A Chat With Pros | 2025
With Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, Angela Magpantay, Gabrielle Martin, and Conor Wylie
Friday March 28th, 2025 | 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Room 4390 – SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
A conversation with four performance makers about making it work in Vancouver.
With Natalie LeFebvre Gnam (Artistic Producer of Plastic Orchid Factory), Angela Magpantay (SCA alumnus, Interim Artistic Director of rice & beans theatre), Gabrielle Martin (Artistic Director, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival), and Conor Wylie (SCA alumnus, part of A Wake of Vultures).
Hosted by the SCA Theatre & Performance area, with support from the FCAT Speakers Fund.
Biographies
Natalie Lefebvre Gnam is an award-winning contemporary dance artist, movement educator and arts administrator based in Vancouver. Born in Prince George, BC, to an extensive French Canadian family, Natalie received her early training at Judy Russell’s Enchainment Dance Studio and later at L’École Superieure de Ballet du Québec in Montreal. From 1997, she has worked with Le Jeune Ballet du Québec, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, dancersdancing, The Vancouver Opera, Coleman Lemieux & Co and Vancouver’s MACHiNENOiSY. Natalie is the artistic producer of plastic orchid factory – an artist-run, interdisciplinary performance company founded in 2008, in partnership with dance artist, James Gnam. Working closely with James and plastic orchid’s board of directors, Natalie performs in and produces the company’s work, while always looking to cultivate an environment which supports an artist-centrered practice. In 2009, James and Natalie were named as the emerging artists at the Mayor’s Arts Award for Dance in Vancouver by the late Lola McLaughlin. Natalie was also the recipient of the 2009 Isadora Duncan Award for Excellence for her performance in endORPHIN, plastic orchid factory’s first evening length work.
Angela Magpantay (she/her) is a first generation Canadian originating from the Philippines and holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University. She has worked internationally as a performer and collaborator in Hong Kong and across the UK. Anjela works freelance as an actor, director, clown, teacher and collaborator with various artists of different disciplines. She is currently living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Gabrielle Martin is a cultural producer and live arts curator practicing transformative experiential design in one of society’s few remaining ritual spaces. Her work prioritizes embodied criticality, imagination, pluralism, and risk. It centres the body, and is framed by social and political urgencies. She has a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University (Montréal), a Certificate in Dramaturgy from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (Châlons-en-Champagne), and an MA in Arts and Cultural Management from Rome Business School. Recently, Gabrielle has participated on curatorial and selection juries for Denmark’s CPH Stage International Days, England’s Horizon Showcase, and Canada’s Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in Dance. Before joining the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in 2021 as Artistic Director, she worked as Festival Manager with the Vancouver International Dance Festival. Prior to working in arts management, Gabrielle performed over 1,400 shows internationally with Cirque du Soleil’s TORUK – The First Flight and Cavalia, participated in choreographic residencies in Belgium, Sweden and France, and presented her work in the UK, US, and across Canada.
A member of A Wake of Vultures (WOV), a project-based interdisciplinary performance collective with SCA alumni Nancy Tam and Daniel O’Shea, Conor Wylie is a performer, writer, and director creating experimental theatre. He lives and works in Vancouver, BC, located on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) nations. Conor regularly collaborates with Theatre Replacement, where he is an artistic associate, as well as with many members of Vancouver’s esteemed Progress Lab consortium. In 2017, he was selected for the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Theatre Artist by Marcus Youssef. In 2019, he was chosen as the Siminovitch Prize Protégé by his dear mentors James Long and Maiko Yamamoto. In 2022, he was named Best Director of a Canadian Feature by the Vancouver Asian Film Festival for his work on K BODY AND MIND.