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Kamal Al-Solaylee, the former Drama Critic for the Globe and Mail, has written extensively and passionately about theatre for years, most notably as the lead theatre writer at Toronto's Eye weekly. Kamal has more than 4300 reviews and feature stories under his belt, covering every aspect of Canadian theatre from Mirvish megamusicals to one-person fringe show. He has also written on theatre for The National Post, Xtra! and Elle Canada.

Last year, he was selected by the editors of Time Out in London to write the Theatre and Dance chapter for their first travel guide to Toronto (2003). Kamal holds a PhD in Victorian Literature from Nottingham University, England, specializing in 19th century melodrama. He also co-edited volumes of Victorian fiction for both Oxford University Press and Everyman Paperbacks. He joined The Globe and Mail in October 2000 as production editor for Report on Business magazine. Since then, he has contributed numerous stories to Globe television, Review, Foreign News, Travel, Focus, and of course, Report on Business Magazine.

Mary Alderson returned to writing theatre reviews six years ago on freelance basis. She recently established her own website www.entertainthisthought.com, and has an e-mail list of over 200 interested readers. As well, she supplied publications such as the Strathroy Age-Dispatch and Sarnia's First Monday magazine, and websites www.stage-door.com, www.theatreinlondon.ca and www.grandbendstrip.com.

Mary has been a fan of live theatre since her first visit to the Stratford Festival as a child, where she saw Christopher Walken and Louise Marleau in Romeo and Juliet. She holds a B.A. Honours English and an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario, London. After graduation, Mary was a reporter for the Exeter Times-Advocate and reviewed shows at Grand Bend's Huron Country Playhouse.

She now lives in Strathroy, Ontario, central to southwestern Ontario's many professional theatres.

Audrey M. Ashley was born in Birmingham, England, and with her husband James emigrated to Canada in 1951 and settled in Ottawa. For almost 30 years she worked at the Ottawa Citizen, 25 of them as music and drama editor, columnist and theatre critic. Her reviews and interviews from those years are now in the City of Ottawa Archives. She was also a correspondent for the former Centre Stage magazine and contributed the Ontario chapter of "Contemporary Canadian Theatre" (Simon & Pierre, 1985. In addition to her Ottawa beat she regularly covered the Stratford and Shaw Festivals as well as occasional productions in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and New York. In 1977 she was awarded the Queen's Silver Service Medal for her service to the arts.

Following her move to Stratford in 1985, she continued to review on a freelance basis for The Ottawa Citizen and later for the Stratford Beacon-Herald. Her biography of actor Mervyn (Butch) Blake and his 42 seasons with The Stratford Festival, "With Love from Butch", was published in 1999. Prof. James Noonan, writing in the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia in 2000, notes that… "no woman in Canada has been a regular theatre critic longer." Through the generosity of Barbara Crook and her family an award in Audrey's name has been established by the Capital Critics Circle in Ottawa, to be awarded annually in recognition of the work of theatre critics in the capital area.

Jeniva Berger was born in Chicago, Illinois. She immigrated to Canada in 1957 and received a M.A. in drama from the University of Toronto 1976. She has been reviewing theatre on a regular basis since the late 1970's, writing on theatre and entertainment on a regular basis for such publications as Toronto Calendar Magazine, the Canadian Jewish News, Scene Changes Magazine — which she served as editor from 1977 to 1982 — and Toronto Tonight. Other theatre pieces have appeared in The Guardian and Melody Maker (Great Britain), the Canadian Theatre Review, the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Oxford Companion to Canadian Drama, and for the book Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions. She is the author of a handbook for theatre publicists, For Immediate Release. Currently, she is publisher, reviewer and webmaster for www.scenechanges.com. She was a regular columnist on Toronto theatre and arts events for The Buffalo News for six years. She is the co-founder (with Herbert Whittaker) and Founding President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association and served for many years as Chair/Coordinator of the Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Theatre Criticism.

