New artistic director ready to get to work at Sick + Twisted

After a months-long national search for its next artistic director, Winnipeg’s Sick + Twisted Theatre has found who it’s been looking for in Mandy E. MacLean.

A Maritimer who studied theatre and performance at the University of New Brunswick and at Toronto’s Humber College, MacLean has served in recent years as the artistic and access producer for Toronto’s Crossroads Theatre — a low-barrier, youth-focused company — and as accessibility producer for Ontario’s renowned SummerWorks Festival.

MacLean, who arrived in Winnipeg last month, has long appreciated Sick + Twisted’s core philosophy, developed by former artistic director Debbie Patterson and a strong community of advisers and fellow artists. The company’s overarching goals include changing the way we think about disability in society and to create safe, supportive environments for artists to bring their “full selves” to the work.

MacLean, who was chosen by Sick + Twisted’s selection committee from a field of over 30 applicants, says the new position was intriguing, especially since she worked as an assistant director on the company’s 2025 production of Neither Here nor There, a personal, group-devised exploration of ability and difference that blended mythology, fantasy and reality.

“That solidified it for me,” says MacLean, who has a non-visible disability and identifies as “mad” (a positive reclamation of language associated with those who have had lived experiences with mental health challenges).

“This was the work I want to be doing. Not only the listening and engagement and activation of the community, but also this idea of how to work with folks of all different experiences, walks of life and intersectionalities. In that piece specifically, it opened up the idea of what it means to ‘crip’ a process. What does it mean when this broad construct of the thing we call theatre isn’t a thing that suits everyone in the space? How do we shift, adjust, change — ‘crip’? How do we ensure that there’s a beautiful disruption that occurs as a result of having these folks in a space that then allows us to actually innovate the process we’re making work in?”

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to be passing the torch to Mandy,” says Patterson, who founded Sick + Twisted in 2016 and announced this past summer that she was stepping down.

“She brings exactly the skill set that Sick + Twisted needs right now — as a producer, a curator and most especially as an expert in accessibility and disability esthetics. We are so lucky to have her.”

MacLean compares “cripping” — a means of recentring and adjusting the artistic process by accounting for lived experiences with disability, questioning preconceived hierarchies and developing equitable approaches for storytelling — to freestyling in the kitchen, adjusting the recipe based on the ingredients at our disposal.

“It’s human-based innovation,” she says.

As she settles into her new city, MacLean has a busy season ahead of her with Sick + Twisted. The company’s fourth annual holiday panto — a comical, political and saucy revue — begins rehearsals later this month. The musical production will run Dec. 17 through Jan. 3 at the West End Cultural Centre.

Meanwhile, the company’s community choir, led by local artist Emily King, continues to meet on a drop-in basis on Saturday afternoons (4 p.m.) at 120 Maryland St.

In addition, Ever Sick Collective — a cohort of Indigenous creative voices co-ordinated under the Sick + Twisted banner — is expected to share new work in the new year under the leadership of Jewish-Michif artist Philip Geller, a Winnipeg-based theatre professional and scholar.

As of Monday, Geller, the co-artistic producer of the locally run Kiyanaan Indigenous Theatre Festival, is also the newest artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, the oldest professional Indigenous theatre company in Canada.

The Ontario-based company has been an influential force in Canadian theatre since 1982, producing works by playwrights such as Tomson Highway, Columpa C. Bobb, Daniel David Moses, Yvette Nolan and Drew Hayden Taylor.

Currently filling the role on a part-time basis during the transition phase, Geller, an experienced dramaturge with a background in clown performance, will succeed outgoing artistic director Joelle Peters on a full-time basis in January. Peters held the role of artistic director for the previous four seasons.

“I am deeply honoured and humbled to be stepping into the role as artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts. I walk into this role inspired, playful, curious and ready to listen to the emergent needs of our communities,” Geller said in a media release.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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