Skirball Salon: Stage and Screen(s)

Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. Often engaging with the politics of participation and interactivity, his recent works feature sustained investigations into the subjects of language, labour, democracy, and the art economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. His work has been featured in film festivals, galleries, and performance festivals across Canada, and recently in Argentina, Mexico, Germany, and the Arctic. He is the Producer for The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver and one half of Guilty by Association. Patrick has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Simon Fraser University. He is passionate about languages—speaking English, French, Spanish, and German.

Joshua William Gelb is an Obie and Drama League Award-winning multi-hyphenate theater maker whose various hats include director, performer, and creative technologist. With an eye for the highly theatrical verging on the cinematic, Gelb’s work has been known to feature striking integrations of technology, music, movement, clowning, and dance. Gelb has been in residence at LaMama, CultureHub, Theater Mitu, Abrons Arts Center, Ars Nova, and is currently a HARP resident artist at Here Arts Center. Recently his media designs with Theater in Quarantine were exhibited at the Prague Quadrennial. 

Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator based in Vancouver, Canada. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University. His work has been presented across Canada, and internationally in the US, Argentina, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, a founding member of Synectic Assembly—an Artificial Intelligence focused art collective, and an Artistic-Leader-in-Residence at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Tom Sellar is editor of the journal Theater and Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale University. Formerly chief theater critic for the Village Voice, his criticism and arts writing have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Artforum and other publications. He has curated series and programs for American Realness, the Prelude festival, Philadelphia Fringe Arts, Prague Quadrennial, Queer Zagreb, and the Institute on Arts and Civic Dialogue.