Patricia Black was born in London, England. She worked as a reporter and photographer for the British Travel and Holidays Association. In 1958 she immigrated to Toronto where she worked for the Crest Theatre. Since 1970 she has lived in London, Ontario, and is a theatre columnist for Scene Magazine. She has been published in a variety of literary journals, newspapers and anthologies, including two editions of The Morningside Papers. Her poems have been aired on several radio and television stations, including the CBC and WTN. Patricia is an instructor of Creative Writing and Writing Life Stories for the University of Western Ontario's Faculty of Continuing Studies, and she is in demand as a pre-performance theatre lecturer, theatre festival adjudicator and panelist. She has interviewed numerous theatre luminaries, including Timothy Findley and James Reaney. In 1994 Patricia was the winner of the Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Theatre Criticism, Short Review Category.

Robin Breon was born in State College, Pennsylvania and attended Penn State University (B.A.) where he majored in theatre arts and communications. After university he toured nationally for two years with the New Shakespeare Company of San Francicso (Margrit Roma, artistic director) and then immigrated to Canada in 1972 where he worked as a freelance arts journalist in Toronto and was a founding member of the Toronto Drama Bench. He returned to Pennsylvania in the mid-70s where he received a masters degree in education from Lehigh University's Social Restoration Program. After teaching English and drama at the secondary and post-secondary levels, he returned to Canada in 1981, to work for Black Theatre Canada as publicist and administrator until 1988 when he became program administrator for the Museum Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Over the years his theatre reviews, articles and cultural essays have appeared in a wide variety of print media, popular and academic journals including Canadian Theatre Review, American Theatre, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Chronicle for Higher Education, Theatre History in Canada, TDR-Drama Review, Toronto Review of Writing Abroad, Our Times and others. He teaches a course on arts journalism for the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, is on the advisory committee of the Theatre Museum and is a regular contributor to AisleSay.com (the independent internet journal of theatre review and opinion).

Victoria Times Colonist theatre critic since 1987. Three British Columbia Newspaper Foundation for awards for arts writing. Master of Arts from the University of Western Ontario.

The Globe and Mail (Senior Dance Writer), CLASSICAL 97 FM (Arts Reviewer, Toronto Life Magazine (Dance Previews), Opera Canada Magazine (Associate Editor)

Kerry Corrigan has been Theatre Critic and Entertainment Writer for View Magazine, Hamilton, Ontario since 19

She was Theatre Critic and Entertainment Writer for the Etobicoke Guardian from 1990 to 1998, and for Etobicoke Life from 1998 to 2002.

Born in England, educated at Cambridge University, worked in professional theatre as director, writer and performer. Theatre critic, The Observer, 1973-84. Came to Canada 1987. Theatre critic of The National Post since its inception in 1999. Has also written for Globe and Mail, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, New York Times, and taught theatre at York University. Winner of six Nathan Cohen Awards. A frequent broadcaster in Canada and the UK, especially on musical theatre (Book Music and Lyrics, BBC) and American popular song (Songbook, CBC).

Publications: Fifty Seasons at Stratford (2002). Produced or the Quantum Book Group by Madison Press Books, Toronto.

James Hoffman is Professor of Theatre at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. His research specialty is the theatre history and culture of British Columbia. He is presently examining the relationship between professional theatre companies in small cities (Kamloops, Prince George, Nanaimo) and their communities. His latest publication (2009) is a chapter in the book, The Last Best West, An Exploration of Myth, Identity and Quality of Life in Western Canada (New Star Books), titled, "Professional Theatre and Community Engagement in Three Small Cities in British Columbia." He has co-edited Playing the Pacific Province: An Anthology of British Columbia Plays, 1967-2000 (Playwrights Canada Press), Alan Filewod's Performing Canada: The Nation Enacted in the Imagined Theatre (TSC Monographs), and edited George Ryga: The Other Plays (Talonbooks) and George Ryga: The Prairie Novels (Talonbooks).

