Cast

Richard Clarkin has been an established presence on Canadian stages and screens for thirty years. Recently he starred as John A. MacDonald in the Confederation plays for VideoCab at Soulpepper for which he received a Best Actor Dora nomination. For Mirvish Productions he starred as Scar in The Lion King, Biff in Death of a Salesman and appeared in The Heart of Robin Hood. Richard originated the role of Jacob Mercer in David French’s Salt-Water Moon and has performed in numerous productions for Toronto’s most innovative theatre companies including the Company Theatre and Necessary Angel. Richard is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and a co-founder of the landmark theatre group Primus. He has performed across Canada especially in Winnipeg for MTC, PTE and MTYP. He recently starred in the film adaptation of The Drawer Boy for which he received a Best Actor ACTRA Award nomination. Richard is best known onscreen as Gord Ogilvey from the Goon hockey films. He appears regularly in Murdoch Mysteries as Chief Inspector Davis.

Katie Melby is very excited to be joining the amazing team and cast of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. She is co-Artistic Director of 3 Sticks, a physical theatre company dedicated to making new work, that she co-founded with fellow graduates of the Lecoq-based London International School of Performing Arts in 2005. Their work has been presented across the US, Canada, and Japan. Her credits include Rite of Spring (Lincoln Center), Sister's Follies (Abrons Art Center), La Davina Caricatura (La Mama), The Cat Who Went to Heaven (Brooklyn Academy of Music), l’Arbre Enchanté (Fire Island Opera Festival), Firebird(Chilean Tour), American Weather (HERE Arts Center), and The Disappearing Man (Musical Theatre Factory). She is also a co-founder of Cloud City, a multi-disciplinary art space in Brooklyn, and a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
Originally from Montreal, Jesse is an actor based in Toronto.
Selected Theatre: Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, The Three Musketeers (St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival); Perfect Wedding (Magnus Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chekhov Collective); The Whipping Man (Winnipeg Jewish Theatre); Twelfth Night (Repercussion Theatre); Romeo & Juliet (Citadel Theatre); Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Macbeth (Shakespeare Bash’d); Casimir & Caroline(Howland Company); Birth (Pandemic Theatre); Journey's End (Empty Room); The SantaLand Diaries (Frosty Co-op); Equus (Hart House); Mary's Wedding (Brantbury Fair); Serious Money (RTS/Nightwood).
Film, TV, Voice-Over: Murdoch Mysteries (CBC), Fare Trade (Bell Media), Slasher Digital (Shaftesbury), Private Eyes(Global), Touring T.O. (Bell Media), Warehouse 13 (SyFy), The Transporter (HBO Canada), Canadian Made and Storming Juno (History Television), Trust, INC. (CBC Radio).
Other: Graduate of the Ryerson Theatre School and participant in the 2014 Citadel/Banff Professional Theatre Program.

Creative Crew

Rick Miller is a Dora and Gemini award-winning writer/director/actor/musician/educator who has performed in five languages on five continents and who Entertainment Weekly called “one of the 100 most creative people alive today”. He has created and toured solo shows such as the hit sensation BOOM, MacHomer, and (w. Daniel Brooks) Bigger Than Jesus and HARDSELL. With Robert Lepage, he has collaborated on Geometry of Miracles, Zulu Time, Lipsynch, and on the film Possible Worlds. As the artistic director of WYRD Productions and co-creative director of the Kidoons Network, Rick has most recently developed BOOM and BOOM X, and (w. Craig Francis) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, GAME of CLONES, Jungle Book, and (w. Craig Francis and Paul Van Dyck) Frankenstein; as well as animated series that educate, enlighten, empower and entertain young people. He often teaches an interdisciplinary class at the University of Toronto called The Architecture of Creativity. Rick is from Montreal, and lives in Toronto with his wife Stephanie Baptist and their two daughters.
Craig Francis is a writer, performer, visual artist and storyteller whose works have been enjoyed by millions of children worldwide. Co-creative director of the Kidoons Network and an accomplished cartoonist, he is the creator of animated series including Jerry Muskrat's The Greatest Lakes Adventure, Grandfather Frog's Water Wonderful World with museums and historic sites nationwide. He is a co-producer and Stage Manager with the hit show BOOM (Kidoons / WYRD Productions) and the co-creator with Rick Miller of new theatrical productions: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, the Star Wars / Game of Thrones parody GAME of CLONES, Frankenstein (with Paul Van Dyck), and the upcoming Jungle Book and Rose Red. Craig has developed marketing for performing arts centres, illustrated several books, appeared as a guest on CBC, CTV, Global, and Showtime. His voices can be heard in animated series and video games.

