GUERILLA HEART JUICE - Key Persons
Alix Sideris is a professional actor, writer, movement coach/instructor, founding member of Prix Rideau Awards, Industry Associate with the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, community galvanizer and a mentor to many young artists.
Audiences have most recently seen Alix in many productions at the National Arts Centre, the GCTC, The Gladstone, OTS, Third Wall Theatre, The St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival, Odyssey Theatre and has received Prix Rideau Awards nominations for her work in Third Wall's Betrayal and The Empire Builders, as well as a CCC nomination for Odyssey theatre's Bungsu and the Big Snake. Alix recently directed a Commedia Dell'Arte piece (which she wrote) with Opera Lyra's production of Pagliacci's silver cast production at the NAC's Southam Hall.
Coming up: m (a work in progress by Alix Sideris: a solo show about her mother, immigration and Ancient Greece and the first in GHJ's series of New Works). Her indie film Cubed (director Lisa Virtue) is receiving international acclaim on the short film festival unit. Alix will soon be appearing in Erik Canuel and Alan Spenser's Bullet in the Face.
For 7 years, Alix was the Artistic Director of Odyssey Theatre's sister company Lazzi Lazzi - an live animation troupe, which still has, under it's wing, some of Ottawa's most talented physical actors. She has taught movement and acting in various theatre environments in Montreal, Toronto, Vermont, Windsor, and Ottawa for the last 20 years. She has been a contracted movement instructor at the National Arts Centre, Opera Lyra, Brockville College, Ottawa Theatre School, Algonquin College, University of Ottawa, University of Windsor, and Concordia University, to name a few. Alix is also a resident artist with MASC.
Andy Massingham has performed across Canada at such venues as the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, West Vancouver Cultural Centre, the Yukon Arts' Centre, the National Arts' Centre, Odyssey Theatre, LKTYP, Tarragon, Soulpepper, the Banff Centre and many others. His most recent roles in Ottawa were the title role in "Peer Gynt" (Third Wall/Ottawa Theatre School) and Frank Foster in "How the Other Half Loves" (Gladstone Theatre), for which he received a Rideau nomination. His wordless, solo play "Rough House"(commissioned by nightswimming Theatre) was nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore Awards, receiving two, including Outstanding Performance. The play subsequently toured Canada in 2008. Andy has been teaching acting, movement, voice and physical theatre for twenty years to actors of all ages and experience.
Peter Ryan has used the body and things physical as his lifelong organizing principle. He is one of Canada's most accomplished proponents of contact improvisation. A former member of Canada's national rowing team, Ryan studied dance during the 1970s with Linda Rubin in Vancouver, worked closely and performed with American contact improvisation pioneers Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith. Peter danced for several Vancouver choreographers before joining forces with several artists to establish EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music), an influential multi-media performance company. In Ottawa, he founded and directed Four on the Floor, an improvisational performance group. He has taught movement and dance to both actors and dancers at many Canadian institutions, including Simon Fraser University, Studio 58, the Vancouver Playhouse, the University of Ottawa and the National Theatre School. For several years he traveled to Greece to teach the Sxedia Dance Company in Athens. He also mentors and coaches actors, singers and dancers.