Pre-Professional Instructors
Bruce Bissonnette, Director of Adult Programs
Bruce is a Professional Actor, Director, and Teacher in the Performing Arts. He works for OSSD as our Director of Adult Programs/Summer Camp Director. We are thrilled that Bruce has taken on this position. Bruce oversees the Pre-Professional Program and helps to develop the curriculum and course content for all adult courses. He started his career in 1986 studying Acting at George Brown Theatre School and Directing at The Canadian Film Institute. His selected Directing credits include: Spider Juice, Work! Jobs in Progress, Our Town, The Duplex, 7 Stories, Blade and An Acre Of Time. His selected Acting credits include: Bordertown Cafe (Gryphon Theatre), Transit of Venus (Magnus Theatre), East of Elvis (Sudbury Theatre), The Mousetrap (Showboat Festival), Aladdin (Limelight Theatre), The Best Present (Carousel Players), Patria 1 (Canadian Opera Company). Bruce's Film and Television credits include: Jake and Phyllis (Canadian Film Centre), Street Legal (CBC), Kids in the Hall (Broadway Video), and Family Passions (CBC).
Mary Ellis
Mary has worked extensively as an actor and teacher for many years in the Ottawa area. Some favorite roles include Theresa in Marion Bridge, Rose in Unity 1918, Helen the social worker in Problem Child and Martha in Waiting for the Parade, all at the GCTC. Mary also teaches theatre at Algonquin College. She is delighted to be teaching at the OSSD, sharing her passion for theatre with these wonderful students.
David Hersh
David is an actor, director, writer and teacher who has worked in the city for the past 12 years. He graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Theatre; Specialization Drama in Education. He was Artistic Director of the Orleans Young Players Theatre School for six years and continues to teach drama workshops in the schools with Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences. David has taught professionally for 16 years and in that time he has written more than 30 plays, directed more than 70 plays and produced over 150 plays for young people. He taught in the adult program at OSSD last year and worked with six to ten year olds this summer. David also performs with Salamander Theatre; he is in the touring show A World of Stories which tours elementary schools and he plays Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth for high school students. David directed and performed in the play What Goes Around… at this year’s Ottawa Fringe Festival. He has worked and performed with a Company of Fools, Third Wall Theatre Company, and the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. David has written a play, entitled Jessica’s Monkey, that will be work-shopped by a Company of Fools and is creating an original theatre piece called The Well as a core member of The By the Well Collective. He has written and directed six short films and has worked with young people in-front of and behind the camera.
Barry Karp
Barry Karp began his acting career in Toronto with “The Studio Lab Theatre” over three decades ago. Since then he has conceived and produced a number of successful theatre training programs for young adults in Canada and the USA. He was the artistic director of The Studio Children’s Theatre which represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. And he has explored the creative aspects of conceiving, directing, writing and producing in the worlds of theatre, Native education and dance. More recently he has been heavily involved in directing the multidisciplinary works of R. Murray Schafer in Canada and Brazil.
Kristine Karpinski
Kristine Karpinski, is a a certified Hatha and Kundalini Yoga Teacher, a Registered Massage Therapist and Thai Yoga Practitioner, and a certified Nia and Kripalu DansKinetics instructor. She is the owner of The Clinic Upstairs
- massage therapy and wellness centre, and has studied and practiced various healing modalities, movement methods and dance styles for over 30 years.
Her yoga experience is inspired by various traditions including Kundalini, Sivananda, Radha, Kripalu, Bikram and Vinyasa forms. Kristine's university studies at Ryerson and Ottawa U focused on theatre and psychology and she is presently studying body-centered expressive therapy with Daniel Leven and Phoenix Rising yoga therapy at the Vermont centre.