A selection of other publications includes: The Ecstasy of Resistance, A Biography of George Ryga, Toronto: ECW Press, 1995; "Biocritical Essay" in The George Ryga Papers, University of Calgary Press, 1995; "Genre Contention at the New Play Centre," in Theatre Research in Canada, Vol. 16, Nos. 1-2; "Theatre" entry in The Encyclopedia of British Columbia, Vancouver: Harbour Publishing, 1999; "Subverting Modernisms in British Columbia: Christopher Dafoe at the Vancouver Sun, 1968-1975," chapter in Establishing Our Boundaries: English Canadian Theatre Criticism, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999; and "Shedding the Colonial Past: Rethinking British Columbia Theatre," in BC Studies 137 (Spring 2003). He also writes program notes for plays staged by Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops.

Christopher Innes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK), and Distinguished Research Professor at York University, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture.

He has published over 85 essays and 13 books, most recently: Avant Garde Theatre (Routledge), Modern British Drama: the Twentieth Century ( Cambridge), Hedda Gabler — A Sourcebook (Routledge), and Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street (Yale: available Fall 2005).

He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bernard Shaw, as well as the General Editor for the Cambridge "Directors in Perspective" series, and Co-Editor for theLives of the Theatre Series (Praeger/Greenwood). He was a Contributing Editor for The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, and has been Co-Editor of the quarterly journal Modern Drama.

At York he founded the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program and served as its first Director, as well as establishing a faculty and graduate student exchange program with the Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz.

Gordon Jones is a Professor of English specializing in Shakespeare and Drama at Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland. He has been director of a number of amateur Shakespeare productions from 1983 to 1996 such Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew (twice), The Comedy of Errors (twice), Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like it, Much Ad About Nothing, and Romeo and Juliet. He was freelance theatre reviewer for CBC Radio, St. John's from 1985 to 1994 and for The Telegram from 1994 to 2003. He has contributed to Theatrum, Performance Arts and Entertainment in Canada. He is the 1992 winner of the Nathan Cohen Award in the Broadcast/Telecast division and the author of The Irish Caruso, a one-man play with music on the life of John McCormack, first performed in 1996. He is a member of the Board of the National Theatre School of Canada and of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association.

James Karas holds degrees in English Literature and Law from the University of Toronto. In addition to practicing law and extensive community involvement, he has taught at Ryerson University and writes on theatre and opera for The Greek Press and reviews books for Hellenic Way.

Jon Kaplan is is senior theatre writer for NOW Magazine and has been writing about theatre in the publication since it began in 1981. He was also theatre critic for CJRT FM the Toronto correspondent for the New York-based BackStage and the London-based Plays International. He received a Brenda Donohue Award and a Harold, both for his contributions to the Toronto theatre community.

Patricia Keeney has been a freelance theatre critic for more than 15 years for such publications as Canadian Forum, Scene Changes, Canadian Theatre Review, Canadian Literature, Performing Arts in Canada, and Maclean's. She is the author of six volumes of poetry (Oberon Press) and one novel (Black Moss). She is currently writing a novel about theatre under the Amin regime in Uganda. She is Professor of Creative Writing at York University.

Founding member of CTCA. Since 1991 Alide has been a regular arts review columnist for Seniors Review and is an arts feature writer. She was a regular contributor to Perspectives on Canada ( Ottawa ) until publication's demise in 2002. From 1979-88 she was full-time general arts writer, critic, and editor at St. Catharines Standard, and prior to that a freelance general reporter and arts writer for The Globe & Mail, Niagara Falls Gazette, Niagara Falls , New York ; Courier Express, Buffalo , NY ; St. Catharines Standard, St. Catharines , ON .

She has directed two advertising films promoting children and women's issues and was Promotion Manager for CTV Network, Toronto.

She has taught English and lectured on Canadian and Chinese history at a college in Changchun, China and wrote and published 'Western Etiquette', published in Chinese in China. In addition, Alide has had poetry published in China , and is a lyricist for a composer in Germany , who uses only English language lyrics. Her volume of poems, A Meditation on Nature was published in 2006.

