Camille Intson (she/her) is an award-winning Esto-Canadian performance and media artist, writer, musician, and academic researcher. As a PhD student within the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, her research areas include: queer-feminist and anticolonial STS, collaborative and community-based practices of making and repair, design justice, practice-led artistic research, and the integration of emerging (digital, AI) technologies into creative work.
As a playwright and theatre maker, Camille’s works have been called “tragic and daring… theatre that sets itself apart” (Steel City Girl), praised for their “high-concept premise[s]” (CBC), “tight, powerful, and inherently theatrical” (View Magazine) texts, and stylized physical realizations. Most recently, her play We All Got Lost won the 2021 Robert Beardsley Award for Young Playwrights (issued by the Playwrights’ Guild of Canada) after winning the 2019 Hamilton Fringe New Play Contest, Best in Fringe, and Best in Venue awards. Other recent projects include the 2021 New Media Prize shortlisted betweenspace (2020 Brink Festival) and Patchface with Allswell Productions, supported by the Ontario and London Arts Councils. Her plays have received development and/or support from Nightwood Theatre, Pat The Dog Theatre Creation, Theatre Aquarius, the Grand Theatre London, the TAP Centre for Creativity, the Paprika Festival, the Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils, and the Hamilton and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals.
Camille’s other produced works include Road (Winner of the 2017 NNPF National Playwriting Competition; Official Selection for the Grand Theatre London’s 2017 Playwrights’ Cabaret), Marty and Joel and the Edge of Chaos (Winner of the 2018 Lillian Kroll Prize for Creative Writing; prod. Alumnae Theatre, dev. Tinkerspace Theatre), The Last 48 and The Stock (ArtLaunch Theatre Co.; with producer-collaborator Rafaella Rosenberg) and Adrik’s Story: Scenes from Chechnya, Russia (ArtLaunch with Upside Down Point).
Her latest play JANE. — a speculative fiction drama about virtual reality deepfake pornography — is currently in development with support from the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils.
Camille’s works often broach themes of queer female sexuality and intimacy, and the impact of emerging technologies on human relationships. As an intermedial practitioner-researcher, she takes a keen interest in virtual and augmented reality performances. A graduate of the acclaimed Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, training includes The Actors Centre London, City Academy London, Theatre Aquarius Theatre School, and additional masterclasses with the École Jacques Lecoq, Fool at Heart School of Sacred Clowning, Digital Catapult (Virtual Reality), Theatre Ontario’s Stratford Summer Theatre Intensive (2018 Youth Scholarship Recipient), Director’s Lab North, and the Toronto Fringe’s TENT Program, among others.
Beyond her theatre and performance work, Camille frequently creates and performs original queer-feminist alternative folk music under the pseudonym “Camie.” Her 2021 EP troubadour (produced by Mike “TOMPA”) was released to critical acclaim and premiere features from media outlets including Indie88, Canadian Beats, Music Mecca Nashville, Next Magazine, the Toronto Guardian, Divine Magazine, and the Hamilton Spectator. Camille’s music education includes vocal training (Cydney Speers) and 10 years of classical harp education with the Suzuki School. In early 2022, Camille and TOMPA will begin work on their next collaborative project, supported by FACTOR and the Ontario Arts Council.
As an emerging scholar, Camille has published with the International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media, Journal for Intermedia and Literary Crossings, TDR: The Drama Review, and Canadian Theatre Review. Conference presentation credits include HRI 2022, 4S 2021, ACH 2021, DHSI 2021, CCA 2021, CHI 2021, and IDOCDE 2020. Camille works and studies under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Keilty, and is employed both as a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Information and as a Research Assistant at the Sexual Representation Collection. Prior to pursuing her doctorate at the University of Toronto, Camille completed her M.A. in Performance Practice as Research from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London, United Kingdom) with distinction, and her B.A. (Honours) in English and Theatre Studies from Western University. Camille’s current academic research comes generously funded by a SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral (CGS-D) Award.
In the past, Camille has worked as a lecturer, workshop leader, teacher, tour guide, wedding planner (yes, seriously), ghostwriter, and retail worker. In all of her work, she embraces multidisciplinarity, fluidity between genres and mediums, and a commitment to queer-positive and anti-racist praxis.
Camille currently lives and works between Dundas/Hamilton and Tkaronto (Toronto) on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, covered by the Dish With One Spoon Territory. She lives with her grumpy kitten Leo and can be found everywhere on the internet at @thecamiliad, or at camilleintson.com.