John P. Kelly
John arrived in Canada from Ireland in 2004 and has already begun to establish himself in theatre here. He recently directed his first professional show in Ottawa, Eugene O’Brien’s hit play ‘Eden’ and his next ‘The Kings of the Kilburn High Road’ is scheduled for May. He has also adjudicated the Eastern Ontario One Act Finals and work shopped for groups both in the EODL and WODL areas. John is a freelance theatre director and course leader and, in a long and varied career, spent several years working for RTE, the Irish equivalent of CBC. For six years, he worked as a Radio Drama producer/director, before moving into management as Managing Editor of Features and Arts. He moved to Switzerland in 1994, where he worked for four years with the European Broadcasting Union as Head of Specialized Programming. He was a founder member of the Irish Association of Drama Adjudicators (ADA) and for a while a member of the British Guild of Drama Adjudicators and has worked in this capacity all over Ireland, including officiating at the Finals both in the Republic and in Ulster.
Sylvia Larrass
Sylvia Larrass grew up in France and Germany where she began her music education in piano and voice. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and holds a diploma in vocal performance, as well as the Silver Medal of excellence from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. Over the past few years Sylvia has developed special techniques to bring out the best in the voice, sung and spoken and has coached over a thousand people in France, Germany, the US and throughout Canada, helping them to gain success in performing and speaking in public. Sylvia also performs actively as a soloist, as well as with the Opera Lyra Chorus and Tourmaline vocal ensemble. Recent credits include a performance at Carnegie Hall in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Lorne Pardy
Lorne Pardy, former Artistic Director of the Great Canadian Theatre Company (2000-2005), is an accomplished actor, director and teacher who received his initial training at the National Theatre School of Canada. As an actor and director he has had a career spanning 25 years and has worked all across the country in theatres large and small. For GCTC, his productions of Waiting For The Parade by John Murrell, The Doll House by Henrik Ibsen, and the Canadian Premiere of Edward Albee¹s The Goat have garnered critical acclaim. Last season, he directed students of the University of Ottawa in Neil LaBute¹s The Shape of Things. At OSSD, he has given workshops in acting and audition technique and in 2000 directed Shelter as part of the Connections series. He remains Artistic Associate of the Great Canadian Theatre Company and will be acting in Yazmina Reza¹s Life x 3 this season.
Peter Ryan
PETER RYAN has been involved in dance and theatre as a teacher, performer and writer since 1975. He has taught and performed across North America and Europe and was a founding member of EDAM, Vancouver's innovative dance and music collective. Currently, he teaches in the Theatre Department at the University of Ottawa, trains dancers and actors in improvisation for performance in Ottawa and Athens, Greece and teaches public classes in Improvisation at Ottawa's Dance Network. Peter also works extensively in the schools, teaching dance and movement. He is currently the Chair of Dance Ontario, has served on the board of the Council for the Arts in Ottawa, and was a member of the Arts Advisory Committee to the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Alix Sideris
Alix Sideris has been working with OYP for most of the ten years she has lived in Ottawa. She's taught in various theatre environments in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa for the last 17 years. Alix is now represented by MASC - an arts agency booking her popular Commedia Workshop in schools throughout the region.
Ottawa audiences most recently saw Alix in Odyssey Theatre's Scapin. Also with Odyssey - audiences might remember her as the wild and energetic Ogre Largemega in The Wedding, as the french maid Elicia in The Illusion, as the lowly feather duster Tristino and the sharp tongued Puto in The Raven. Alix is also the coordinator of Odyssey's Lazzi Lazzi animation troupe - which proudly casts some of Ottawa's most talented physical actors.
Most recent theatre credits include Mambo Italiano and It's All True (Great Canadian Theatre Company), The Odyssey, The Winter's Tale (National Arts Centre).
Kristina Watt
Kristina relocated to Ottawa after training and working in the U.S, England and South America. She currently teaches at OSSD, has served a Director of The Young Actors' Space, and instructs both theory and practice at the University of Ottawa. She recently acted in Love's Labour's Lost (National Arts Centre), The Real Inspector Hound (Third Wall Theatre Co.), and Picking Up Chekhov (Magnetic North--On the Verge). A career highlight was working with Judd Hirsh and Eva Marie Saint in Death of A Salesman (North Carolina). Film/TV credits include One Life to Live, Bull Durham, and Rescue 911. She plays the flute, and loves dancing and horse-back riding.