It was our great pleasure to host Annie Valentina as our playwright-in-residence summer/fall 2025. Annie holds a BA in Theatre from Dalhousie University and is a past Merritt Award nominee for her 2014 play Alien. She was formerly the Artistic Associate of Neptune Theatre, where her play Ballad of the Motherland premiered in 2023. During her residency at the museum, Annie worked on a new play called Od Dzvezdena Prašina (From Stardust), which she describes as "an exploration of multi-generational immigrant family dynamics" told through Cass, a second-gen Queer Canadian-Macedonian. Through humour, emotional candour and magical realism, the play engages with topics pertinent to immigrant families – elder care, grief and loss, generational communication gaps and LGBTQ erasure, among others.
The residency culminated in a workshop reading with professional actors and a small test audience in November 2024. At present, the work is on its third draft and in continued development.
From left: Loren Baldwin (as Bowie), Riley Reign (as Cass), Stephanie MacDonald (as Zoe), Mary Colin Chisholm (as Magda), Jennifer Allen-Barron (as Amanda / stage directions). Dramaturgy & photos by Scout Rexe.
