical / visual theatre. These performances have been presented at Espace Tangente, Studio 303’s Edgy Women, Summerworks in Toronto and Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival. Her creations have as well toured to various festivals in Europe and the United States. For over 20 years, Leslie has been teaching the Six Viewpoints and a Physical Approach to Acting. She has taught at the National Theatre School of Canada, Concordia University, University of Costa Rica, Studio 303, EOLIA Center (Barcelona) and Carver Center for Arts (Baltimore), amongst others.

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  Suzanne Cerreta

  Part Time Faculty

  Suzanne has been teaching accents, dialects, and voice and speech for over 15 years, both here in Montreal and in her home town of NYC. She has a BFA in acting from Carnegie Mellon University where she received the Thomas Auclair Memorial Scholarship Award and the Judith Light West Coast Drama Alumni Award for excellence in acting. She has worked in NYC in theatre, TV, and film, including off-Broadway plays The Maiden's Prayer, The Tempest, Spike Heels, and films such as, Puccini For Beginners, A Most Violent Year, and of course, every NY actor's calling card, Law & Order. Suzanne is most proud of her voice over work in dozens of national US commercials for TV and radio, video games and audiobooks.

  Voice work and accents have always been a major passion, and she completed her MA at Concordia in 2016 in Applied Linguistics, where she combined her years of experience as an actor and coach of accents and dialects with the applied science and research of linguistics. She drew from the work of Dudley Knight and developed a sensory based speech curriculum, testing it out on Francophone actors in Montreal for her thesis research. Her research article, Engaging the Senses, is published in the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. Some of her accent and dialect clients include Mylene Mackay, Noemie O'Farrell, Zachary Quinto, Lynn Collins, Tommar Wilson (Hamilton), Sophie Sumner (America's Next Top Model), and many others.

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  Joe De Pau

  Part Time Faculty

  Canadian actor, writer, teacher, director and clown Joe De Paul is a graduate of Concordia University ‘91. Acting in various productions across Canada, ranging from classical theatre to new works, in theatres, in schools, in parks, on screen and under the Spadina bridge. Joe began his career as a clown in 1999 and performed in numerous Cirque du Soleil productions, including his debut in the North American tour and in the Emmy award winning film version of Dralion. Joe’s unique physical comedy has brought him critical acclaim in various circuses and cabarets in in North America and Europe including Salto Natale in Zurich, PALAZZO in Germany, and Cirque Zanzibar in France. Joe has toured from Spain to Finland with Los Galindos street circus. Joe cofounded the “ Collectif Clown International de Marseille” for the research and development of new works. He has taught at the Geneva Circus School, FRACO clown school in France, National Theatre School of Canada and Concordia University. He has written comedy and directed for Cirque du Soleil’s Ama Luna, Ka, Drawn to Life and directed and starred in multiple productions of Teatro Zinzanni in The USA. Joe has authored and toured two full length clown productions, Placebo and Mr.P.P. and Joe in Canada and Spain. He also works on a continuing basis with Dr.Clown as a therapeutic clown for Hospitals, schools and seniors residences.

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  Harry Standjofski

  Part Time Faculty

  Harry Standjofski has been an actor, playwright, director, musician and teacher based in Montreal working in both English and French since 1982.

  Recent stage roles include Hellfire Pass and Don Quixote at the Centaur Theatre, Un Maison Face au Nord at Théâtre Jean Duceppe, My Name is Jean-Paul at the Théâtre D'aujourd'hui and The Little Prince and The Jungle Book for Geordie Theatre.

  Recent film and television work in English includes the manic railway cop in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet, Capaldi in Nickelodeon's hit Nicky Deuce and Dr. Morty in Barney's Version. In French he played Tom Cohen in Radio-Canada's hit TV series À Nous Deux for three seasons and recently finished shooting as the sleazy lawyer Moise Loman in the upcoming La Marraine. Recent big screen credits include the role of George Buchanan in the Quebecois cult film Un Capitalisme Sentimentale. You have undoubtedly heard his voice on innumerable cartoon series, documentary narrations, t.v. & radio commercials and video games, including all incarnations of Assassin's Creed.
  He has also created & performed the music for Geordie's The Little Prince as well as choreographer Florence Figols' mute/sense veu/en silence and he was house guitarist for the fabulous Kiss my Cabaret from 2001 to 2008.

  Playwright-in-residence at Montreal's Centaur theatre in 1986/87 his recently produced plays include After Miss Julie, two/three, Here & There (Masque Award nomination 2005) as well as four plays for young audiences produced by Geordie Theatre, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Story Wars and Pinocchio.

  Since 2007 he has been curating, directing, translating, writing some pieces for, acting in, as well as creating and performing the music for Les Contes Urbains/Urban Tales at the Centaur theatre.

