Cast & Creative Team
Now on Tour in Saskatchewan.
Click Here to find out more.
A Manitoba Theatre for Young People Production
In nîkwatin sîpiy, Grandmother Moon tells the story of two eleven-year-olds, born under the same blood moon, but in different parts of the world. This new play follows their stories as they meet in a forest, and that of their descendants who meet in the present day in what is known as Manitoba. A broken promise from the past can be righted when there is finally an openness to learn from those who have protected and honoured the waterways for centuries.
Presented in the BackStage Stage and on tour across the province.
Recommended for ages 5 +
Co-Playwright
Michaela Washburn is a proud Métis artist of Cree, French, Irish and English descent. Now based in North Bay, she feels blessed to be grounded in ceremony and community based arts in her work with Aanmitaagzi and Big Medicine Studio. An award winning actor and writer, Washburn also has multiple nominations including the Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Theatre. Her work has been shared internationally at festivals and theatres in Wales, Aruba and across Canada and the United States. Michaela’s practice spans theatre, film, television, writing, spoken word, clown, improvisation, hosting, workshop facilitation and stand-up. Proud to be continuing as an Artist in Residence with Necessary Angel Theatre Company and an Associate Artist with the Stratford Festival, Michaela is also honoured to currently be serving as a mentor with Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s National Mentorship Program.
Co-Playwright
Carrie loves adapting stories into theatre for young audiences. She is often inspired by a book or a historical event and then figures out the theatrical way in. She has adapted seven children’s books into plays for various ages, including The Paper Bag Princess, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Snail and the Whale, and There’s a Mouse in My House. The latter was produced by Carousel Players in 2009 and toured Niagara schools. In 2010 the play was remounted and brought to Young Peoples Theatre and Theatre Direct in Toronto. Carrie’s next play, Water Under the Bridge was her first historically inspired work, which she co-wrote with Michaela Washburn. This play was produced in 2012 and toured for 2 years throughout Southern Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Carrie’s most recent project Torn Through Time, co-written with Frances Koncan and Cherissa Richards, was about forgotten Canadian female heroines and was produced by MTYP in 2019. She is so grateful to finally see Frozen River come to life. Co-writing with Michaela Washburn and Joelle Peters has been a beautiful experience and thank you to all the artists and funders who have supported this play. Finally, thank you to her amazing family who inspire her everyday with their hope, joy, love and kindness.
Co-Playwright
Joelle Peters is an Anishinaabe actor/playwright from Walpole Island First Nation in Southwestern Ontario. She is the Interim Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, and a graduate of Seneca College’s Acting for Camera and Voice program. Selected theatre credits: Embodying Power and Place (New Harlem/Native Earth/ Nightwood), Mistatim (Red Sky Performance), The Election (Nightwood/Theatre Direct/Commonboots/Theatre Passe Muraille), Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin (Signal/Soundstreams), Women of the Fur Trade (Toronto Fringe). Selected film/TV credits: Shoresy (Crave/Hulu), In Her City (Raven West Films). In 2020, Joelle was selected as the Siminovitch Prize Protégée by her mentor and dear friend Tara Beagan. Joelle’s plays include Frozen River (co-written by Carrie Costello and Michaela Washburn, winner of the 2021 Sharon Enkin Plays for Young People Award), Niizh (developed in Native Earth’s Animikiig Creator’s Unit and commissioned by the Blyth Festival), and Do you remember? (an audio play commissioned by Burnt Thicket Theatre, supported by the Pemmican Collective & Punctuate! Theatre Playwrights’ Unit). She has also written a short film called Where Would You Go?, which was commissioned by Bad Hats Theatre.
Grandmother Moon
Krystle is a Cree/Métis actor, singer, songwriter with an outstanding career. Krystle is a recipient of CBC Future 40 Award, short-listed for the Saskatchewan Arts Awards for Emerging Artist as well as a nomination in the YWCA Woman of Distinction Awards. Krystle’s list of acting credits includes Saskatchewan film Run: Broken Yet Brave; Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s The (Post) Mistress, Sum Theatre’s Little Badger and the Fire Spirit, National Arts Centre’s Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show. Ferre Play Theatre’s The Penelopiad. Currently, Krystle is the lead vocalist for Lynx Lamour Goes to Nashville, a brand new one-woman Cree musical written and composed by Tomson Highway. Krystle has had the great pleasure of taking this musical to New Zealand and has been touring Canada over the past two years.
Eilidh
Mallory is a Winnipeg-based artist and she is so honoured to share this beautiful show with you. Selected credits include: Much Ado About Nothing (SIR); Peter Pan (MTYP); Miracle on 34th Street, The Foreigner (Chemainus Theatre Festival); East Van Panto: Wizard of Oz (Theatre Replacement); the title role in Cinderella (TUTS); Evil Dead: The Musical, Rocky Horror Show (Wasteland Productions). Training: Studio 58. Mallory is very grateful to all the artists and caretakers of this land that came before her and endeavors to do her part to keep this world beautiful for future generations of imagineers.
