Announcing the Artists of RISER 2025-2026
Since 2021, RISER has supported 13 new performance projects in productions, readings, and development workshops. Now, we’re excited to announce our first cohort of artists participating in our brand new two-year model in partnership with Fringe Theatre, Azimuth Theatre’s Expanse Festival, and Skirtsafire!
Artists will develop their projects over two years, with a work-in-progress showing at the 2025 RISER New Works Festival towards a full production with their partnered Festival in 2026. The two years will include mentorship in producing, development workshops for text, production, and design, and numerous in-kind resources provided by Common Ground and all our development and presenting partners.
Thank you to our independent jury members for their tireless reviewing and recommendations, and our friends at Fringe Theatre, Azimuth Theatre, and Skirtsafire for their partnership in the curation process. Keep reading to learn more about our four exciting new RISER projects!
Congratulations and welcome to our 2025-26 RISER Artists: D’orjay Jackson, Calla Wright, Jameela McNeill, and Alexis de Villa and Tokunbo Adegbuyi!
About D’orjay: D’orjay is a Black queer/gender non-conforming human who creates through several mediums of art and facilitates energy medicine in amiskwaciwâskahikan (so-called Edmonton) on treaty 6 land.
About Postal Prophets: Postal Prophets is a musical play set in a dystopian alternative realm generations after a great war between the inhabitants of the land colonies and a sentient intelligence retrieval system. The story follows the journey of O’ludrey, an indentured mail carrier and vocal labourer who lives and works under the oppressive eye of the ruling institution, the Communications & Postal Consortium. O’ludrey, along with a clandestine resistance movement embark on a daring quest to liberate the sharing of information and ultimately humanity itself.
Others collaborating on Postal Prophets are Sahil Chugh (Musical Collaborator), and Mustafa Rafiq and Mohamed Ahmed (performers).
From D’orjay: “After experiencing the intensity and fulfillment of being a recording artist, I have been searching for outlets that give opportunities for me to feel unbound creatively while also having support and guidance. Through attending a playwright workshop, I was inspired to use small seeds of my lived experience to play in the mediums of theatre, music and world-building. I discovered the creative freedom I was seeking through this process and Postal Prophets was born! The RISER mentorship will allow me to continue on this already incredibly gratifying project. Having access to the supports and access to resources will allow me to see this project to completion through every phase while ensuring that accessibility and diversity are foundational aspects of the experience for all artists involved.”
Postal Prophets will be presented in partnership with Common Ground Arts at the 2026 RISER New Works Festival.
About Calla: Based in Edmonton, Calla holds a BFA in Playwriting from Concordia University in Montreal and their work has been staged across the country. Select writing credits include: Madness and Other Ghost Stories (Found Fest 2024) Tiresias, Turning (Thousand Faces Festival, 2024) The Wright Sisters Present: The Wright Brothers (Edmonton Fringe 2023, Edmonton Fringe 2019, Saskatoon Fringe 2020) The Orange Room (EdmonTEN 2023) Sisyphus, Happy (The Thousand Faces Festival, 2022) One Song (co-written with Daniel Belland, Edmonton Fringe 2021) Hair, But No Teeth (EdmonTEN 2021) Spiral (co-written with Michelle Soicher, Montreal Fringe, 2021) Home Again (The Alberta Queer Calendar Project) Home Again (Short Film, Vicarious Playground Productions, 2020) Witts: Ballad of Queer Cowboys (Edmonton Fringe 2019, 2017 Ergo Pink Fest) Christmas Play (Dammitammy Productions, 2018-2020) They won the 2015 Kit Brennan Playwriting Award for their play The Wind and the Rain, which went on tour to the 2018 Regina, Calgary, and Edmonton Fringe Festivals.
About Binding: “The piece, called Binding, is an exploration of my trans identity and relationship to my body, specifically my chest. I came out as nonbinary fairly late in life, but have always struggled with my relationship to this particular part of my body. Stylististically, it will draw inspiration from post-dramatic theatre, clown, and drag. I was inspired to create this piece in early February of this year, after hearing Danielle Smith’s cruel and discriminatory plans for the trans youth of this province. I believe it is important, now, that trans and nonbinary adults who have the means and the ability create visibly trans work. The visibility of queer adults was incredibly important to me as a young queer teen, to see that I was not alone, that the future was not so bleak as it seemed. I want to be a proud, visible trans and nonbinary adult and artist, living a life that I love, in the hopes that my image will be meaningful to even one young trans person. ” – Calla
From Calla: “I am a queer and nonbinary Canadian playwright and performer living and working in Edmonton. I’ve been writing professionally for the theatre for around 15 years now, and self-producing a lot of my own work. In my work, I focus a lot on bringing together disparate elements of theatre. I’m very passionate about both classical theatre and historical research, and post-dramatic arts creation and absurdism. I’m very inspired by work that lives in the between, the partial, and the fragmented. With RISER, I hope to take the next step in my career, and challenge and elevate my work to the next level. “
Binding will be presented in partnership with Azimuth Theatre at the 2026 Expanse Festival.
BINDING is being presented at the 2024 Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival! Click here to check it out.
About Jameela: Jameela is an actor, musician, and writer. Her work has been seen on stages such as the Citadel Theatre, Mayfield Dinner Theatre, Workshop West, Expanse Festival, Lunchbox Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, and the Stratford Festival. Her playwriting training began with Tarragon Theatre’s Young Playwrights Unit (2021). Since then she has been a part of the RBC Emerging Mentorship (Citadel), My First Play Program (Nextfest), and Horizon’s Writer’s Circle (Writers Guild of Alberta). She is passionate about digging into the past, examining familial bonds, and putting a spotlight on the stories that have been forgotten or unexplored.
About Ms. Pat’s Kitchen: The Bailey family has won their golden ticket! Their very own restaurant that is. A brand new kitchen in Edmonton, featuring Jamaican patties, stew chicken, and of course Ms. Pat’s famous soup! As Pat transitions into this new stage of her life, her daughter Kenise prepares to take a leap into adulthood. Although, her journey to independence is not what she thought it would be. Something is troubling Kenise and Pat can sense it. Pat would do anything for her daughter, but in her attempt to save Kenise she must first recognize her own scars. This play examines intergenerational healing and how we all carry pain differently.
From Jameela: “I am delighted to be a part of this year’s cohort! This story was birthed out of my desire to speak about consent across generational borders. My hope is to bridge the gap between older and younger generations. Everyone has a story (some linked to the subject matter of the play, some not), no matter their age or where they come from. When we come together and listen to one another we can find common ground and understanding.”
Ms. Pat’s Kitchen will be presented in partnership with Skirtsafire at their 2026 Festival.
About Alexis and Tokunbo: Tokunbo(he/him) and Alexis (they/them) are long time friends and co-conspirators in an effort to foster community arts projects that center stories and communities that have been historically pushed to the margins, erased, and/or ignored. Both are multidisciplinary artists in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (colonially known as Edmonton) and are emerging producers.
From Alexis and Tokunbo: “Diasporic Diaries: Tales from the 2nd Gen emerged from discussions on shared experiences and distinct narratives of growing up Filipino and Nigerian within the context of Treaty 6 and how our relationships with our racial identities have changed over the years. We found that these experiences were also shared and similar to further colored diasporic communities. Our hope with this project is to foster a space for folks to unpack and share their experiences through multidisciplinary art forms and dig into the navigating being children of immigrants while on stolen lands.”
Diasporic Diaries will be presented in partnership with Fringe Theatre at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival.
Stay tuned in early 2025 for more about the RISER New Works Festival and your chance to see these incredible artists in action.