“A force to be reckoned with…her script is wildly funny and, by the end, surprisingly profound.”

— Chelsea Dinsmore (My Entertainment World)

How To Be FEARLESS!
(With Roxy Roberts)

Playwright/Performer: Ali Joy Richardson
Director: Neil Silcox
Dramaturgs: Courtenay Stevens, Clare Preuss, and Aaron Willis

Meet Roxy Roberts - unorthodox motivational speaker/self-defence coach.

This is the day everything goes wrong. Her simulated attacker doesn’t show up for her seminar, her PowerPoint crashes in a blaze of glory, and the pumped-up persona Roxy has created cracks in public. This one woman show blends big physical comedy with hard truths about our culture of victim-blaming.

How To Be FEARLESS! (With Roxy Roberts) is a pencil-skirt-ripping, high-kick at the darkness of life as one woman reclaims her magic in the face of fear.

(50 mins, 1 actor, uses projection and no set)

2023 Merritt Award Nomination for Outstanding Independent Production (NS)

  • Chester Playhouse, 2022

  • LunaSea Theatre SoloFest, 2022

  • Convergence Theatre, 2019

  • Toronto Fringe, 2018

“Urgent themes arise with startling ease and theatricality in Ali Joy Richardson's powerful new play.”

— Glenn Sumi (NOW Magazine, NNNN)

A Bear Awake in Winter

Playwright/Director: Ali Joy Richardson
Original Cast: Hershel Blatt, Andrew Di Rosa, Michaela Di Cesare, Bria McLaughlin, Danny Pagett. Natasha Ramondino, and Andy Trithardt

2007. Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A high school band class. A new teacher from Toronto wants to be an inspiration to his jaded students but is afraid to come out to them. A boy bullies a girl in insidious ways until she takes matters into her own hands. An act of violence at a school dance fractures the community. This is a dark, funny, and difficult play about the fight to stand up for yourself.

(90 mins, 7-9 actors, optional doubling)

Published by Scirocco Drama

  • The Next Stage Theatre Festival, 2019

  • Finalist for the Safe Words New Canadian Play Award, 2018

  • Developed through Canadian Stage’s RBC Director Development Residency

Dad

Playwright: Ali Joy Richardson
Original Director: Ann-Marie Kerr
Original Cast: Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Thomas Olajide, and David Storch

What do we do when someone we love does something we hate?

Roy, a revered theatre school teacher, falls from grace after his behaviour with a female student comes to light. Mark, his past student (now teaching colleague), has to make him understand. Vic, Roy’s daughter, desperately needs her dad to do the right thing. Nobody’s giving up without a fight.

Dad asks : What does true atonement look like? What comes after the fall? Can we ever learn the hardest things?

(90 mins, 3 actors)

  • Selected for Intermission Magazine’s “Three To Stream”, 2021

  • Studio 180 Theatre’s In Development Program, 2020

One Deep Breath

Four musicals about mental health for preteens

Book Writer/Director: Ali Joy Richardson
Music & Lyrics: Judy & David Gerson
Producer: Education Arts Canada

The Secret Life of Riley K. – Anxiety

Jay vs. The World – Emotional Regulation, Bullying

Straight On Til Morning – Depression, Screen Addiction

Strange New Days – COVID Mental Health

(Each show is 60 mins, 2 actors – Grades 4-6)

  • Toured to 80,000+ students in Ontario

  • Created with Juno Award-winning songwriters Judy & David

  • Supported by The Ontario Trillium Foundation

Contact info@educationarts.ca

“Brilliance…”

“…chalk that up to
Ali Joy Richardson’s
chilling, intense performance…”

– Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine (NNNN)

“Airtight theatre…”

“…the evening is exactly what theatre should be.”

– Michael Lyons, Daily Xtra

Any Warhol Presents: Valerie

Playwrights: Ali Joy Richardson & Ben Hayward
Director: Matt White
SCUM Chorus: Nicholas Potter, Ray Jacildo, Emily Johnston, April Leung, Natasha Ramondino, Jonathan Walls, and Neil Silcox

You’re invited to a party at The Factory. Andy Warhol is hosting. It’s for the woman who is about to shoot him.

Valerie Solanas is best known for her SCUM Manifesto, a ferocious satire that calls for the eradication of all men in order to end sexism. While trying to get Andy to produce her play Up Your Ass, Val became part of his offbeat gang at the Factory in NYC. After a misfit friendship with the prince of pop, Valerie shot Andy 4 times in the summer of ’68.

Party games, pop art, and violence collide in this radical, interactive piece about one of the "crazy" women history forgot.

  • Sold-out run in Toronto Fringe, 2014

  • NOW Magazine’s “Outstanding Production” & “Outstanding Ensemble”

  • Kitchener’s NIGHT/SHIFT Festival, 2014