Crow's Theatre Artistic and General Director, Chris Abraham has been the driving force of Crow’s since the 2008.09 season. He has successfully led the company through several major milestones: the 25th, 35th, and record-breaking 40th anniversaries of the company, as well as building Streetcar Crowsnest, a pioneering, state of the art facility with three venues in the east end of Toronto. At Crow’s, Chris has directed numerous award-winning plays including Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, The Master Plan, Uncle Vanya, MixTape, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Stars: Together, The Wedding Party, True Crime, Boy in the Moon, The Assembly, The Watershed, The Seagull, Winners & Losers, Someone Else, Eternal Hydra, and I, Claudia. In 2003, Chris directed the film adaptation of Kristen Thomson’s award-winning hit I, Claudia for which he won a Gemini Award. A graduate of the National Theatre School’s renowned directing program, Chris served as co-director of the program from 2006 to 2010, In 2013, Chris was awarded the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre for Directing. Chris’ artistic practice spans the spectrum of solo work, documentary, highly lauded Stratford and Shaw productions, hybrid music theatre concerts, opera, and filmmaking. This summer, Chris directed One Man, Two Guvnors at the Shaw Festival and will open Crow’s Theatre’s 41st season with the Canadian premiere of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, adapted by Duncan Macmillan.

Named by The Globe and Mail as a Canadian Cultural Icon in 2022, Cliff Cardinal is a polarizing writer and performer known for his black humour and compassionate poeticism. His AS YOU LIKE IT, A RADICAL RETELLING has been performed across Canada, was shortlisted for the Ontario Trillium Book Award, and was the recipient of the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.

Other solo theatre productions including Stitch, Huff, Cliff Cardinal’s CBC Special, and (Everyone I Love Has) A Terrible Fate (Befall Them) have toured across Canada and won numerous awards. He is an associate artist at VideoCabaret where he develops his new work. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, he studied playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada and fronts the hilarious and nefarious Cliff Cardinal and The Skylarks. 
Cardinal’s first multi-character play, Too Good To Be True, opened VideoCabaret’s 2019 season at The Busy Street Theatre in Toronto with Cardinal himself directing. A workshop version of the script debuted at Summerworks ’13, where NOW Magazine said, “This captivating tale of an off-grid mother and her desperate children solidifies Cardinal as one of the most talented and intriguing writers in the country.”

Prior to premiering AS YOU LIKE IT, A RADICAL RETELLING, Cardinal was best known for his one-man play Huff, which he has performed over 200 times. This harrowing yet hilarious show about youth who abuse solvent, at high risk of suicide won the Buddies in Bad Times’ Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation, two Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Outstanding Performance, Outstanding New Play), RBC’s Emerging Playwright Award, The Lustrum Award (which recognizes the greatest moments at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and was shortlisted for Amnesty International’s Freedom of Expression Award. The production garnered a five-star review in The Guardian Observer titled “a hard-hitting tour de force.” Huff has been published, translated into French, continues to tour, and was released as a podcast by the CBC. 
Cliff Cardinal’s CBC Special, a songwriter/storyteller performance, toured festivals in Ottawa, Calgary, St. Catharines, through Canada’s North starting in Yellowknife with a stint at Theatre Kingston and won the Jon Kaplan Spotlight Award for the top performance at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival.

Cliff Cardinal and The Skylarks’ first recording, This is Not a Mistake was released in 2016 and their follow up Gonna Be Fine was released in 2020, both are available online. The band’s third album Suicidal Valentine is out on Merlainen Music. The title track has risen to number six on the Indigenous Music Countdown.

William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Radical Retelling By Cliff Cardinal, launched the Crow’s Theatre 2021.22 season, following the pandemic shutdown. The run sold-out and the show was held over twice. The show was next presented by Mirvish Productions at the CAA Theatre as The Land Acknowledgement Or As You Like It in April 2023 and was also extended one week! The show has been touring since its premiere and continues to do so well into 2024.

After thirty two years working in education, Justino retired to work in his passion since childhood, farming and ranching. He settled his self in an small farm located in the foothills near to the well know active volcano the Popocatepeltl, in Mexico. An elder with a social concuss for helping small food producers of the region throughout managing power lines and hydro, advising the local government on managing water sources and pushed for the equitable distribution of government grants for local producers. At 86 years old, Don Justino, as people call him, still working in his farm, dividing his time between taking care of his farm and promoting equal rights on the use and approach of natural resources in the area where he lives.

Recipient of Pitblado Family Scholarship for Dance Endowment.