Having recently completed his MA in Theatre Studies specializing in Theatre Criticism, Byron is now working towards a PhD at York University in Canadian Theatre History. As a critic, he is a free-lancer whose work can be found frequently in EYE WEEKLY in Toronto. Previously he had been a staff writer for York's Excalibur newspaper and, in that time, had covered Theatre as well as Film and the Visual Arts. He recently attended the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, is a graduate Fellow from the National Critics Institute's 'Boot Camp', and has attended numerous of the International Association of Theatre Critics’ New Critics Seminars.

Artistically, Byron is the co-Artistic Director of Up Your Nose and In Your Toes Productions and the director of the critically acclaimed Morro and Jasp do Puberty which ran at the Toronto Fringe in 2009. Previous UNIT works include Morro and Jasp GO GREEN, The Truth According to Morro and Jasp, and The Bully Project: Clowns in the Round, a co-production with Toronto’s premiere Forum theatre makers Mixed Company. Byron was also the founder and Artistic Director of Theatre du Refuse which produced the five star hit The Hunt For Treasure at the 2006 Toronto Fringe which later ran Off Broadway in New York with English Rose Productions.

In addition, Byron worked as Dramaturg and Associate Director at the University of Toronto's historical Hart House Theatre on its musical theatre productions of Godspell, the sell out hit The Rocky Horror Show, and the Canadian Premiere of Reefer Madness. He also toured with the Canadian Improv Showcase for seven years, performing in over 400 shows including school shows, fringe festivals, workshops, corporate events, comedy clubs and a cultural exchange to Singapore.

Sheila Martindale wrote the theatre column for Scene Magazine (London, Ontario) from 1989 to 2007, and for The Lake Erie Beacon (Port Stanley, Ontario) from 2004 to 2008. She has also published one play, eight books of poetry and several hundred articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines in Canada and the USA. She was the poetry editor of Canadian Author for fifteen years, and the Canadian editor of Bogg (USA) for twenty-one years. Sheila has taught creative writing at the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College, as well as business English for 3M and other major Canadian companies, and is in demand as a literary adjudicator and workshop facilitator. Sheila now lives in Victoria, BC.

Martin Morrow has been a theatre critic since the 1980s. He served as chief critic for the Calgary Herald from 1988 until 2000, during which time he won the 1995 Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Theatre Criticism. He was the arts editor and theatre reviewer for Fast Forward, Calgary's alternative weekly, from 2003 to 2006, and prior to that was a regular contributor to the arts pages of the Globe and Mail (2000-2003). Morrow has a particular interest in experimental and avant-garde work and is the author of "Wild Theatre: The History of One Yellow Rabbit," published by the Banff Centre Press (2003) and nominated for an Alberta Book Award. Morrow is currently a Toronto-based arts producer for CBC.ca, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website, where he continues to write about theatre.

RICHARD OUZOUNIAN is Theatre Critic of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper, as well as the Canadian Theatre Reporter and Critic for Variety , "the bible of show business". He has worked professionally in the Performing Arts for the past 35 years. In that time, he has written, directed, or acted in over 225 productions, served as Artistic Director of 5 major Canadian theatres, been an Associate Director of the Stratford Festival of Canada for 4 seasons, and was Harold Prince's assistant on the original Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera . His recent works for the stage include Larry's Party, Emily and Dracula: a Chamber Musical — all of which broke box office records across North America as well as the francophone musical, Dracula: Entre l'amour et la mort, which enjoyed a successful year-long tour of Quebec and Ontario. From 1990 through 2004, he was the host of CBC's weekly radio program on musical theatre called Say It With Music which was heard throughout Canada and from 1995-2000 he served as Creative Head of Arts Programming at TVOntario. He has had 6 books published by McArthur and Company, including a collection of his celebrity interviews, entitled Are You Trying To Seduce Me, Miss Turner?

