The ARRAY: Less Than Zero

Anjela Magpantay – Lead Artist

Anjela is a multidisciplinary artist working as an actor, director, producer, clown, teacher, devising collaborator and anything in-between with various artists of different disciplines. She has worked nationally and internationally as a performer and collaborator in Hong Kong, the Philippines, in the UK and across Canada. Her interests are extensive but they have always led her back to wondering about the influence of space and environment on human behavior. Previous selected works: hear her voice in the Peabody award-recipient video game: 1000X Resist made by Sunset Visitor; director of Happy Valley (rice & beans theatre) and Fly, Love (Studio 58); performer in Walking at Night by Myself (Nancy Tam and A Wake of Vultures); and Host of Foreign Radical (Theatre Conspiracy). Anjela was recently the interim Artistic Director of rice & beans Theatre and Theatre Replacement’s COLLIDER artist in residence on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. 

Abi Padilla – Collaborator

Abi Padilla is a first generation Filipino-Canadian actor and writer. A graduate of the Studio 58 acting program, her co-written plays “The Banyan Tree” and “How to F*ck Up a Funeral” were staged at the Six of One: New Play Festival. “Grandma.Gangsta.Guerrilla”, her first full length play where she also played the titular character, world premiered under Ruby Slippers Theatre in 2025. She has performed in numerous festivals and has worked with various theatre companies based in Vancouver such as rice and beans theatre, Theatre Replacement, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre,

United Players of Vancouver, NPC3 and Southeast Asian Cultural Heritage Society. She is also one of the producers of the annual Sapin-Sapin Arts Festival, which showcases the talents of emerging Filipino playwrights and performers. In her spare time, she loves to play early 2000’s RPGs, train in different martial arts, and read books.

Argel Monte de Ramos – Collaborator

Argel Monte de Ramos is a multidisciplinary artist from Surrey, BC, working across theatre, music, and new play development. A graduate of Capilano University’s Musical Theatre and Bachelor of Performing Arts programs, he has performed with Arts Club Theatre, Align Entertainment, Theatre Under the Stars, Metro Theatre, and Urban Ink. Notable roles include Joseph in Metro Theatre’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Manager in Arts Club’s Elf! The Musical and Horton in  Align Entertainment’s Seussical.

Alongside performing, Argel is an award-winning composer and playwright-producer. He co-founded The Parallel Project, a writing and performance workshop dedicated to IBPOC artists, presented in partnership with The Cultch, City of Vancouver, and Playwrights Theatre Centre. His music and theatre work have earned recognition including a Fraser Valley Music Award, an Ovation Award, and a Leo Award nomination.

Argel continues to hone his skills toward future artistic leadership, with a passion for curation and community-centred creation.

Aryo Khakpour – Co-creator/Director/Performer

Aryo Khakpour (he/him) is an interdisciplinary writer, director, performer, and dramaturg. Born and raised in Tehran, he has been based in Vancouver, Canada, since 2005. He co-founded The Biting School in 2013 and was company-in-residence at the PuSh Festival and The Dance Centre from 2018–2020. In his practice, he explores dynamics of power, implications of ideologies, repetition of mythologies, and cultural adaptation. An intersectional feminist, Aryo interrogates the patriarchy and its harmful effects. His practice is highly physical and surrealistic; it moves from theatre to performance art to dance to film and back to theatre; it deals with pain and pleasure, is sex-positive, and aims to queer the status quo. Aryo was trained in devised practices of non-hierarchical collective creation — this is his favourite way of creating work. Aryo is the recipient of the 2024 Theatre Replacement Accelerator Lab Fellowship, which focuses on international touring within the context of experimental theatre and interdisciplinary performance, and building relations with the international arts network.

Erika Mitsuhashi – Co-creator/Performer

Erika Mitsuhashi is an interdisciplinary artist with a practice spanning performance, installation, film, scenography, and projection design. She is ever delighted by contending with the materiality of the present and using the body as the site for conceptual, existential and tender curiosity. Her work has been presented by Surrey Art Gallery, VIVO Media Arts, PushOFF, Ehkä Productions (FIN), La Serre’s OFFTA, and the Western Front. Locally, she collaborates with Alexa Mardon (Mardon + Mitsuhashi), Francesca Frewer, and is part of the producing and curatorial team behind Boombox, an underground performance venue in a shipping container.

elika mojtabaei – Costume Designer

elika mojtabaei الیکا مجتبایی is an Iranian-born writer, costume designer, and dramaturg based on the stolen lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, “Vancouver.” Her interdisciplinary practice spans performance, film, installation art, and text. Through colour, texture, surrealist gestures, and the poetry of the unsaid, her work interrogates how language and apparel have been weaponized to marginalize, control, and erase. The movement and stillness of bodies, the power and limitations of fabric, and the joys and tribulations of words inspire her. She wrote, designed and produced the short film, “a film about a uterus”.  As a costume designer, she has collaborated with vAct, Jin-me Yoon, Theatre Conspiracy, Alley Theatre,  Company 605, Alexis Fletcher, and others.  Most recently, her installation/performance piece TechniCowlour was exhibited at Centre A Gallery. She is currently developing a new play, Draw Me a Home, based on children’s experiences of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), exploring the interconnectivity of oral, visual, and haptic storytelling.

