JAYNE EASTWOOD
LADY
Earlier this year Jayne Eastwood received the ACTRA Toronto 2019 Award of Excellence that recognized her 50 year career in film, TV, stage and voice animation. She came to national attention in 1970 in Don Shebib’s classic film Goin’ Down The Road and has since amassed nearly 250 acting credits. Her other films include My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Chicago, Hairspray, Dawn of the Dead, and Videodrome. Among her extensive TV credits are SCTV, King of Kensington, This is Wonderland, Material World, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Riverdale and Workin’ Moms. In 1998 she won a Gemini Award for Dangerous Offender: The Marlene Moore Story. She has voice acted in The Care Bears Movie, Babar, Scaredy Squirrel, and For Better or Worse. She was an original member of the Second City Troupe in Toronto and she is currently part of the popular comedy stage troupe Women Fully Clothed.
JACKIE RICHARDSON
ROSIE
One of Canada’s foremost singers of gospel, blues and jazz, who has performed across the country and internationally, Jackie Richardson is also an award-winning actor who received a Gemini Award for her performance in The Gospel According to the Blues. Her TV work includes This Is Wonderland, Sue Thomas F.B Eye, Further Tales of the City, Road to Avonlea, and her among her film roles are appearances in The Frenchman, Extreme Measures, Three Men and a Baby, and Hoover vs Kennedy. On stage she has played two fabled singers, Big Mama Thornton and Alberta Hunter, and starred in Ain’t Misbehavin’. She received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Cookin’ At The Cookery. A recent career highlight was her appearance at a gala concert at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall marking Canada’s 150 birthday.
WRITER – MORRIS PANYCH
One of Canada’s most celebrated playwrights, Panych has received two Governor General’s Awards for Drama among countless other accolades. His plays have been performed around the world and include The Overcoat, 7 Stories, The Girl in the Goldfish Bowl and Lawrence and Holloman. He is also an accomplished stage director and has mounted productions at the Stratford Festival, Montreal’s Centaur Theatre, Arts Club Vancouver, and at Soulpepper and Canadian Stage Company in Toronto. This fall his play This London Life is premiering at The Grand Theatre in London, ON and in 2020 his Frankenstein Revived will open the new Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford. What about the Hey Lady! switch to TV? “For a playwright to tell a story in about seven minutes is like going on a very strict diet,” Panych notes. “But I feel so much thinner now.”
DIRECTORS
ADRIANA MAGGS is a director, writer, and actress native to Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Currently based in Toronto, Ontario, some of her television writing credits include Frankie Drake Mysteries, Little Dog, and Caught. Adriana wrote and directed Grown Up Movie Star, a film that won the Breakout Performance at Sundance for Tatiana Maslany and the Bird’s Eye Film Festival Best First Feature in London, England. It was also nominated for several Genie awards, including Best Screenplay. In winter of 2018, Adriana directed Goalie, the epic story of legendary hockey player Terry Sawchuk. The feature was co-written with her sister, Jane Maggs, and is based on the award-winning book Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems written by her father Randall Maggs. (2008 Winterset, 2009 EJ Pratt Poetry Prize, 2010 Kobzar Literary award among others.)
SARAH POLLEY received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her first film as director- Away From Her, based on the short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. This film also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for star Julie Christie. Her next film Take This Waltz, which starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman, world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Stories We Tell, her documentary which examines secrets and memory in her own family, won Best Documentary Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, and the New York Film Critics Circle. Sarah also received a Writer’s Guild of America award for its screenplay. Most recently, Sarah executive produced and wrote the Netflix limited series Alias, Grace, which she adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel.
WILL BOWES is best known for his acting appearances in films like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and television series including Alias Grace. The Toronto-based artist won 1st place in the 2018 International Songwriting Competition with his single, Mad at the World. Upcoming appearances include Spinning Out (Netflix), and A Teacher (FX) before releasing his debut solo album, Character, in early 2020.
