studip — referencing a common dyslexic disorientation of flipping the letters “d” and “p” — is a new experimental solo comedy currently in early stages of research and development. studip is inspired by June’s lived experience with dyslexia and her relationship to words, particularly from her vantage point as a playwright.
Combining personal storytelling, verbatim interview text, comedy, and devised experimental theatre, studip explores the world of words through a dyslexic lens. Word games like Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and word searches will act as dramaturgical frameworks to ask: “How can play and failure with words unsettle our allegiance to legibility?” and “How do cultural norms shape our unconscious biases about perceived intelligence?”
studip invites audiences to reexamine the word “stupid” and, in turn, the English language itself, illuminating both the fallibility of words and the creative potential of illegibility in postdramatic theatre.
Over the next year, June will receive support to generate the first draft of this as yet unwritten play, courtesy of the James Brown Memorial Creativity Fund.
June Fukumura is a multidisciplinary, nisei (second-generation) Japanese-Canadian theatre artist living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, colonially known as Vancouver. She is the Co-Artistic Director of Popcorn Galaxies, an experimental theatre company dedicated to re-enchanting the everyday through unconventional, site-responsive works. Since 2013, Popcorn Galaxies has created over twelve productions and has been presented in Vancouver, Richmond, Edmonton, Whitehorse, and Dartmouth. From 2019–2021, June served as Assistant/Associate Dramaturg at the Playwrights Lab at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and from 2021–2023 she was the Resident Dramaturg of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s Creation Lab. Her artistic practice includes acting for theatre/film/TV, devised performance, clown/bouffon, dramaturgy, and writing. As a dyslexic artist, she also works as a speaker, advocate, and educator. She is passionate about creating diverse, inclusive, and safer spaces for all neurodiverse and neurodivergent artists. www.junefukumura.com
Thank you so much to everyone who applied to our New Play Commission, made possible by the James Brown Memorial Creativity Fund. We assembled an excellent jury of artists to guide the selection process: Columpa Bobb, Daniela Atiencia, and Adam Grant Warren.
Now based in Vancouver, Adam was born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada. He started writing professionally in his early twenties, as a radio columnist for the CBC Morning Show. In that time, he also became Newfoundland’s youngest ever winner of both the Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the George Story Medal of Excellence in the Arts.
Adam then moved west to study at Vancouver Film School. His films have since screened as official selections at festivals including California’s Newport Beach Film Festival, the National Screen Institute’s Online All-Star Reel, and the Vancouver International Film Festival – where his film “Float” took home the honours for Best Canadian Short in 2012. In 2016, Conocerlos: Get to Know Them earned him his first BC Film Award nomination for Best Screenwriting.
Following development as part of the National Writers’ Circle at Vancouver’s Playwrights’ Theatre Centre, Adam’s solo show, Last Train In, premiered to critical acclaim at UNOFest and rEvolver. More recently, Lights won Touchstone Theatre’s 2019 Flying Start Playwrights Competition and marked the beginning of the company’s 50th anniversary season. Adam’s current play, Saturday Nights at Axles, was the final component of his full-scholarship MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and is now in development nationally.
Daniela Atiencia is a Latinx-Canadian theatre artist born and raised in Colombia. Daniela holds a BFA in Theatre Performance and an MFA in Theatre Directing. Her recent directing credits include Chochito Rey (Shakespeare meets Telenovela -Rumble), The Wrong Bashir (Touchstone Theatre), Methamorphoses (Studio 58), Clean/Espejos (Neworld), which won 5 Jessie Richardson awards, for which Daniela won for Outstanding Director. She is currently the Associate Artist at Touchstone running their Flying Start program which helps support early career playwrights and is also the LEAD Ensemble producer for Neworld Theatre. Daniela works as a freelance bilingual director, dramaturg, and deviser. She is based on the Unceded Territories of the Coast Salish peoples (Vancouver, B.C.)
Columpa has been a theatre artist for almost 40 years. Her credits and merits include the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award nominated performance in White Noise, co-produced by the Firehall Arts Centre and Savage Society, she won a Jessie for her lead role in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe and was nominated for a Jessie for Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble Cast for Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (Firehall Arts Centre). She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Actress for Sixty Below (Native Earth). She has written well over a dozen produced plays and as a playwright, her play Jumping Mouse, co-written with Marion De Vries, was nominated for a Dora Macie Moore award for Best Production, Youth Category. She has been nominated 4 times for the Mayor’s arts Awards In Winnipeg MB. She was nominated for the Contributions to North American Native Writing, Returning the Gift awards, Norman Oklahoma. After a Storytelling residency at the VPL where she developed and toured her version of Indigenous story “Raven Steals the Light” throughout Vancouver libraries, she also toured it toTrivandrum India, across Canada, Along the eastern seaboard of Australia, São Paulo Brazil, Ahmedabad, Chandragar, India and most recently in Hamilton New Zealand at the 2019 NAISA conference.
2023-2025 Playwright-in-Residence Adam Grant Warren, Saturday Nights At Axles
2022 Playwright-in-Residence Sam MacPhee-Pitcher, Something in the Water
Inaugural Playwright-in-Residence Kirsten Kirsch, GIMPY
Encouragement Award Winners Mugabi Byenkya & Yousef Kadoura
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