Malcolm Page is Professor Emeritus of English at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., and a past President of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research. He writes the Vancouver column for the British monthly, Plays International. His essay on Sharon Pollock's early plays is reprinted in Sharon Pollock, ed. Anne F. Nothof (Guernica, 2000). His essay, '14 Propositions about Theatre in British Columbia,' first published in Journal of Canadian Studies, will be reprinted in Theatre in British Columbia (Playwrights Canada, 2006). He is currently working on the recent history of theatre in Vancouver.

In his 14-year career with The Kingston Whig-Standard, David Prosser won five Nathan Cohen Awards and two National Newspaper Awards for theatre criticism. He also won a 1986 Centre for Investigative Journalism Award for his story on Soviet POWs in occupied Afghanistan, and a third National Newspaper Award in 1990 for editorial writing. In 1991 he was awarded a Southam Fellowship to study at the University of Toronto.

He is now Director of Literary Services at the Stratford Festival of Canada, where he oversees the editorial content of all Festival publications. Two one-hour scripts that he created based on the writings of Robertson Davies, were presented at the Stratford Festival in 2001, and his adaptation of Plato's Symposium was presented in the 2003 season's series of public workshop readings.

Currently, President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. Don Rubin is Editor of the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre. He was Founding Editor and Editor for eight years of Canadian Theatre Review, and former Chair, Department of theatre, York University. Don has been a freelance critic for more than 30 years reviewing for, among others, the Toronto Star, CBC Radio, CITY-TV, Canadian Forum, Maclean's, New Haven Register (US), Entre (Sweden), Dialog (Poland), Teatteri Finland, Teatr (Russia), Theatre Quarterly (UK). He was co-founder and former president of the Toronto Drama Bench, former President of the Canadian Centre of the International Theatre Institute, former chair, International Permanent Committee on Theatre Publishing. Don is Professor at the Department of Theatre, York University.

He is the Editor of the standard textbook, Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings (Playwrights Canada Press).

Currently Co-President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association, Alvina Ruprecht has been the regular theatre reviewer on CBC Ottawa morning since 1981. She can also be heard and read on the CBC website: ottawa.cbc.ca/ottawamorning/theatre.html, on the Parisian critics site www.theatredublog.unblog.fr, and on the Caribbean web sites www.madinin-art.net and www.gensdelacaraibe.org. She is professor Emeritus at Carleton University and currently adjunct professor in the Theatre Department of the University of Ottawa. She has published in Theatre Research in Canada, Essays in Theatre, Canadian Theatre Review, and the Quebec theatre journals l'Annuaire theatral and Cahiers de theatre Jeu as well as theatre journals abroad. Her book, Les Theatres francophones et creolophones de la Caraibe, (coll. Univers theatral, Paris l'Harmattan was published in 2003. Thanks to a recent SSHRC research grant. she has been able to persue her research on Francophone theatres in the Indian Ocean, in the South Pacific and in the francophone and creolophone spaces in the Caribbean and South America (Guyane). Her research web site is another result of this SSHRC grant: www.carleton.ca/francotheatres. She is currently engaged in a Caribbean theatre repertory project involving the English, Spanish and French speaking countries of the region; she is preparing a book on the theatres of New Caledonia and Tahiti and a second publication on the origins of Guadeloupean theatre.

Denis Salter has been a Contributing Editor of Theater (http://www.yale.edu/drama/publications/theater/editorial.htm), published by the Yale University School of Drama, since 1993. He has published articles and interviews for Theater on a wide range of national and international productions. A specialist in Canadian/Québécois theatre, modern drama, Victorian and Edwardian stage history, Shakespeare in performance, and dramaturgy and criticism, he teaches at McGill University, where he served as Director of the Drama and Theatre program from 1989 to 1993. A past President (1987-89) of the Association for Canadian Theatre History (now the Association for Canadian Theatre Research), he serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Theatre History Studies, Comparative Drama, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, alt. theatre: cultural diversity and the stage, Studies in Theatre and Performance, the Journal of Theatre and Drama, the International Journal of Scottish Theatre, Essays on Canadian Writing, Essays in Theatre, Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches Théâtrales au Canada, the Theater in the Americas series, and the Theatre Museum Canada. He is a two-time winner of the Richard Plant Best Essay Prize (2000 and 2003) awarded by the Association for Canadian Theatre Research. He is the co-editor of the Canadian drama section of the online Literary Encyclopedia (http://www.litency.com). He is the Associate Editor of alt. theatre: cultural diversity and the stage , a quarterly magazine published by Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montréal.

