Where Did It All Start?

In 1989, Paula Costain and Michele Sereda co-founded Curtain Razors. Together they co-created, developed, produced, and performed numerous new works over a period of 7 years. While Paula went on to pursue her freelance acting career, Michele continued to head the company on her own, inspiring and producing work that explored the boundaries of contemporary theatre. Many young artists, including some of our current Artistic Associates, witnessed Michele’s freedom with process and collaboration, traversing the worlds of theatre, performance, movement, visual art, and film; her legacy informed a new generation of makers who would continue to stretch the limits of theatre-making. Over the past 30 years, Curtain Razors has continually built bridges between artistic disciplines via multidisciplinary methods and practices.

In 2015, the Canadian artistic community was devastated when Michele Sereda died in a tragic car accident alongside artists Lacy Morin-Desjarlais, Narcisse Blood, and Michael Green. The group had been traveling together in February to Piapot, to continue ongoing making processes with the students and community at Piapot School. The impact of this loss resounded throughout the country. In a period of grief and overwhelming sadness, the Board of Directors appointed Joey Tremblay as Artistic Director to oversee the company’s ongoing projects. Tremblay set the company on a new forward journey, dedicated to sustainable, rigourous, and process-driven creation and development. In 2017, Tremblay invited a team of Artistic Associates to join him in relation to Curtain Razors. In 2019, the team transitioned to a new structure that lateralized the leadership of the company. Joey Tremblay stepped out of his role as AD and joined the team of Artistic Associates, who assumed a collective directorship model.

Today

Currently, the company is led collaboratively by six established independent artists with varying practices: Kris Alvarez, Johanna Bundon, Terri Fidelak, Jayden Pfeifer, Joey Tremblay, and Judy Wensel. Each artist brings their own unique perspective to Curtain Razors as they share artistic leadership through a proactive, forward-looking, and radical model within the local performing arts community. Working collaboratively, the team relies on their cascading networks to enrich the company’s programming and artistic choices. They develop projects that are cross-disciplinary, fully original, and reflective of varying viewpoints. They practice reciprocity; labouring on one another’s work, often with other creative collaborators, and witnessing the evolution of one another's art over time. An active board, a part-time administrator, and a broad community base of support complete the company structure.

We feel we are strongest when, like the skyline here on the prairies, we hold a wide and expansive viewpoint of our artistic work.

The plurality of our leadership structure is in alignment with our dedication to multiple ways of seeing, making, and being.

Our Vision

Curtain Razors believes in theatre that invites artists and audiences to collaborate in the creation of live and communal events. We are committed to creative self-determination and support local, interdisciplinary artists in developing healthy, sustainable, and meaningful processes. We cultivate a space for Saskatchewan artists to incubate, evolve, and present original work that offers artistic excellence to the province and to our peers across the country and beyond.

Our driving objectives are to challenge and expand theatre practice in Saskatchewan. We explore the boundaries, both in how we create and how we define what constitutes a theatrical event. We want to provide our audiences with an alternative to mainstream theatre, to model independent and artist-led practice, and to support and nurture the artists who make the ecology here possible. Alongside these aspirations - we are humans committed to making art and labouring to nourish our field of practice.

Our Mandate

Curtain Razors nurtures, develops, and presents original Saskatchewan work that challenges the boundaries of theatre and upholds the artist and audience as co-creators of live performance.

Curtain Razors operates on the traditional lands of Nēhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota Lakota and Nakoda Nations and the homeland of the Métis. We are fully aware of the urgent need for healing relationships with land and people, through kind action, intentional creativity, and choosing to renounce white supremacy.