BY THE OPPRESSED. WITH THE OPPRESSED.

MICHELE DECOTTIGNIES

Stage Left's founder & Artistic Director
Michele Decottignies is a Canmore-based, multiple award-winning producer, presenter, playwright, director, designer and arts advocate with 30 years experience in the professional arts industries. She founded Stage Left Productions in 2003 to house her daring blend of professional arts production with bottom-up, radical social justice praxis – and has since made Stage Left the leading contributor to Disability Arts in Canada, a model of excellence Artist-Community Collaboration, and a global Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed.
 
Through Stage Left's Theatre of the Oppressed practice, Michele has pioneered highly successful applied arts projects in Social Work, Adult Education, Aboriginal Health, Mental Health, Self-Advocacy, Independent Living, Youth Criminal Justice, Human Rights & Multiculturalism and many other fields. 
 
Within the broader arts community, Michele has worked in a variety of artistic, technical, administrative and/or advisory roles for many different professional and community arts companies throughout Alberta. Most notably, she assisted Michael Green in forming the Performance Creation Canada network, collaborated with many international jokers on the development of the International Theatre of the Oppressed Women's network, and founded the Disability Arts & Culture Presenters' Network.

She is currently coordinating the national development of The Deaf, Disability & Mad Arts Alliance of Canada (a nascent national arts service organization); chairs The Calgary Congress for Equity & Diversity in the Arts; sits on the Board of the Canadian Arts Presenters Association; and facilitates arts equity training for the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres.
 
As an under-educated, working class, lesbian feminist artist/ activist with several invisible disabilities, Michele's practice is necessarily concerned with the development of artistic and cultural practices that foster rather than negate diversity. Her art work is multi- and inter-disciplinary, collaborative and radical using the arts to challenge dominant social paradigms that render difference invisible and undesirable in society. 



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OLIVIA MARIE GOLOSKY

Stage Left's Community Connector
​A proud member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, Olivia Marie Golosky is a queer artist and advocate for equity with a passion for grassroots community-building. Hailing from Treaty 8, Fort McMurray, her background is in theatre, film, radio, music festivals and television production as a stage/production manager, technician and playwright.
 
Currently, she sits on the Indigenous Committee for the NCRA, holds the seat as the Indigenous Representative on the NCRA's Board of Directors, produces/hosts a podcast through CJSW 90.9 FM, Through The Kaleidoscope, is a founding member of the Calgary Congress for Equity & Diversity in the Arts and is a member of the Treaty 7 Film Collective.
 
Olivia is also the Production Manager for Indigenous Resilience In Music, the Stage Manager for REDx Talks as well as an Artistic Associate for Stage Left.






























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