Our Team

KATE ALTON (CHOREOGRAPHER)

Kate Alton is an award-winning Canadian dancer and choreographer who has performed on stages around the globe. She is a former member of Toronto Dance Theatre and is Artistic Director of Crooked Figure Dances in Toronto. Kate creates thought provoking, emotionally engaging theatrical dances that are as much explorations of the mind as of the body, working with writers, directors and vocal coaches to develop inter-disciplinary performance works that pack an intellectual and emotional punch. Her work has been presented across Canada and in Europe. Highlights from the recent past include Associate Direction and Choreography for The Exchange Rate Collective's Dora award winning Appetite, performing James Kudelka's works In Paradisum and 15 Heterosexual Duets for Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie in China, Mongolia, the USA and Canada, and firstthingsfirst productions' sold-out shows Namesake and Namesake:Three. Kate is choreographer and co-creator/director, with Ross Manson, of the dance and sound poetry production The Four Horsemen Project, which garnered four Dora Mavor Moore awards including Best Direction by Kate and Ross Manson and has toured nationally and internationally. NOW Magazine named Kate as one of the best Toronto dance artists of the past twenty years.
 

Paul Braunstein (Elliot Green)

Paul's other work with Volcano includes a Canadian tour of Goodness by Michael Redhill. Other Tarragon credits include; Kilt, Midnight Sun, Well, Mimi: A Poisoners Musical, and Within the Glass. Paul has worked in film and television recently and can be seen in Undercover Grandpa (opposite James Caan), Legacy (to be released next Halloween) and the acclaimed series Black Mirror, directed by Jodie Foster. 

Other credits include, Suits, Fargo, The Thing, Jesus Henry Christ, Saving Hope, and Baroness Von sketch (The hit CBS sketch comedy show). This spring Paul will assistant direct several video cabaret shows.

Peter eaton (Production Manager) 

Peter is a freelance Technical Director and Production Manager based out of Toronto Ontario.  He is excited to be working on this winter’s tour of Infinity, his first project for Volcano Theatre.  Other projects of note include: the Summerworks Performance Festival (Prod. Manager) which takes place in Toronto in early August each year,  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, for WYRD Productions/Kidoons Inc. (Prod. Manager), and Helen Lawrence, for Canadian Stage (Tech. Dir.), both of which will be touring through the Southern United States later this year.
 

Vivien Endicott-Douglas (Sarah Jean Green)

Vivien has been working in theatre, film and TV for over a decade. Theatre credits include The Circle (Tarragon) Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Ruff) Killer Joe (CoalMine Theatre) Harper Regan (Canadian Stage) Stopheart (Factory Theatre), Forests (Tarragon), Hush (Tarragon) A Boy Called Newfoundland (Theatre Smash), and Ajax por nobody (Summerworks). Vivien has appeared in the TV shows American Gods(Starz) Hemlock Grove (Netflix), Copper (BBC America), Murdoch Mysteries (CBC), Rookie Blue (CTV) and The Line (TMN). Other notable film/ TV credits include: Let Me Down Easy, Forget & Forgive, The Shape of Rex, Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, How Eunice Got Her Baby and An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving. 
 

Njo Kong Kie (COMPOSER/MUSIC DIRECTOR)

Njo Kong Kie was born in Indonesia but grew up in Macau where he received his musical education from the Academia de Música São Pio X. He continued his studies in Portugal and then Canada, where he eventually settled. He now divides his time between Canada and Macau. Pianist and music director of Montreal's contemporary dance company La La La Human Steps since 1996, Kong Kie has given close to 500 performances with the company throughout Canada and abroad. Among his many projects in both countries, Kong Kie writes music for Canadian chamber band Day OFF, and composes for opera. He has created five chamber operas dissecting controversial issues ranging from same-sex marriage to human organ trafficking. Bridging the gap between modern opera and theatre, classical and contemporary popular music, these works attempt to introduce contemporary operatic work to a wider audience.
 

Isabelle Ly (Stage Manager)

Isabelle is a Toronto-based stage manager who has worked in theatres across Canada, including 11 seasons at the Thousand Islands Playhouse (Gananoque, ON), and 6 seasons at Western Canada Theatre (Kamloops, BC). Recent credits include: Blithe Spirit (TIP/WCT), A Grand Time in the Rapids (TIP). Favourite credits include: stage manager for Mary Poppins (WCT/Persephone Theatre), Infinity (Tarragon/Volcano), and rehearsal ASM for the world premiere of Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation (Royal Winnipeg Ballet). Upcoming: Million Dollar Quartet (TIP/Sudbury Theatre Centre). When not stage managing, Isabelle works in arts marketing and has held various marketing and PR positions with the Thousand Islands Playhouse, Roy Thomson and Massey Hall, Nightwood Theatre, Soundstreams, and the Luminato Festival.
 

Ross Manson (Director)

Ross Manson is an award-winning director, and the founding artistic director of Volcano, an internationally acclaimed theatre company based in Toronto. Over the past 20 years, Ross has directed and or co-created many shows for Volcano, which have toured around the world, and won or been nominated for over fifty local, national and international awards (including Dora awards for Ross as a director, a play-maker and a co-producer), a KM Hunter Award for his body of work as a theatre artist, a Harold award for arts community service, and the Best of Edinburgh award for his production of Goodness, by Michael Redhill). He has also directed for various companies across Canada, as well as in Helsinki (Svenska Theatre) and in Munich (BeMe). Ross trained in England at the University of London (MA in Theatre, specialty in Directing), in Germany (Directing apprenticeship, Stadttheater Freiburg), and in Canada (Banff School of Fine Arts and Mount Allison University). 
 