Freelance Theatre Journalist, Michael J. Sidnell is Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, where he still teaches on an annual basis. He is the former Director, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, and Director of Graduate Studies in English at the University of Toronto. Currently he is writing for the Journal of Canadian Studies, Modern Drama, The Canadian Theatre Review, and the Cambridge University Press.

"Authorizations of the Performative: Whose performances of What, and for Whom?" The Performance Text, ed. Domenico Pietropaolo, The Ottawa: Legas, 1999. (Pp. 97-112).

"Mode narratif et mode dramatique: reflexions � partir de la piece Le chien de Jean-Marc Dalp�" L'Annuaire th�atr�l: revue d'histoire et de recherche, 10 (automne 1991) 173-187 (Translated by Jean-Guy Laurin).

"Polygraph: somatic truth and an art of presence" Canadian Theatre Review, 64 (Fall, 1990) 45-48.

Gary Smith is the Theatre and Dance Critic for The Hamilton Spectator, the Toronto Dance Correspondent for Ballet Review, and contributes to Dance International Magazine, Revue and CanPlay.

Charoula (Hara) Stathopoulos writes in English about theatre and North American news items for Eleftheria, a daily Greek Newspaper where he works as Canadian correspondent. He also writes for The Greek Press, a weekly Canadian ethnic journal, and has his own own program on Odyssey Television Network & Hellenic Canadian Chronicles. He specializes in ancient Greek theatre studies and classical Greek Theatre.

A former stage manager and theatrical technician, John Threlfall has been the theatre critic for Victoria BC's Monday Magazine since 1999, and the Arts Editor of this award-winning alternative weekly since 2001. As well as being one of the founder of Victoria's annual Critic's Choice Spotlight Awards, he has also been nominated in the arts writing category of the Association of Alternative Weeklies (AAN) awards and is a regular contributor to CBC's Definitely Not The Opera. With degrees in History and English, Threlfall also juggles teaching and freelancing with various book projects… and still manages to spend time with his family. An admitted musical theatre junkie, he one day intends to write a musical of his own.

Anton Wagner has edited ten books on Canadian theatre and drama including Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism (University of Toronto Press, 1999) and The Worlds of Herman Voaden (http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/voaden/index.htm) about the experimental Canadian director and playwright of the 1930s. Anton was the director of research and managing editor of the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, published by Routledge. He has produced and directed a dozen documentaries including Our Hiroshima, distributed by the National Film Board of Canada.

Jerry Wasserman is Professor of English and Theatre at UBC and editor of the two-volume anthology Modern Canadian Plays (Talonbooks), now in its 4th edition. He has published widely on Canadian drama and theatre in academic journals and encyclopedia, and he co-produced, hosted and wrote Modern Canadian Theatre , a 12-hour television series for BC's Open Learning Agency. As an actor Jerry has appeared on most of Vancouver 's professional stages and in over 200 TV episodes, MOW's, and feature films (see www.imdb.com for a partial list). He has reviewed theatre since 1985 on CBC radio where he was the regular critic for Radio One's The Afternoon Show in Vancouver from1987 to 2004. He was theatre editor and critic for Vancouver's Plus magazine 1988-89, and has freelance reviewed for The Georgia Straight and Shaw TV. Since July 2004, Jerry's criticism has appeared on his web site, www.vancouverplays.com, and since February 2005 he has been freelance theatre critic for Vancouver's Province newspaper.