Wâpam
Keely McPeek (she/her) has just graduated with a Post-Baccalaureate in vocal performance from the Desautels Faculty of Music at the University of Manitoba, from which she also holds a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance. During her time at the university, she also worked on and performed in multiple productions with the Black Hole Theatre Company. She won the 2020 Rainbow Stage Trophy a couple days before the world shut down, so you can probably blame her for that. While working on her Post-Baccalaureate, she explored her Oji-Cree heritage by taking courses in Indigenous Studies and performing a scene from the Canadian Indigenous opera Missing with the University of Manitoba Opera Theatre Ensemble. Her favorite past roles include Mrs Lovett in scenes from Sweeney Todd and Beverley Bass in scenes from Come From Away with the University of Manitoba Musical Theatre Ensemble, as well as Clarice Starling in the Winnipeg Fringe production of Silence! The Musical (An Unauthorized Musical Parody of Silence of the Lambs). You may have seen her as an ensemble member in Dry Cold’s recent production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Keely is very excited to bring an Indigenous story as meaningful and timely as Frozen River across Canada.
Director
Katie is a Métis director, performer, educator and mother. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Katie is currently the owner and director of Junior Musical Theatre Company (JMTC), the Assistant Program Director of Pimootayowin Creators Circle with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, an Artistic Consultant with Manitoba Theatre for Young People and a Directing Fellow with the ThisGen Mentorship through Why Not Theatre and is a mother to a creative 7-year-old and a joy-filled 1 and a half-year-old. Katie is so incredibly grateful to have be re-discovering this piece with all of the talented artists working on it, honouring the past work and baring witness to the future. It has been a wild ride.
Recent performance and directing credits include: The Hockey Sweater, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (Rainbow Stage), The Rez Sisters (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), MTYP’s Midwinter Mosey, A Year with Frog and Toad, Seussical: The Musical (Manitoba Theatre for Young People), Embodying Power and Place Digital Presentation & Workshop (Director – New Harlem Productions, Nightwood Theatre & Native Earth Performing Arts), Winn nipi (Director – Prairie Theatre Exchange), The (Post) Mistress (Assistant Director – RMTC), CAN Premiere of Tuck Everlasting (Director – Junior Musical Theatre Company), Wolf Joe Cartoon (Voice Director & Character Voice – Media Rendezvous & Amberwood Entertainment), South Pacific (Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra), Pippen Reimagined & American Idiot (Winnipeg Studio Theatre).
Assistant Director
Julie Lumsden is a proud member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, with Scottish and German settler ancestry. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Classical Voice Performance from the University of Manitoba Desautels Faculty of Music. She recently completed her 4th season at The Shaw Festival, most notably as Bella in “Gaslight”, being heralded as “luminous” (Globe & Mail) and “particularly compelling” (New York Times) “tour de force performance” (Broadway World). She has also performed on such stages as: RMTC, PTE, MTYP, Rainbow Stage, Theatre Cercle Moliere, Magnus Theatre, and Neptune Theatre. She is a Juno Award Nominee for her work with Against the Grain/The Banff Centre’s MESSIAH/COMPLEX.
Costume Designer
Jay Havens (he/him/they) is a multimedia 2 Spirit artist and educator of Haudenosaunee and Scottish Canadian ancestry and a citizen of the Kanien’keha:ka from Six Nations of the Grand River. Although he is trained in set and costume design for live performance, Jay has a history of producing large scale collaborative artworks and interdisciplinary projects throughout Turtle Island. He regularly makes site-specific installations, murals, projections, sculptural artworks for galleries and public display while their craft-based practice is an expression of Onkwehon:we teachings and traditions. Several of these sculptural weavings can be found in the collections at the New York State Museum. Over their 18-year career, project highlights include projection mapping on Stratford City Hall, a floating artwork in the Toronto harbour called The Peacemaker’s Canoe and a 150ft, 3 story tall mural on the windows of the Vancouver Opera house. Recently he has been shortlisted to propose two major public artworks to Waterfront Toronto on the West Don Lands and has also been awarded to design a sculpture garden for the new Etobicoke Civic Centre. Jay loves opportunities to design for stage and is honoured to be included in the family for MTYP’s production of Frozen River. Jay would like to dedicate his design on Frozen River to the memory of his father who passed in 2021.
Set Designer
Andy Moro is the co-founding Artistic Director of ARTICLE 11 Cultural Industry with Tara Beagan. Their most recent performance work Deer Woman met critical acclaim at the Edinburgh and Sydney Festivals Arts Centre Melbourne, and Kia Mau, Aotearoa. The 2020 video interpretation commissioned by Downstage and the NACIT screens regularly. ARTICLE 11 is currently in pre-production for a cinematic work Reckoning and are mid-edit on a short documentary Hasalala Danxalax commissioned by the Chan Centre featuring Marion Newman and Friends performing from the Indigenous opera canon. Andy is honoured to have been a collaborating designer with Dancers of Damelahamid for Flicker, Minowin, and currently Raven Mother. He has collaborated with Kaha:wi Dance Theatre for nearly a decade. Pandemic design work includes The War Being Waged by Darla Contois at Prairie Theatre Exchange, Tomson Highway’s Post Mistress at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Time Stands Still with Making Treaty 7, SkyDancers for A’no:wara Dance Theatre. Presently, Andy is designing Walter Borden’s Tightrope Time at the National Arts Centre and Ken William’s The Herd, a Citadel Tarragon NAC coproduction. Upcoming is Tomson Highway’s Rez Sisters at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre directed by Tracey Nepinak. Andy curently has an AR/Sculptural work at cSPACE Calgary.
