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the slate
poster design by max warkentin
so what are we doing?
The Slate Festival 2025 will be running from October 3rd to 5th at a brand new location for us... The Green (36 James Street, St Catharines). We are honoured to have support from fellow theatre creators (and lovely humans) at Suitcase In Point, as well as financial support from the City of St. Catharines to bring this year's festivities to life.
Our incredible artists have been hard at work putting together a spectacular show for you all, with readings of brand new plays, first-ever performances of killer new songs, and the staged premiere of a returning artist (and friend).
We're so happy to have invited Alison Adams back as our headliner, with her new play, Perfect, Perfect Girls. This show is an evolution of the excerpt she shared with audiences last year (stupid dumb idiot) --if you attended The Slate 2024, you'll have been a part of the growth of this project!! From page to stage- literally!!
But that's not all... We're so excited to be sharing these original works-in-progress alongside our returning artist:
Union by Oliver Pitschner
For ____ by Jenae Fairclough
Aren't You My Brother? by Roselyn Kelada-Sedra & Suchiththa Wickremesooriya
AND RETURNING (in some way shape or form) !!!
Music by Almost Through April (Zakk, Frankie & Simon)
Tunes by Mad Seeding
meet our artists
Alison Adams
Alison Adams is an actor and writer with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Windsor. For playwriting, Alison was a part of the Tarragon Young Playwrights Unit in 2021 for her play “sweet teeth.” Alison’s next play “stupid dumb idiot” was a part of Half Blind Owl’s The Slate 2024 theatre festival in Niagara. Her upcoming work, “Perfect, Perfect Girls,” will be a part of Half Blind Owl’s The Slate 2025 festival, where she has been selected as the Featured Artist of the year. Most recently, she has been selected to develop her newest work, “One Million Love Songs” with The Vault Creation Lab.
In her time away from the theatre, she is an avid martial artist and amateur fighter with a speciality in Okinawan Shorin Ryu karate, karate kickboxing, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. She recently placed bronze in the World Association of Kickboxing Organization’s Canadian Nationals for 2025. She believes that these physical arts are not only her moving meditation, but the practice of exploring the body through space: essentially, another mode of storytelling.
Perfect, Perfect Girls
Two girls live here, CHERIE and TINA, and they are degenerates– fabulous degenerates. They are wearing party dresses. They are on the couch, eating in silence. Obviously drunk.
performances all show days
Suchiththa Wickremesooriya
Roselyn Kelada-Sedra
Roselyn Kelada-Sedra is an actor/creator/writer/director based in St. Catharines and Toronto. Her favourite experiences have been acting in Fellow Travelers (Showtime), workshopping her play, Sister Warriors with Suitcase in Point, and assistant directing Love's Labour's Lost at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama.
As an actor, Roselyn trained at RADA (England), DAH Teatar (Serbia) and the Manitoulin Island Conservatory. As a theatre-maker and media-maker, she cut her teeth at b current Performing Arts and at Humber College. Roselyn’s directorial debut film, WOMEN OF RESILIENCE, was a short documentary that was honoured by festivals from London (UK) to Kalakari (India).
She is currently working on her first feature documentary, WHY OUR BRAINS HURT. As a writer, Roselyn was a Cayle Chernin finalist and is published by the Playwrights Canada Press, as well as newspapers and magazines (Globe & Mail, St. Catharines Standard).
Roselyn writes and portrays bold women with a hunger for connection. You can hear about her through roselyn.link/news
Suchiththa is a multi-disciplinary Sri Lankan/Canadian performer and theatre-maker. He is drawn to multi-sensory, multi-modal and physical theatre. He recently completed the process of building a Deaf Theatre Adaptation of The Little Prince, Premiering at Theatre Passe Muraille in April 2025 as Director, and Dramaturg. He most recent performances include an adaptation of "Jesus Christ Superstar" (Talk is Free Theatre), and played Kamal in Alberta Theatre Projects’ "Bombay Black".