Deco Dawson is an international award winning filmmaker from Winnipeg, Canada. His 15 innovative short films remain at times unclassifiable, continually blurring the lines between dramatic, documentary, animation and experimental film, often creating fantastical worlds with miniatures, archival footage, meticulous set design, in-camera effects and grainy, textured filmstock. Dawson is a Canadian Screen Award nominee, and a two-time winner of the Best Short Film Award from the Toronto International Film Festival for his films KEEP A MODEST HEAD in 2012 and FILM(dzama) in 2001, which also won the Best Technical Innovation award at the 2002 Ann Arbor Film Festival. In addition to screening at major festivals worldwide, Dawson has been host to solo retrospectives of his work in France, Spain, USA and Canada.
 

Richard has been creating soundscores and music for Canadian theatre, dance and film since 1992. Over the years, he has worked with many prominent theatre figures including Daniel MacIvor, Michael Hollingsworth, Peter Hinton, Sarah Garton Stanley, Daniel Brooks, Darren O’Donnell, Chris Abraham, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Albert Schultz, Guillermo Verdecchia; and companies across Canada, such as the Citadel in Edmonton, Theatre Calgary, Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, Buddies In Bad Times, Neptune Theatre, and the Shaw Festival. His work has been heard around the world, in cities like Budapest, Sydney Australia, Tel Aviv, Dublin, New York, Manchester, Amsterdam, Tehran, and Prague. He has also composed music scores for films by Daniel MacIvor, Robert Lepage, Valerie Buhagiar, and others. Richard has won seven Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the 1999 Pauline McGibbon Award, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Siminovitch Prize. www.haemorrhage-music.com/richard-feren
 

Irina Litvinenko is an accomplished creative artist, graphic designer, and video production artist. Irina has been a longstanding collaborator with Rick Miller and Craig Francis, including as Multimedia Designer for Jungle Book and BOOM X; assisting on onscreen media and DVD production for MacHomer and its educational Animated Shakespeare videos, brand design for BOOM and BOOM X, and video sequences and design elements for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. As a web and video artist, Irina is a designer, animator, and production editor of the Kidoons Network animated series. She has worked on advertising and multimedia campaigns for Performing Arts Centers across Canada and the US; for shows from BOWFIRE to Carol Burnett; and campaigns including TELUS, Cirque Musica, and the University of Kentucky Opera.
 

Andraea Sartison is a theatre artist and event producer in Winnipeg, MB. She is the founding Artistic Producer of One Trunk Theatre, captaining the creation of 15 original productions and one festival, since the company’s inception in 2012, including A Dollhouse of Commons, I Dream of Diesel, Mission Potluck, Taste and 204FM. She is known for boldly creative performance concepts, interdisciplinary collaboration, devised theatre and integrating technology into live performance. Andraea has travelled internationally as a performer and director of new Canadian plays, from the fringe circuit to Broadway. Notable collaborations include with Ghost River Theatre on their production of Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst at Alberta Theatre Projects as Assistant Director to Eric Rose, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea on international tours as Assistant Director to Rick Miller. She is Associate Artistic Director of Theatre Projects Manitoba and is Co-Owner of Event Production and Arts Consultation Company Fête Jockey.
Puppet designer/builder Shawn Kettner has been creating puppets of all kinds for over 40 years. Her work includes everything from tiny 4” high Moomins to giant 10’ dragons and dinosaurs. Shawn is pleased to once again have her puppet creations at The New Victory Theatre, last seen here in Comet in Moomin Land. Shawn’s work has appeared in numerous productions, most recently The House of Pooh Corner, The Hobbit, Rapa Nui and The Cat Came Back. She is the artistic coordinator for Many Voices, One World; an artist collective focused on promoting peace and community building through storytelling and art projects in the schools. Her company Patient Puppets Inc. has produced over 2200 medical demonstration puppets for use in hospitals and clinics around the world.

Marcus Jamin is an actor, puppeteer and designer. His puppetry work has been featured at Theatre Passe Muraille, the SummerWorks Festival, the Fresh Ideas Festival, the Lab Cab Festival and Les Trois Jours de Casteliers in Montreal. He has had the privilege of acting as the Workshop Assistant to Ronnie Burkett on his productions of Penny Plain and The Daisy Theatre. Most recently he designed and built the puppets for Outside the March’s Mr. Burns, a Post-electric Play.  Marcus is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
 

Hanna Puley is a Toronto based theatre and film designer. Credits include design for Henri Faberge’s Heligoland Follies, and Feint of Hart, costume design for Digits’ music video Street Violence as well as costume design on the Canadian Screen Award winning webseries Space Riders. Season 2 finished shooting at the end of May. Recent credits include design of the short film She Stoops to Conquer starring Julian Richings and the world premier of John Patrick Shanley’s A Woman is a Secret.
 