Language Expert
Cam Robertson is Ininiw [Cree] from Norway House, he is a language consultant who works with theaters, writers, and numerous educators who want to know more about the Cree language. Cam is an L1 speaker who was raised in the trapline. Huge changes happened when Cam moved to Winnipeg when he was 16. He has learned to adapt, while altering he always shares knowledge of his language, he loves to write. Cam goes home once in a while, always to maintain his family roots and language. Cam enjoys working with theater very much and is a storyteller himself, one day soon, Cam hopes to share his love if his writing and storytelling, by telling countless tales within the Cree language, sharing, initiating, and maintaining his knowledge of both…
Lighting Designer
Dean is happy to work on the lighting for this touring production of Frozen River. Previous lighting designs for MTYP include Big League, The Power of Harriet T and Frog and Toad. Dean has performed as the resident lighting designer for Le Cercle Moliere and Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers. Dean has designed the lighting for various companies in Winnipeg as well as Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa among various other cities and touring shows. In addition to his lighting design work, he has also designed sets and costumes for various companies in Winnipeg. Dean graduated from the National Theatre School’s Lighting Specialization program in 2004, and from the University of Victoria in 1995 for Set Design. Enjoy the show!
Composer and Sound Designer
MJ is a French Métis and Anishinaabe woman from the Red River Nation. She is an accomplished bassist, director, sound designer, composer, and producer. She has worked and toured with various artists worldwide for the past 18 years. MJ has been nationally recognized with recording awards such as JUNO, WCMA, CFM, and was recently awarded the Indigenous Full Circle Award, one of the Manitoba Arts Council prestige prizes in the arts. MJ made her theatre debut in Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s production premiere Bitter Girls. Following that debut, she has worked on, Prairie Theatre Exchange’s Both Alike in Dignity, Katharsis, The War Being Waged, Théâtre Cercle Molière premiere production La Liste, MTYP’s A Charlie Brown Double Bill, Torn Through Time, Tiny Treasures, and most recently Frozen River. Dandeneau is very excited and honored to be part of this production.
Set Design Assistant
Shauna is excited to help bring this story to the stage and grateful for the opportunity to do so. Other Credits: The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare in the Ruins), The (Post) Mistress, Women of the Fur Trade, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), Lawrence and Holloman, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Guild Hall – Whitehorse, YT). Training: Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Practicum program (2019) in Scenic Art.
Dialect Coach
Rhea is an actor, singer, educator, and director living and working on Treaty 1 Territory. She trained at the University of Winnipeg B.A. Hons. Acting Performance Program receiving the gold medal. This past summer she was performing with Edmonton’s Opera Nuova in their Opera and Music Theatre Festival. There she played the role of Mae Tuck in their production of Tuck Everlasting Directed by Rob Herriot. While being a multifaceted theatre artist, Rhea is passionate about teaching and working with youth. She is an instructor at Manitoba Theatre for Young People. Rhea recently completed Creative Manitoba’s Professional Mentorship Program with mentor Erin McGrath focussing on theatre for teens and young adults. Rhea began dialect coaching in Winnipeg with the support and mentorship of Shannon Vickers. Rhea is grateful to be supporting Frozen River as a dialect coach. Recent credits as an actor; Love’s Labour’s Lost, Arcadia, The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Ok Probably, Women of Manhattan, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, Annie, Shrek, Grease, 13, Wizard of Oz. Recent credits as a director/assistant director; She Kills Monsters, The Barely Wives Club, Love of the Nightingale, Cinderella, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, High School Musical.
Stage Manager
Julia Cirillo is a Winnipeg based artist, who has a diverse skillset both on and off the stage. Graduating from the University of Winnipeg, with a BA in Theatre and Film. Julia’s recent return to theatre in person after the pandemic, was in MTYP’s own Midwinter Mosey. Since then Julia has been using her passion for creating theatrical magic, working as the Props Assistant on Shrek Jr, The Secret Garden and Frozen River. She continues to create theatrical magic creating props for Red Rover Entertainment, in their production of Flying Lovers of Vitebsk and working as the Props Designer and Assistant Director for Junior Musical Theater Company. On top of creating theatrical props she works in stage management. She has worked as the Apprentice Stage Manager on the STILL/FALLING northern tour with MTYP and has since gone on to stage manage many local Winnipeg productions with companies like 7Ages, RedLips Productions and Joie De Survivre. Julia loves all things, teaching drama at MTYP and musical theatre for adults with special needs through virtual classes online with the Crescent Arts Center, along with outreach classes for schools and events around Winnipeg.