  He has been on the part-time faculty at Montreal's Concordia University since 1986 for whom he has directed the shows: Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet; Atreus; The Bacchae; Little Katrina; Metamorphoses and Theatre/Business.

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  Gabriela Petrov

  Part-Time Faculty

  Gabriela Petrov is a theatre artist and educator based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She has taught performance practices independently and at institutions including McGill University, John F. Kennedy Adult Education Centre and Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She has over a decade of training and practice in the Six Viewpoints approach to performance and studied under the mentorship of Wendell Beavers and Barbara Dilley. She also specializes in Somatic practices and is currently working through Esprit en Mouvement’s Body-Mind Centering® program towards certification as a Somatic Movement Educator with the support of a Professional Development grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Gabriela leads embodiment workshops for artists from a diversity of disciplines and recently launched The Mindful Body, a guided audio-series to create space for simple, everyday embodiment.
  Gabriela is founder of the Habitat Practice Group, a community of artists interested in experimenting with performance through a Somatic lens. Her recent artistic work explores the deconstruction of performance practices through embodied inquiry. Recent professional credits include Repercussion Theatre’s summer tour of Measure for Measure and being featured in the digital Wee Festival with My Silly Yum, a puppetry show for young audiences she co-created.

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  Annie Murphy

  Graduated 2010

  Annie Murphy’s past projects have included Rookie Blue, Flashpoint, Good God, The Story of Jen, Beauty and the Beast, and Blue Mountain State. Murphy has also worked in theatre in Montreal and Toronto.

  Murphy is currently starring in the Emmy-nominated Schitt’s Creek for CBC/ITV. She stars alongside Eugene Levy, Daniel Levy, Catherine O’Hara, and Chris Elliott as Alexis Rose, the daughter of Eugene Levy and O’Hara. For her performance in the series, she garnered critical acclaim and won a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, while also receiving nominations for four Canadian Screen Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Critics' Choice Television Awards, and one Golden Globe Award. Her performance has been hailed by critics as “breakthrough” and “more than just good acting, it’s a freakin’ magic trick”. Buzzfeed ranked her performance as the most “criminally underrated of the 2010s”.
  Murphy wrote, produced, and acted in The Plateaus, a CBC web series, which also features Elisha Cuthbert, Jay Baruchel, Sam Roberts, and Kevin MacDonald. She is a graduate of both the Canadian Film Centre Actors’ Conservatory and the Theatre Performance Program at Concordia University. She resides in Toronto, Ontario and was born in Ottawa.

  Murphy is a CARE Canada Ambassador and travelled to Jordan in September 2019 to highlight the issues women, girls, and Syrian refugees are facing.

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  Jimmy Blais

  Graduated 2010

  Jimmy is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, he is of Plains Cree and French settler heritage.

  Born and raised in Montreal, Jimmy graduated from Concordia’s Theatre Performance Program. He is a seasoned stage and film actor. He has worked professionally for over 10 years, for companies like The Stratford Festival, The Centaur, Geordie Productions, Porte Parole and La Licorne. He has had roles in television and film for HBO Canada, Discovery Channel, CBC and Space as well as multiple award-winning short films. Jimmy's most notable tv role was playing Watio for five seasons in APTN's hit series Mohawk Girls. Jimmy is also a writer, director, mentor and coach. He spent several years as a visiting artist/associate professor at Concordia University and as a mentor in Black Theatre Workshop’s Artist Mentorship Program. He was the Indigenous Artist in Residence for the 2016 Students On Ice Expedition to the Arctic. Jimmy just successfully completed the Indigenous Artist In Residence at The National Theatre School of Canada, where he spent 18 months focusing on creation and playwrighting. His play “Sonny's Way” was presented at Native Earth's Weesageechak Begins To Dance festival in Toronto in November 2019 and is set to be produced in 2022.

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  James Tupper

  Graduated 1992

  Tupper was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He studied acting at Concordia University Montreal, and later at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he earned a master's degree. He known for his roles as Jack Slattery on the ABC television series Men in Trees, Dr. Chris Sands on the NBC medical drama series Mercy, Nathan Carlson on Big Little Lies, and David Clarke on ABC's Revenge.

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  Antoine Yared

  Graduated 2011

  Born in Lebanon and raised in Montreal, Antoine has performed in theatres across Canada and the United States. He most recently appeared in A Thousand Splendid Suns at Arena Stage in Washington DC. Prior to that Antoine had the pleasure to perform in Indecent at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, A Christmas Carol at Soulpepper in Toronto and The Last Wife at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal.

  He also appeared in Groundling Theatre’s production of LEAR in Toronto. Other career highlights include Romeo in Romeo & Juliet at the Stratford Festival where he spent five seasons appearing in productions like The Madwoman of Chaillot, John Gabriel Borkman, Macbeth, As You Like It, King John, The Alchemist, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Merchant of Venice and Pericles.