Lara Schmitz – Lara Schmitz is a Calgary based performer, playwright, and educator/community facilitator. As a queer playwright, she is currently writing PUSSY, which explores the gap between Sarah’s understanding of her identity compared to what her partners expect of her, and a script with Matt McKinney for Verb Theatre about queer female scientists exploring consciousness and the realities of aging and death. She has acted with many of the professional theatre companies in Calgary, recently having finished a spring 2019 tour of We Are All Treaty People (Quest Theatre and Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society) and looking forward to Iceland with Theatre Calgary in the fall. She is also very excited for Dirty Laundry Goes to Camp, which will be her first season as producer of Calgary’s only fully live, fully improvised soap opera, Dirty Laundry.
Matt McKinney – Matt McKinney is a Calgary based performer, playwright, and filmmaker. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program (2009) and a queer artist engaged in bringing LGBT voices to the stage and screen. As a playwright, he has worked with Calgary’s Third Street Theatre to tell the story of Sergius and Bacchus, Christian saints thought to have been gay lovers, as well as writing and performing a fringe theatre show Polar Shift. Matt is co-writing a script with Lara Schmitz for Verb Theatre that centres around queer female scientists exploring consciousness and the realities of aging and death.