Robyn Jacob – Lead Artist/Composer

Robyn Jacob is a composer, pianist, vocalist and educator living and working from the unceded territories of the Sḵwxwú7mesh, Xwməθkwəyəm and Səl’il’wətaʔ Nations, also known as Vancouver. Her compositions include commissions by Grammy winning Third Coast Percussion (Chicago), Architek Percussion (Montreal), Grammy winning Sō Percussion (Brooklyn), Chor Leoni (Vancouver), and the Victoria Symphony, as well as collaborations with visual artists and instrument makers. Her avant-pop project Only A Visitor (Mint Records) has toured internationally and released four albums to date. She has released two albums with her duo project The Giving Shapes in collaboration with harpist Elisa Thorn. Her new solo project Immix explores the emotive narratives of voice and electronics. From 2012 – 2024 she was part of the multi-disciplinary art collective Publik Secrets, whose work includes a variety of public space interventions, performances, installations and ephemeral gatherings, including Gamelan Bike Bike, which she co-led with artist and composer George Rahi for over ten years.

Dave Mott – Director/Devisor

Dave is a BFA graduate of University of Victoria , founding member of Upintheair Theatre, an actor, director, performance deviser, playwright and creator. He was born on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Coast Salish People, in the city known as North Vancouver, and is committed to betterment of these lands through generosity, sharing and respect for others. He holds a non-hierarchical world view, values inclusion, loves nature, and reveres Indigenous culture, ceremony, and storytelling. Committed to the creation of new plays and performance, supporting and presenting artists at transitional points of their careers, community building, and training the next generation of theatre makers, Dave’s true passions are exhibited best when he is mentoring artists, presenting their work, and visiting other Canadian cities to view works in development.

Jason Rothery – Playwright/Devisor

Jason Patrick Rothery is an Alberta-based writer, theatre artrist, and lapsed academic. A graduate of UBC’s BFA Creative Writing program, and with an MA in Humanities from York under his belt, Jason was formerly a resident dramaturge at Playwrights Theatre Centre (Vancouver), resident playwright of the Soulpepper Academy (Toronto), the co-founder and Festival Director of the Calgary International Fringe Festival, and the Artistic Director of Ghost River Theatre (Calgary). He has enjoyed multiple professional productions of his work and collaborative creations, which have toured across Canada and the U.S. Currently focused on prose, Jason is the author of the novels Privilege, REG, and the forthcoming Impostor Syndrome.

Sherine Menes – Assistant Director

Sherine Menes is a first generation Filipino-Canadian theatre artist and filmmaker. They trained under the Intensive Acting Program at Vancouver Institute of Media Arts in 2021. They’ve since been in buto/buto: bones are seeds and Hurricane Mona. Sherine was a part of a residency at the James Black Gallery and exhibited their multimedia work alongside other queer Filipinx artists at  ‘bahay na babalik-balikan (a home to always return to)’.

Jessica Hood – Performer

Jessica Hood (she/they) is a queer, disabled theatre and animation artist and white settler based on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Qayqayt First Nation, and the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, colonially known as New Westminster and Vancouver, BC. Jessica holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from Simon Fraser University and a diploma in 2D Character Animation from VanArts. They are the co-founder and co-artistic producer of unladylike co., an interdisciplinary multimedia production company that creates new femme-focused works in a feminist, collaborative, and inclusive process.

Blake Hobson-Dimas – Performer

Blake Hobson-Dimas (he/him) is a Mexican-Canadian visual and performance artist based in Vancouver, BC. He is the Artistic Director of HeadFullOfRocks, a performance collective exploring character, costume, and embodied storytelling. Most recently, HeadFullOfRocks was commissioned by Pi Theatre to develop a 30-minute performance in celebration of the company’s 40th anniversary. A recipient of the 2025 DAWN Mentorship at Upintheair Theatre, Blake’s work blends clown, crochet, and personal mythology to create tactile, performative installations and productions that invite magic, reflection, and play.

Garvin Chan – Performer

Garvin (They/them) is a theatre maker/director from Hong Kong, situated in xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. Graduating from Simon Fraser University’s theatre performance program in 2022, they have since featured in Pedro Chamale’s Peace Country, received a residency with Rumble Theatre, and participated in programs with vAct, Arts Club, and Whatlab. Garvin explores identity through dark humour, contrasting the spiritual with the mundane. Garvin’s works include “What the F-Word is Going On?”(presented at rEvolver festival 2024), “Year of the Frog”, and“A Grandchild’s Quest for Chicken” at 2025’s Vancouver Fringe Festival.