Resident Artists

Jackie Chau

Jackie has been designing sets and costumes in over 200 productions for stage and screen. Her work can be seen across Canada and has toured internationally. In addition, she is a production designer and art director for film and television. Selected theatre design credits include: Sexy Laundry (Theatre Aquarius) Annie Mae’s Movement, The Place Between, Salt Baby, Almighty Voice and His Wife, Giiwedin, Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, From Thine Eyes, HUFF (NEPA), Antigone Insurgency, Someone is Going to Come, Talking Masks, Like the First Time, Charge of the Expormidable Moose, Ubu Mayor, Smyth/Williams, Music Music Life Death Music (One Little Goat), Gas Girls, Cake (New Harlem Productions), The Making Of St. Jerome (eastBOUND Theatre), Romeo and Juliet (TD Dream in High Park/Can Stage), Zadie’s Shoes, Lady Sunrise (Factory Theatre), Brown Balls, Mixie and the Halfbreeds (Fu-Gen), The Swearing Jar (Prairie Theatre Exchange), Dirty Butterfly (Bound to Create), Fish Eyes Trilogy (Nightswimming), Canada 300 (Watermark Theatre), Cannibal! the Musical (Starvox Entertainment), Twist Your Dickens (Second City Chicago/Toronto), Mini Me Makeover – Designer and Co-host (CBC Kids/Expect Theatre), Moment, Pomona, Dissidents, Human Animals, OIL (ARC Theatre), KISS (ARC/Theatre Smash/Can Stage), A Year with Frog and Toad (Manitoba Theatre for Young People), Cowboy Versus Samurai, 39 Steps, Oraltorio, Yellow Rabbit (Soulpepper), and The Komagata Maru Incident (Stratford Festival). Jackie was named in NOW magazine’s Top 10 Theatre Artists of 2009, nominated for the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design, nominated for a Saskatoon Area Theatre (SAT) award, Winnipeg Theatre award (Evie), 2 Broadway World awards and has received 8 Dora nominations for outstanding set and costume design. Jackie has been a company member since 2014.

Deborah Drakeford

Deb is a proud member of ARC, having been a Resident Artist for the past 18 years. Deb assumed the role of Co-Artistic Producer of ARC in July 2020. She has performed in many ARC shows, including A Kind of Alaska, The City, Bea, Moment, Pomona, Human Animals, Oil, Gloria, Martyr and upcoming, Rockabye.

Deb has been lucky enough to work across Canada from BC to PEI.

Other fun credits include Redbone Coonhound (Tarragon Theatre), Doubt (BNE Productions), Shirley Valentine (Thousand Islands Playhouse and Capitol Theatre), The Penelopiad and The Importance of Being Earnest (Grand Theatre), Portia’s Julius Caesar (Shakespeare in the Ruff), Innocence Lost, Great Expectations, Waiting for the Parade and A Christmas Carol (among others) (Soulpepper), Hedda Noir (Theatre Northwest) Rabbit Hole, Same Time Last Year and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Sudbury Theatre Centre). Deb has been Dora nominated 11 times (individual and ensemble).

She has also done tv, film, and voice, most recently appearing in HBO’s Station Eleven and recording the audiobook The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.

Deb holds a BEd and teaches for YPT, Soulpepper and for the TDSB.  She makes her home in Toronto with her lovely husband, actor Oliver Dennis, and their two amazing kids, Charlotte and Philip.

Rob Kempson

Rob Kempson is a theatre artist and educator, working primarily as a director and playwright. Selected Writer/Director: Trigonometry (timeshare/Factory); Mockingbird (Next Stage Theatre Festival); SHANNON 10:40 (timeshare/Videofag); explicit (Rhubarb Festival); #legacy (Harbourfront Centre); The HV Project (Community). Selected Director: Box 4901 (timeshare/Buddies), The Places We Are (Theatre Erindale), The Snow Queen (Canadian Children’s Opera Company), Electric Messiah IV & V (Soundstreams), The Little Mermaid (St. Lawrence College), 9 to 5: The Musical (Randolph College), The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom (Sudbury Theatre Centre), Box 4901 (SummerWorks, foldA Festival); The Canadian, Maggie and Pierre, Million Dollar Quartet, Daisy Amazed Me, Violet’s the Pilot, Rose’s Clothes (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Robert (co-directed with Briana Brown, Toronto Fringe); Songs for a New World (Claude Watson). Writer/Composer/Performer: The Way Back To Thursday (Theatre Passe Muraille/Touchstone Theatre – Dora Nomination: Outstanding New Musical).

Rob has been a member of the Stratford Festival Playwrights’ Retreat, a Resident Artist Educator at Young People’s Theatre, and the RBC Intern Director for The Musical Stage Co. He is the past Artistic Producer of the Paprika Festival, the past Associate Artistic Producer at Theatre Passe Muraille, and the past Associate Artistic Director at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. More info at robkempson.com or on twitter at @rob_kempson.

Nabil Traboulsi

Nabil Traboulsi is a Canadian-Lebanese film, television and stage actor based in Toronto. Nabil is a Meisner-trained actor and a graduate of the 2-year conservatory program at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York. He has appeared in short films and has recently been part of stage productions at the New York Fringe Festival, the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), the Kaaitheater in Brussels, and the Toronto Fringe Festival. For the Théâtre Français de Toronto (TFT): Les Zinspirés: Six Degrés de Séparation, Le Menteur, and La Seconde Surprise de l’Amour. The cast of Les Zinspirés was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding Performance – Ensemble (TYA division). In 2020, Nabil was part of ARC’s production of Oil by Ella Hickson. For Film/TV: Titans (Netflix/Warner Bros.)

Nabil is fluent in English, French and Arabic and has lived in different cities including New York, Paris, Beirut and Montreal.

Tamara Vuckovic

Tamara is a Toronto based Stage Manager, Director and Producer in
primarily Theatre and Opera. Her work has taken her across Canada, from
Toronto to Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, and Halifax; to cities in the
US such as San Francisco and New York; and across seas to Italy &
Estonia. She has been ARC’s Managing Producer since 2018, and their
Resident Stage Manager since 2014. She has also been the Resident SM of
opera performance company Off Centre Music Salon since 2010.

Recent Stage Management credits include: Oil (ARC); Marjorie Prime (Coal
Mine); Hell’s Fury (Soundstreams); The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare in the
Ruff); Hook Up (Tapestry Opera); Flying Hearts Tour (Theatre Direct);
The Glass Menagerie (Grand Theatre); La Bohème (Against the Grain); Dead
Man Walking (Vancouver Opera); Birds of a Feather (Roseneath Theatre).
Her most recent directing credit is AD’ing ARC’s last production of Oil,
and the Co-Director of ARC’s Dissidents.