He currently serves as Associate Artistic Producer at Common Boots and served as Associate Producer, Education for Shakespeare in Action for over two years, producing "3Tempests" (Dramaturg and Producer) "Nona's Malaika" (Digital Theatre), "Harabogee & Me". He has also produced for Pleiades Theatre (Tyson’s Song) and Red Beti Theatre (Decolonise Your Ears, Devi Triptych). Lately, he's been an active collaborator in new works and adaptations, "Leopards and Peacocks" by Gitanjali Lena and "Sweeter" by Alicia Richardson and “Sister Warriors” by Roselyn Kelada-Sedra.
Aren't You My Brother?
Aren’t You My Brother? is about the deep frustration and brokenness that occurs
when siblings are wedged apart by trauma and different cultural expectations. Family comes first. This is particularly true in global majority cultures. What happens when that family is what hurts you the most? What happens when you need to break away in order to heal or even define yourself outside of the standards imposed on you by the people who are supposed to love you the most? What happens when those imposed expectations make it impossible to talk about the unheal-able hurts. They fester into a bottomless mass of discontent, fury and pain; what do you do with that?
October 3rd, 7PM; October 4th, 1PM
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Jenae Fairclough
Jenae is excited to be a part of Half Blind Owl's Slate Festival! She recently graduated from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, earning her degree and diploma in Theatre and Drama Studies. Her most surreal experience being, losing herself in a book, where the world on the page feels more real than the one around you. Jenae is thrilled to begin her journey into directing and can’t wait to explore storytelling from a new perspective! She also had the pleasure of acting in three productions with Theatre Erindale, playing Number 1 in Five Faces for Evelyn Frost, Duke Senior in As You Like It, and Mary in Mary Stuart. Outside of acting, she works as a nail technician in Toronto!
For ,
Content Warnings: Sensitive Themes Involving Pregnancy.
performances all show days
Oliver Pitschner
Oliver Pitschner is a playwright, director, and arts administrator based in so-called Toronto. In his work he explores themes of youth culture, the family unit, fate, religious fundamentalism, and transgender liberation. He has written and directed Behold, a Man!, The Other Paris, and bi-province audio play collaboration Transfigure/Transfix with Halifax's Around + Out Theatre Company (coming to the Theatre Centre May 20th), as well as directed Valentine Leger's The Biography of Harry Allen for Buddies in Bad Times' 46th Rhubarb Festival this past spring. He is an arts administrator, most recently having worked for the Toronto Fringe Festival, and sits on the board of directors for East End Arts, helping bring accessible arts and culture to Toronto’s east end where he resides. Oliver can usually be found cooking his friends dinner, trying to teach his fiancee Maeve Magic: The Gathering, or at the club dancing to post punk.
UNION
is a surreal satire about a power hungry student union, their dark supernatural dealings, and the messy queers who rule it.
Content Warnings: UNION deals with themes/depictions of violence, cults, and manipulation. It includes strong language, sex, toxic masculinity, transphobia, and in general people mistreating each other. Please take care.
October 4th, 7PM; October 5th, 1PM
Almost Through April
Talented young musicians breaking their way onto the scene
Almost Through April is an alternative rock band started in St. Catharines, Ontario, comprised of Frankie Turco (Bass), Simon Bell (Drums) and Zakk Milne (Guitar & Vocals). Music has always been a means of coping for them, and their songs attempt to break down their personal lives and experiences into art that speaks to the tragedy of the human condition. They hope you are able to find a piece of yourself in their work.
check out their most recent single here
performances all show days
Mad Seedling
Lou Sementilli
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Mad Seedling is a Lo-fi Hip Hop producer based in the Niagara region. His sets of wonky, oddball grooves and lullaby beats have earned him placements with some of the biggest Lo-Fi labels and over 3 million streams.
Lou Sementilli is a musician of over 16 years, now stepping into a new era of solo classical performance. His set blends timeless classical repertoire with movie, game, and pop arrangements, all reimagined for the rich voice of the classical guitar.
These two have mysteriously never been seen in the same room together - but be sure to catch them both at this year's Slate Festival!