Laura Johnson is a Canadian lighting designer, stagehand, and jack of all trades in the theatre world. She graduated from York University with a BFA in Theatre Production and Design. In 2011, she volunteered at the Prague Quadrennial and had her work showcased in the Dublin Fringe Festival. Since then, she has been predominantly working in the Kitchener-Waterloo / Toronto regions. In 2015, Laura was Associate Lighting Designer for Canada 300, a National Conversation piece that traveled to 21 predominant Canadian cities, and has assisted with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea through its process, in both Toronto and Quebec City.

Production Crew

Gabriel Cropley is a Toronto based lighting designer and three-time Dora Mavor Moore award nominee.
Recent credits include King Arthur Panto for Port Hope Theatre Festival, Kickstart for CanAsian Dance, Return of the Dead for NAfro Dance, Styll (Nuit Blanche Scarborough exhibits) for the City of Toronto, Sounding Thunder for Festival of the Sound, Llandovery Castle for Bicycle Opera, Category E for Coal Mine Theatre, and Tales of China for Little Pear Garden Dance.
Gabriel has had the privilege of collaborating with Alias Dance Projects, Young Voices Toronto, Ballet Creole, Expect Theatre, Lark and Whimsy Theatre, Julia Sasso Dance, dreamwalker dance, Angela Blumberg, Simcoe Contemporary Dancers, Avinoam Silverman Dance, Deviation Dance, Newton Moraes Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman, Sook-Yin Lee & Jennifer Goodwin, Cadence Contemporary Ballet, Ontario School of Ballet, Theatre Gargantua, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Martha Hicks School of Ballet, Sampradaya Dance Creations, Hamilton Children’s Choir, Tracey Norman, Sabina Perry, Forcier StageWorks, Soulpepper Global Cabaret, RAW Taiko Drummers, Ritmo Flamenco, Teatron Theatre, JDdance, Tribal Crackling Wind, Toronto Dance Theatre, Art of Time Ensemble, and the School of Toronto Dance Theatre.
 
Guifré Bantjes-Ràfols is a Catalan-Canadian actor and creator based in Toronto, ON. A member of both ACTRA and IATSE, he grew up in the theatre and has been a professional working on both sides of the industry since 2009; He has produced a number of projects, including the upcoming short film; Laundro, which he also wrote and acted in. On the technical side, he is an Electric with IATSE 873 but prior credits include: Venue Technician for the Saskatoon Fringe, ASM for Visió Ardent/Burning Vision in Barcelona (Tant per Tant), and Technical Director for TO WebFest 2018.
Jeff has a lifelong passion and vision for combining art and technology to develop original works. His projects are inspired by a love of storytelling and innovation. Through Kidoons theatrical productions and digital works on the Kidoons Network, Jeff's artist collaborators help organizations to tell their stories onstage and online. He works with Not-for-Profits and corporate clients across Canada and the United States with a vision to inspire and empower all generations.

Kidoons and WYRD Productions engages under the terms of the Independent Theatre Agreement, professional Artists who are members of Canadian Actors' Equity Association. 
 

Thank You

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea has been a journey for us, and we owe thanks to the following for helping us to explore, including:
Jeff Lord of Kidoons
Don, Iris, and Chris of PANAMANIA team for the initial commission.
We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
Produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
Our talented workshop & performance casts: Raoul Bhaneja, Colin Doyle, Stephanie Baptist, Rob McLaughlin, Stefanie Wiens, Carson Nattrass, Toby Hughes, Gil Garratt, Andrew Shaver, Mary-Lee Picknell, Marco Poulin, Eric Leblanc, Marie-Ève Perron, Suzy Jane Hunt; Serafín Falcón; and Richard Clarkin.
The Francis, Miller, and Baptist families
Ravi Jain, Jason Knight, Michael Levine, Jung-Hye Kim, and Leslee Silverman
Manitoba Theatre for Young People
Allen MacInnis and Young People’s Theatre
Andy McKim and Theatre Passe Muraille
The teams at La Caserne and Ex Machina
Deborah Knight and DKPR, Toronto
Our ever-expanding network of web series partner organizations across the continent... and to water heroes and New Atlanteans everywhere!
- Rick Miller and Craig Francis, co-creators

Thanks for support from

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Canada Council For The Arts

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Ontario Arts Council

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Toronto Arts Council

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Panamania TO2015 Arts and Culture Festival

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Kidoons

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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.