Originally from Mexico City, he is an artist with an interdisciplinary training; In the field of performing arts he has: Bachelor's Degree in Arts and Humanities from the Centro de Educación Artística “Frida Kahlo”; Bachelor's Degree in Acting from the Escuela Nacional de Teatro; Specialty in Dance Creation from the Centro de Investigación Coreográfica; as well as, Specialty in Movement Studies from the Escuela Nacional de Danza “Nellie y Gloria Campobello”, all  schools of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. He studied inter- and transdisciplinary artistic creation in the Tránsitos Diploma offered by the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. He is certified in Adobe Photoshop: Visual Communication. He has worked as a choreographer, stage director, dancer, actor, teacher, lighting designer, stage manager and educational manager. His activity as an actor has been carried out mostly in theater; He was part of the theater groups ABCdidáctivo, Teatro x Teatro and El Pequeño Teatro de Valentiva Novoa. As a dancer he was a member of the group En Dos Partes directed by Gerardo Delgado; As well as Caída Libre under the direction of Ana Gonzáles and Oscar Velázquez, he has also collaborated on projects created by the performing artist Carlos Rivera. As a choreographer he was selected in 2006 and 2015 for the qualifying rounds of the INBA-UAM Contemporary  Choreographic Composition Award; In 2015 he was a finalist in the 1st Contemporary Stage Creation Contest organized by the Cultural Center “Un Teatro”; in 2104 he was a finalist in the Choreographic Creation Contest of the Festival Angelopolitano organized by the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. From the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes he received the Artistic Residencies Abroad Scholarship on three occasions in the discipline of dance; All of them were performed in Canada, two of them at the Banff Center in 1999 and 2002 and one more in the City of Toronto with the choreographer Malgorzata Nowacka. Since 1996 he founded and directs his personal artistic project called Performing Arts ELEUSIS, with which he has created choreographic work in collaboration with different artists and groups. He was artistic director and guest choreographer of the dance groups Morpho-Azul Danza Contemporánea, YLEM Movimiento
Contemporáneo -both groups from the City of Puebla- and the DansEnica Collective of Mexico City, likewise, he collaborated with the collective Lenguajes Afectados, also from Puebla. Internationally he has collaborated with Canadian companies, The Chimera Project, Red Sky Performance, Kaha: wi Dance Theatre and is an international advisor to Tribal Crackling Wind. He has taught classes and workshops on dance, theater and interdisciplinary creation in various schools such as the Centro de Educación Artística “Luis Spota”, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Escuela Nacional de Teatro de México Escuela Nacional de Danza “Nellie y Gloria Campobello”, Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Universidad Veracruzana, National Theater School of Canada, among others. More than 30 years ago he entered the field of electronic music as a DJ, this led him to investigate the forms of digital music production and thus he created sound designs and original music for contemporary dance pieces and video dances. He is currently
a member of the Colectivo Cuerpo Abierto, he dances his own creations based on movement improvisation. In recent years he has delved into the work of movement improvisation and has established a personal methodology with which he provides advice and teaches courses related to movement for stage creation and stage improvement.

Recipient of Pitblado Family Scholarship for Dance Endowment.

Multidisciplinary artist, teacher, director, manager and producer. Founder and Co-Director of Ts'ook Danza Plataforma Escénica A.C. She has collaborated with important contemporary dance companies in Mexico and international choreographers.

Benefited on more than 4 occasions by different programs of the Support System for Artistic Creation formerly FONCA.
Finalist in the Guillermo Arriaga National Dance Award INBAL- UAM 2019 and 2021 with works of her authorship.
In 2020 she won the Tour Award in Burgos within the SOLODOS DANZA Contest in Costa Rica.
Winner of the 4x4 Tj Night Choreography Award in Tijuana in 2018, where she also won the award for best performer.
In 2015 she obtained a mention for the best acting quality within the Contemporary Stage Creation Award.
Creator and manager of “Verano Machincuepero”, “3D Choreography Award” and “LA RUTA”

Recipient of Bobbye Ruth and Dewitt L. Potter Fund for Dance Scholarship.

Carlos Rivera is a director, choreographer, actor and a dancer, originally from Mexico City, based in Montreal. He graduated from the Indigenous Residency Program at National Theatre School in 2018 and recently graduated from the MFA in Directing for Theatre Program at the University of Ottawa. Carlos has worked and collaborated with several performing arts companies across Canada including: Red Sky Performance (Toronto), Globe Theatre (Regina), Raven Spirit Dance (Vancouver), MT Space (Kitchener), Puente Theatre (Victoria), Ondinnok (Montreal) Lemon Tree Creations (Toronto) Electric Company (Vancouver) Micro-Scope Productions (Montreal); among others. He is continuously working on numerous artistic projects in dance, film, theatre and performance.

Recipient of Bobbye Ruth and Dewitt L. Potter Fund for Dance Scholarship.

E.Macias (Amskapi Pikuni/Blackfeet & A'aninin/GrosVentre) is a dance maker and dance scholar. Macias holds a BFA in Dance with a Modern Emphasis from Utah Valley University, and a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside. Her dance work centers Siksikaitsitapi ways of knowing to investigate familial lineage, embodied histories, relationships to land and the more than human. Macias has performed and shared dance with communities across Northern and Southern California, Montana, Utah, Massachusetts, New York, and Vancouver BC. She has worked with Native communities including: Sherman Indian High School in Riverside CA, Native American Student Programs at UCR, the Gathering of the Tribes Summer Residential Program at UCR, Title VI Lil Feathers program in Salt Lake UT, Native American Health Center San Francisco CA, and Ohketeau Cultural Center in MA.

Recipient of Ilona Diener Memorial Fellowship Fund Endowment.