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Home » Panel #1: Cathartic Creation

Panel #1: Cathartic Creation

This panel will explore the benefits of art-making for catharsis, community, and creative outlets, rather than solely for the cycle of commercial production. Together, we will work to unlearn hustle culture conditioning, instead emphasizing the value of slowing down.

Dainty Smith

Dainty Smith is a Toronto based actor, burlesque performer, writer and curator. 

Dainty believes that through the art of storytelling and a willingness to be exposed that genuine human connections can be made. Her performances often tell deeply vulnerable stories regarding race, religion, sexuality and challenging social boundaries. Dainty studied performing arts at George Brown College and is a powerful self-taught storyteller, performer, and orator.

She performed in the acclaimed independent theatre group Les Blues. She was a co-producer in the independent performance art collective Colour Me Dragg. She is the founder of Les Femme Fatales: Women of Colour burlesque troupe, the first burlesque troupe for women of colour in Canada. 

Anna Morreale

Anna Morreale is a multidisciplinary actor and artist based in Toronto and Montreal. Since graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in 2021, Anna has been working professionally in the theatre, film and voice acting industries, alongside their writing and producing practices.

They are inspired by art that is absurd, surreal, intrepid and accessible. Their own work spans themes of queerness, mortality, oral history, grief, dreams, and corporeality. When they aren’t performing, you can find Anna in the kitchen kneading bread dough and asking: ‘have you eaten yet?’.

Mitchell Keys

Mitchell Keys is a multi-disciplinary artist working in the realms of illustration, animation, drawing and collage. His work aims to reveal the beauty and magic and hope found in the natural world.

Moderator

Cassandra Myers

Cassandra Myers (My’z) (they/she/he) is an award winning poet, performer, dancer, illustrator, and counselor from Tkaronto, Ontario.

As a queer, non-binary, South-Asian-Italian, crip, mad, survivor of sexual violence, Cassandra’s work is cinematic and juicy with it’s critical anti-oppressive eye. Cassandra’s work has won national literary and spoken word titles including the National Magazine GOLD Award in Poetry and Champion of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Their work has been internationally received at the Ada Lovelace Festival in Berlin, and elsewhere. Find their poetry in ARC Poetry Magazine, Canthius, the Tahoma Literary Review, and more.

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