Join Bloedel Reserve Creative Resident, Justin Neal, at Bainbridge Performing Arts for an intimate presentation about his upbringing on Bainbridge Island as a Filipino and Indigenous mixed race person presenting as white, and how that informs his environmental stewardship and current dramatic works.

Tuesday, February 13, 7-9 PM at Bainbridge Performing Arts
Cost: Free with optional donation at check-out

Content Warning: The work presented contains strong language and deals with themes of substance abuse, racism, and violence.

Register for tickets below:

Justin Neal is a dramatic writer of offbeat narratives that weave comedy with high-stakes drama, creating uplifting tales of personal transformation.

As a playwright and theatre producer, Neal is the Executive Artistic Director of Holy Crow Arts in Vancouver, BC. The fledgling company produced his original play, So Damn Proud, in 2021 with funding provided by Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, First Peoples’ Cultural Council, the City of Vancouver, and the Squamish Nation. Holy Crow will produce the world premiere of his latest play, Keepers of the Salish Sea in Vancouver and the US premiere in Bellingham, WA.

Neal’s screenplay The Skins Game received Telefilm development funding in 2021. His limited series, Boundary Bay (a 2022 Indigenous Screen Summit pitch project at the BANFF World Media Festival), and his feature The Traveller, have been awarded development grants from the Indigenous Screen Office and Creative BC. His series project Hole in the Donut received a Creative BC development grant in 2023.

For years, Neal juggled day jobs with amateur theatre in San Francisco and New York until he moved to his family’s traditional Sḵwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw territory to earn a Joint Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre from University of British Columbia. Neal is an alumnus of the Toronto-based Canadian Film Centre’s Norman Jewison Film Program Writers’ Lab (2022). He graduated from Bainbridge High School in 1991.

Squamish Ocean Canoe Family in their canoe, Kxwu7lh. Drone image courtesy of the Squamish Nation.