2018 Patrick Conner Award Recipient Announced

The Patrick Conner Award Committee is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2018 Patrick Conner Award is SUSANNA FOURNIER. Furthermore, for the first time, due to the unique quality of submissions, the Committee has decided to award the inaugural Patrick Conner Ticket to MARIAH HORNER. The Award and Ticket will be presented at a celebration to be held at The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West, Toronto, on Thursday, September 13 at 6:00pm. The Award Celebration is free and open to the public.

Susanna Fournier is a Canadian theatre-maker with a dark sense of humour. She works in various performance mediums, primarily constructing new texts for theatre (of which she has written many, with no end in sight). Her work is feminist, rowdy, anti-imperial, and sometimes impossible. Susanna is the founder and artistic producer of PARADIGM productions, a collaborative producing vehicle dedicated to creating the practical and artistic opportunities emerging and pivoting artists need to investigate disruptive stories and methodologies. In 2018/19 PARADIGM will produce Susanna's trilogy of performance texts, The Empire, across three venues in Toronto and as radio-drama podcasts online. To learn more visit www.empiretrilogy.com and www.susannafournier.com

Mariah Horner is a theatre artist based in Kingston. She is the director of the Storefront Fringe Festival and produces digital content for SpiderWebShow and foldA (Festival of Live Digital Art). She was a 2017/18 Metcalf Foundation Intern with both SpiderWebShow and Theatre Kingston, and founded the site-specific company Cellar Door Project in 2013. www.cellardoorproject.com

The Patrick Conner Award honours long-time collaborator Patrick Conner who passed away in December 2012, and seeks to carve a space to acknowledge the costs of integrity, honesty, generosity and belief. Previous award winners are James Davis, Estelle Shook, Lea Ambros, Taarini Chopra, Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Kimberly Edwards, Sarah Pittoello, Georgina Beaty and Jennifer Dallas. The annual award straddles and unifies two worlds that were essential to Patrick: (i) theatre and (ii) sustainable living, including the sustainability of food production in our environment. It honours an extraordinary individual who works to change the world through their practice, and includes a cash prize of $3,500. The Patrick Conner Ticket offers a 2018/19 season subscription to the following Toronto theatres companies who have generously donated this prize: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Canadian Stage, Crow's Theatre, Factory Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, The Theatre Centre and Theatre Passe Muraille, as well as tickets to Luminato 2019.

For more information please visit:

patrickconneraward.com