William Watt is a freelance theatre critic and has written for R.P.M. Magazine, the Toronto Free Press, and HiRise.

Toronto native James Wegg has been an active musician and writer since 1973. He studied clarinet at the University of Ottawa and obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1980). Through the Nepean Symphony Orchestra, which he founded in 1974, he conducted the world premieres of more than 50 works. In the '90's Wegg re-focused his artistic projects from music to television production as both producer and writer. Simultaneously, he led and assisted a number of cultural and social service agencies. Since 1997, his articles, short fiction, performing arts and film reviews, profiles and commentaries have been widely published. Currently, Wegg is Managing Editor of JWR (James Wegg Review) (" - your independent global view of fine arts & film). He is a regular contributor to Pulse Niagara, Echo, Hamilton View, Film Threat and Rotten Tomatoes.

Ric Wellwood was born in Chatham, Ontario and began a fifty-year relationship with theatre at the Chatham Little Theatre under the direction of the late theatre designer Jack King. He passed his audition to the National Theatre School in 1962, but was talked out of going by Jean Gascon and Powys Thomas when he informed them he wanted to write plays. Enrolling at Ryerson, he completed his work in Radio and Television Arts while studying drama with Jack McCallister and Theatre with Ernest Schwartz. He completed further studies in drama and Shakespeare at Wilfrid Laurier University and film at the University of Western Ontario. While a senior news editor with CKNX Radio and Television in Wingham, he began reviewing at the Stratford Festival in 1967, London's Grand Theatre in 1970 and the Shaw Festival in 1974. He continued to direct in community theatre and had two plays commissioned by Bernard Hopkins, the Grand's Artistic Director. As a performer, he toured Ontario with a one-man show on Stephen Leacock in the 1980's, reprising the role in 2005 at Roy Thompson Hall as part of Jubilee. Ric has won 4 CanPro Awards in writing and direction for Canadian Television Drama, and holds Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals from the International Radio Festival of New York for Commentary and News Analysis, sharing the awards podium with Dan Rather and Peter Jennings.

Herbert Whittaker was born in 1910 in Montreal from British-born parents, and raised in the Outremont section of Montreal. He studied at the Ecole des beaux arts in that city and later designed many of the productions he also directed, including those at the Montreal Repertory Company and the Crest Theatre in Toronto. He directed the first Canadian production of Bertolt Brecht's Galileo in 1951 in the basement theatre of the Royal Ontario Museum, as well as the first Canadian production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame in 1959. One of his stage designs is part of the certificate for the Herbert Whittaker/Drama Bench Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre.

He began his critical career as film, dance and theatre critic for The Montreal Gazette (1935-49) before he was invited to take the same post at The Globe and Mail (1949). By 1952 he was concentrating his critical attention more on theatre until his retirement from the Globe in 1975 at which he was given the title of Drama Critic Emeritus. He continued to cover theatre for the Globe and Mail from New York and London and as he traveled to Russia, Greece, Israel, France, China and Australia. According to Robert Fulford in his article about Herbert Whittaker in the National Post (June 13, 2000), "Whittaker remains a unique figure in our journalism: More than anyone else among the daily arts critics of the last 50 years, he's practised the craft he's written about."

Mr. Whittaker was the Founding Chairman of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association and Founding Chairman of the Toronto Drama Bench. He was a member of The Order of Canada.

Setting the Stage: Montreal Theatre, 1920-1949. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1999.

Whittaker's Theatre: A Critic Looks at Stages in Canada and Thereabouts, 1944-1975. Edited by Ronald Bryden with Boyd Neil. Greenbank, Ontario: The Whittaker Project, 1985.

'Canadian Theatre Criticism' in Contemporary Canadian Theatre. ed. Anton Wagner. Toronto: Simon & Pierre, 1985.

To contact the CTCA:

Don Rubin, President, CTCA
e-mail: drubin@yorku.ca
or
Jeniva Berger, Membership
e-mail: scenechanges@rogers.com

Webmaster: scenechanges@rogers.com