Praxis Theatre

About Praxis

Mandate

Praxis Theatre is a Toronto-based not-for-profit theatre company devoted to creating original theatrical productions. These works emphasize challenging sociopolitical ideas while remaining dedicated to creating theatre that is accessible to a wide spectrum of our community.

The impetus underlying all our projects is the same: We believe in the potential and power of new stories, created by local artists, to give audiences the opportunity to question the world we engage in and how we shape it.

Michael Wheeler: Artistic Director

Michael Wheeler has directed ten original productions as Artistic Director of Praxis Theatre.

He is currently Co-Curator of the Freefall Festival at The Theatre Centre and the Neil Munro Intern Director at the Shaw Festival. Michael has trained as a director at the Tarragon Theatre, as an artistic producer with Volcano Theatre and is editor of praxistheatre.com.

Assistant director credits include Tear The Curtain at The Cultural Olympiad and Peggy Pickit Sees The Face of God as part of Luminato and Canadian Stage.

He is a Finalist for the 2010 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, Winner of the 2011 SummerWorks Arts Professional Award and Finalist for the 2012 OAC John Hirsch Award for Emerging Directors.

A member of The Wrecking Ball, Michael holds a Certificate from Harvard University and a MFA from the Moscow Art Theatre.

Aislinn Rose: Artistic Producer

Aislinn is the Artistic Producer of Praxis Theatre, and Associate Editor of praxistheatre.com. For Praxis she has led the online Open Source Theatre Project for Section 98, created the experimental Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical, and was Artistic Producer on their co-production of You Should Have Stayed Home. Most recently she produced A Very Lupe Xmas for Fault Line Theatre, Guns & Roses for The Original Norwegian, and Jesus Chrysler for Praxis Theatre in Association with Theatre Passe Muraille.

She is now also working with Aluna Theatre as their Festival Producer for PANAMERICAN ROUTES: A New Festival of Theatre for Human Rights, and is the Community Manager for the online experiment www.theconversationaboutlove.com, an online art gallery and companion piece to Sarah Polley’s new film, Take This Waltz.

After supporting Liza Balkan’s work on Out the Window as a dramaturg, she began developing its online counterpart “The Brain”, as a living archive of the project’s source materials, which existed previously only in a series of bankers’ boxes, computer files, and in the brain of the show’s creator. The Brain currently lives at www.outthewindowcollective.com, her very first wordpress site.

Simon Rice: Founding Member

Simon is a director, actor and journalist. Most recently he directed Underneath with Praxis. Simon also directed Stranger and the company’s “Patron’s Pick” winning The Blood of a Coward.

As a performer, he played principal roles in Eugene, Checkpoint, and The Master and Margarita. In 2007, Simon toured Toronto’s parks with Stranger Theatre’s, The World Turned Upside Down.

Other roles include, “K” in Red Castle Inquiry and Richard in Richard III, directed by Yanna McIntosh. Simon has worked extensively with teacher and director Raymond Bobgan, Artistic Director of The Cleveland Public Theatre.

Simon is a graduate of Humber College Theatre School and is currently pursuing an Advanced Diploma in Journalism at Humber’s School of Media Studies and Information Technology.

Margaret Evans: Performer/Creator

Margaret’s first association with Praxis was as an actor and producer of DYAD at the 2007 Toronto Fringe Festival.

She was the General Manager for Praxis Theatre from  2008 – 2010 producing Stranger, Tim Buck 2 (which she also performed in) and Underneath. She is currently starring in Jesus Chrysler.

She has produced for the Summerworks Festival, the Toronto International Fringe Festival, Nightwood Theatre, Theatre in Her Shoes and the Andrea Nann Dreamwalker Dance Company, among others.

Margaret’s screen credits include many short films as well as Spynet and This is Wonderland (CBC Television). Her first feature film The Last New Year premiered at the Victoria Film Festival in January of 2009.

Her theatre acting credits include Much Ado About Nothing (Cry Havoc) Jimmy the Cocksucker (Expanded Arts), Crossing Delancey (Encore) The Moon Bath Girl (Summerworks), Trying (Globus), and A Minor Symphony in Bees (Rhubarb). Margaret received a B.A. in History from the University of King’s College in Halifax, a M.F.A. in Acting from the Actors Studio Drama School in New York and completed the Acting Shakespeare course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.