Theatre

Natsuko Ohama

Natsuko Ohama is an actor who trained under legendary voice teacher Kristin Linklater. She is a founding member and permanent faculty of Shakespeare and Company Lenox, Mass., a senior artist at Pan Asian Rep New York, and was the Director of Training at the National Arts Center of Canada. Ohama has taught at numerous institutions […]

Manami Hara

Manami Hara was born and raised in Tokyo Japan. She became fascinated with Western theatre and the English language and at the age of 18, left Japan home to become a stage actor in North America. She moved to Vancouver, took ESL classes and graduated from Studio 58, a two-year conservatory Theatre Arts program at […]

Mieko Ouchi

Mieko Ouchi is an actor, writer, and director working in theatre and film/TV. Mieko trained at U of A’s BFA Acting Program, the Women in the Director’s Chair Program and the National Screen Institute. Film roles include Nori Sato in Global TV’s The Guard, The Orange Seed Myth and Other Lies Mothers Tell, Fear Itself, […]

Roy Kumano

Roy Kumano was one of the most well-known Nisei harmonica players, and a member of the Lemon Creek Harmonica Band. He was very active as a harmonica performer and bandleader in Vancouver prior to the forced removal, giving solo performances as well as leading groups such as the Gakuyukai and Hompa Harmonica Bands. He was […]

Ellen Anderson

Ayako Ellen Yamasaki Anderson is an artist, writer, and social activist. She was born in 1943, in Sandon, BC. Sandon was an internment camp for Japanese Canadians during the war. Ellen is considered a sansei third generation Japanese-Canadian but her great grandmother was actually a first generation Issei from Japan. Ellen trained as a visual […]

Mitch Miyagawa

Mitch Miyagawa is a filmmaker and writer known for his 2012 documentary A Sorry State. A Sorry State won the Writers’ Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award for Documentary in 2013. It was commissioned by TVO and Knowledge Network. His play The Plum Tree was produced several times across western Canada, as well as a public […]

Rick Shiomi

Rick Shiomi is a Toronto-born theatre artist now based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a leader in early Asian Canadian theatre movement in the 1980s. He credits his time spent in Vancouver in the 1970s, working with the Powell Street Festival in its early years, and later with the Redress movement, as what gave him the […]

Terry Watada

Terry Watada is a poet, novelist, short story writer, historian, playwright, columnist, essayist, and music composer. He has published five poetry collections, three novels, a short story collection, two manga, two histories on the Buddhist Church in Canada, and two children’s biographies. Significant titles include Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes (Arsenal, Vancouver 2007), novel, The […]