Michela Sisti (Assistant Director)

Michela Sisti is an emerging director who is excited about finding new theatrical forms to create meaning and tell stories. After completing a degree in Drama at the University of Toronto Michela traveled to London, UK and trained in directing through Living Pictures and the Young Directors Program at the Young Vic Theatre.  In London she directed both new and experimental writing with You Are Already Dead, Intermission Theatre and The Pensive Federation and headed the creation of an interdisciplinary exploration of ‘personhood’, Humanity on the Edge, for the Invention Festival.  On returning to Canada, Michela worked as an assistant director to Ross Mason (Century Song) and Leon Major (Handel’s Alcina, GGS) and directed new writing with Alumnae Theatre.  She was a Team Leader during Volcano Theatre’s 2016 InFORMING CONTENT weekend and has devoted this past summer to studying with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre, the SITI Company and Volcano Conservatory.  Michela is currently a Nightwood Theatre Young Innovator and co-producer of the Brave New Theatre performance series.  She is super stoked be be studying artistic direction with Ross Manson at Volcano Theatre. 

Hannah Moscovitch (Playwright)

Hannah Moscovitch is considered one of the strongest playwriting voices in Canada. Her work has won multiple awards. She is the first playwright to win the Trillium Book Award in the prize's twenty-seven year history for This is War, a play premiered by Tarragon in 2013 which also won the Toronto Critic's Award for Best New Canadian Play and toured to Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange. Her first full-length play, East of Berlin, premiered at Tarragon in 2007. Tarragon also produced a mini-festival of her work in 2013 that included the premieres of Little One and Other People's Children as well as a remount of Roseneath Theatre’s In This World. Moscovitch's other writing for the stage includes What a Young Wife Ought to Know (premiered last month by Halifax's Neptune and 2b theatre company), The Children's Republic (Great Canadian Theatre Company premiere) and The Huron Bride (premiered as part of Theatrefront's The Mill play cycle) as well as The Russian Play and Essay, both of which won awards at SummerWorks Performance Festival. She’s been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Siminovitch Prize and the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Upcoming, she is writing a combination of TV, opera, theatre, and film projects, including commissions with the Stratford and Shaw Festivals. She is a playwright-inresidence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

Rebecca Picherack (Lighting Designer)

For Volcano: Century Song, A Beautiful View, Goodness . Productions over the past year include: Uncle Vanya (Shaw Festival), Disgraced (Mirvish) Hosanna, Blood Wedding (Soulpepper), The Circle, Within the Glass, Infinity (Tarragon), Sleeping Beauty (Ballet Jorgen), Armstrong's War (Canadian Rep), 20th of November, Tom at the Farm (Buddies in Bad Times), Dead Metaphor (Mirvish/Theatre Aquarius). Rebecca has received 3 Dora Awards for excellence in lighting design.

Teresa Przybylski (Set & Costume Designer)

Teresa Przybylski is an architect and a stage designer. She received her degree in Architecture at The Technical University of Krakow and in Scenography at The Fine Art Academy, Krakow, Poland. She has designed for Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Theatre in Saint Louis, Pacific Opera, Calgary Opera, national Arts Centre, Atlantic Festival, Blyth Festival, Young People’s Theatre, Factory Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Native Earth, Volcano Theatre, Theatre Smith-Gilmour, Canadian Stage, Canadian Film Center, Rhombus Media, among others. She has been awarded 5 Dora Awards and 16 nominations, and two Gemini Awards for her work in film & television. 

Lee Smolin (Consulting Physicist)

Lee Smolin has been a professor at Yale, Syracuse and Penn State Universities and held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara; and the Enrico Fermi Institute, the University of Chicago. He recently won, with the University of Edinburgh’s Marina Cortês, the prestigious Buchalter Cosmology Prize for groundbreaking work on the concepts of causality and time. He is currently on faculty with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. His books include The Trouble with Physics, Time Reborn and, co-authored with Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy.

Amy Rutherford (Carmen Green)

Amy Rutherford was classically trained at both The National Theatre School of Canada and at The Stratford Festival of Canada’s Conservatory. She has since worked in film, theatre and TV and with Canada’s leading directors and playwrights. She has been nominated for several Dora Mavor Moore Awards, one Calgary Critter and was named one of Toronto’s Top Ten Theatre Artists by Now Magazine. Amy has performed internationally; at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, Rwanda Arts Azimut Festival, The Ricardo Montalban in Los Angeles and at New York’s PS122 theatre. Recent acting credits include: The Public Servant (Common Boots, Nightwood) Sherlock Holmes starring David Arquette, Rosalind in As You Like it (Canadian stage) and Michael Ondaatje's theatrical adaptation of Divisadero. Amy played the recurring lead of Marla in Greg Spottiswood's dramatic series Remedy.

Andréa Tyniec (Violinist)

Andréa Tyniec has performed as a soloist with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, Calgary Symphony, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal+, iVirtuosi Italiani (Italy), Münchener Kammerorchester (Germany), Akbank Chamber Orchestra Istanbul (Turkey). Andréa premiered & recorded André Ristic’s violin concerto (ATMA), and premiered Alec Hall’s violin concerto & performed it on tour with the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal. She released her "simply stunning" (The WholeNote) recording of the Six Sonatas for Solo Violin by Eugène Ysaÿe in 2015 and plays on the Baumgartner Stradivari (1689), on loan by the Musical Instrument Bank of the Canada Council for the arts.