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Join us on Monday evening and Meet the Playwrights! While playwright mentoring has been a part of DD’s suite of programming since the beginning, for the last 5 years we have been running a successful partnership with TD and theatre companies in Toronto amplifying the voices of emerging black playwrights. Meet this year’s four participants in our DD/TD Black Playwrights Mentoring Program, learn about what inspires them, and the long road from initial script idea to fully produced play that they have set out on. Hosted by April Leung of Theatre Passe Murraile, one of our theatre partners.

About the Participants

Alten Wilmot is a playwright, producer, and multidisciplinary artist based in the Waterloo Region and Toronto. Their work amplifies the voices of second-generation Caribbean, Queer, and MAD communities, centering stories that find meaning in the unresolved through comedy and messy emotions. Alten is the founder of Unwrap Theatre, and has worked independently on over 50 projects across Canada and internationally, working with institutions like CBC, Global TV, Harbourfront Centre, NBCUniversal, and Theatre Passe Muraille. 

Their work explores vulnerability and authenticity, bringing humour to heartbreak and grace to chaos. Alten has been recognized with a Buddies in Bad Times Queer Emerging Artist Award, an ArtworxTO Emerging Artist Award, and a Waterloo Region Arts Award. They have held residencies at The National Ballet of Canada, Obsidian Theatre, MT Space, among others. 

In 2025, Alten premiered their play, My Life in Colour, with Unwrap Theatre to public and private venues across the Waterloo Region. Their next play, a comedy about the biracial experience, is set to premiere in fall 2026.

Kendelle Parks (she/her) is an actor, playwright, and director, based in the GTA. She holds a BFA in Performance Acting from Toronto Metropolitan University and loves theatre that uses stylized or heightened language, portrays morally grey characters, and subverts expectations. She approaches her writing through a lens of humour, often embracing the silly and absurd. Recent writing and directing credits include INSERT CLOWN HERE (Parlous Theatre), which toured to four Fringe Festivals across Canada and had a sold-out run at Toronto Fringe, winning The Spirit of The Fringe award.

Lili Robinson (she/they) is a theatre artist, poet and facilitator born and raised on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. Heavily inspired by Afrofuturism, Black feminism, and queer theory, her work is rooted in theatre’s potential as an agent of collective healing and political transformation. Lili has worked with theatre companies across the country as a playwright and performer, and has won multiple awards for her playwriting, including the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s John Palmer Award, recognizing a new generation playwright dedicated to making art that agitates the status quo. Other hats they’ve worn in recent years include: Community Engagement Producer for Playwrights Theatre Centre and the frank theatre; Resident Curator at rEvolver Festival; and dramaturg for the Parallel Project, supporting emerging BIPOC playwrights to develop new work. As a poet, Lili has been featured as part of the Vancouver Writer’s Festival, Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival’s Queerotica and Futurosity in the Midst of History events, and online as part of Brick Books’ Brickyard online platform.

Pierrette Walker believes in the embodied stories within, around, beside and beneath. She seeks to hold space for their possibilities, illuminating their testimonies through words, rhythm and rhyme. She is coming into her artistic voice, an evolution of radical self-love. Widowed while pregnant in the height of COVID, Pierrette is on a journey to magnify the experiences of racialized peoples experiencing loss. She believes in the vulnerable power of taking space in all of your phases of being and healing. By day, she is an Educator and at night, she morphs into Dino-Mom or whatever toddler adventures her son invites her into. She is an ‘Awkward Butterfly’ – Mahogany Sunshine, making ripples in her dance with life.

April Siutong Leung 梁筱彤 (she/her) is an award-winning playwright, performance creator, and actor who grew up in Hong Kong and is now based in Tkarón:to (Toronto). She has worked with, and performed at, many celebrated theatre companies across Turtle Island including Theatre Passe Muraille, Blyth Festival, Factory Theatre, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, and fu-GEN Theatre. April’s creative practice extends into playwriting and digital media works. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director at Theatre Passe Muraille.

We would like to thank TD for their ongoing support of this program!

June 12, 2025 | 12:30 PM

Curious about writing books for young readers? Join children’s author Derek Mascarenhas for an engaging introduction to the world of picture books. In this session, we’ll explore the different types of picture books, the writer’s role, and the key ingredients of a great story—character, structure, plot, and more. You’ll also learn how to shape an idea, consider your audience, and navigate the path to publication.

Register here.

About the Presenter

Derek Mascarenhas is a graduate of the University of Toronto SCS Creative Writing Program, a finalist and runner up for the Penguin Random House of Canada Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. His linked short story collection, Coconut Dreams, was called a “stunning debut” in Quill and Quire’s starred review and The Globe and Mail named it one of the best reads from Canadian small presses. Derek’s first picture book, 100 Chapatis, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “warm and reassuring,” and his second, The Mango Monster, was the CBC Books top pick for Canadian kids in Fall 2024. Derek is also working on a middle-grade and speculative novel, and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto SCS.