Current Artistic Team

Tara Goldstein is the Founder and current Co-Artistic Director of Gailey Road Productions. She graduated from the MFA Playwriting Program at Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky, in November 2006. Tara is also a professor, researcher and playwright in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Tara’s 2021 play Out at School written with Jenny Salisbury and Pam Baer is a verbatim theatre piece based on interviews undertaken with LGBTQ families about their experiences at school. Out at School is available as an audio-play at Gailey Road Audio on popular podcast platforms.

Tara’s 2023 historical project The Love Booth and Six Companion Plays about queer and trans activism in the 1970s and 1980s was performed at the 2023 Toronto Pride Festival. Tara’s first novel Home of Her Heart was published by Gailey Road in April 2023. Tara is currently working on play adapted from her 2025 biography Léa Roback: Quebec Social Justice Activist called Auntie Léa and Me: Or How to Be A Bad Ass Activist.

Jenny Salisbury is the Co-Artistic Director of Gailey Road Productions and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education where she is working with Tara Goldstein as a dramaturge on a verbatim theatre project called 60 Years of Queer and Trans Activism. Jenny is also a theatre director and arts-based researcher who specializes in new play development. For over 20 years, Jenny has worked with playwrights, actors, and theatre ensembles to create new plays with a rich emotional tapestry, and a strong justice ethic, rooted in physical theatre traditions. Jenny’s PhD thesis (2021) examined the relationship between community-engaged theatre and its audiences, and she is currently a director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research, an international research community dedicated to producing new research on theatre spectatorship.

Pam Baer works with Gailey Road Productions as a Director, Playwright, and Artist Researcher. Pam is a theatre and filmmaker with a focus on community-engaged work. Using artistic practice as a form of critical pedagogy to share stories and build dialogue, Pam has worked on applied arts projects with wide-reaching themes in community and school settings. Pam has a Ph.D. in Education from The Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Douglas Friesen is a teacher, musician, and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. He has led teachers, students, musicians, and other interested folks across Canada and Latin America through ways of using listening and sound to engage creativity and facilitate community. He is a PHD candidate researching critical sound and listening pedagogies and has taught music education courses at various institutions including the University of Toronto. As a musician Doug has played with Selina Martin, Kate Reid, Dave Bidini, and John K Samson.

benjamin lee hicks, PhD (they/them) is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the FLOURISH Collective in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. They are also a visual artist, elementary school teacher, and sessional instructor for Elementary Arts Education in the Master of Teaching program at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. benjamin completed their PhD in Curriculum and Pedagogy (OISE/UT) in June, 2022. Their dissertation contains a series of graphic stories, which aim to centre the educational experiences of trans/gender diverse (GD) people in ways that are different from how we have been centred-out by others (To Do This Discussion Differently: Queering Teacher Professional Learning Through Comic Art and Graphic Stories). Visual communication and creative expression are integral to every aspect of benjamin’s professional practice because sharing stories and being deeply, intentionally present with others when they offer to share theirs is one important way that humans can enact greater care in the places/spaces we travel.

benjamin has had the very good fortune of working closely with several research collectives over their academic career thus far, including: The LGBTQ+ Families in Schools Project (OISE/University of Toronto, 2015-2022), The Addressing Injustices Project (OISE/University of Toronto, 2015-2020), and QTPiE (Queer and Trans People in Education, University of Vermont, 2021-2022). As a teacher and educational researcher, benjamin has written and designed curriculum on topics of sustainable community building, queering school space, arts-based activism, and comic art as pedagogy. These publications and others can be found at www.benjaminleehicks.com/blh-publications → To see more of benjamin’s work in visual art, elementary education, and educational research, please visit: www.benjaminleehicks.com →

Slam-storytelling meets many a queer-themed tune in the music of singer-songwriter and whip smart wordsmith, Kael Reid, who combines musical activism with public pedagogy. Kael facilitates workshops, gives concerts, and delivers musical keynote addresses for universities and colleges, public schools, conferences, and community service organizations on 2SLGBTQI+ perspectives.

With a Ph.D in Education from the University of Toronto, Kael is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University, where they are a co-applicant on a three-year, SSHRC-funded, arts-based research project with newcomer and refugee children. This project examines how songwriting, recording, and performance provide opportunities for newcomer and refugee children to experience personal empowerment and express musical agency by composing and recording their stories in song. As part of this research, Kael uses an innovative, participatory research creation method they developed called, “collaborative ethnographic songwriting.” A robust method for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating research data through music, collaborative ethnographic songwriting supports underserved people and communities to narrate and document their lived experiences, perspectives, and stories in recorded song. Home – Kael Reid →

Bishop Owis is a writer, interdisciplinary scholar and Assistant Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Saint Mary's University. Bishop's research critically examines a praxis of care at the intersections of disability, gender, sexuality, racial capitalism and settler-colonialism in educational institutions. Bishop's work explores the nuances and relational ethics of care work through art-making and storytelling with disabled QTBIPoC.

Pam Baer works with Gailey Road Productions as a Director, Playwright, and Artist Researcher. Pam is a theatre and filmmaker with a focus on community-engaged work. Using artistic practice as a form of critical pedagogy to share stories and build dialogue, Pam has worked on applied arts projects with wide-reaching themes in community and school settings. Pam has a Ph.D. in Education from The Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Margot Huycke has been advising Gailey Road Productions since its inception January 2007. She has worked as the Producer of our Women Writing Letters literary performance series. The series ran for four seasons from 2011-2015 and in the fall of 2016 hosted a fundraiser for The CASA Award. Margot has also worked as a producer for several Gailey Road productions including the 2019 Pride performance run of Out at School. Margot taught geography at Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute in Toronto and is an avid recreational hockey player.

Bessie Giannikos has been advising Gailey Road on grant proposals and production budgets since its inception in January 2007. Bessie is currently the Manager, Finance & Administration in the Department of Curriculum Teaching and Learning at University of Toronto.