Anjela Magpantay (she/her)
Managing Artistic Director
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Anjela Magpantay (she/her) was an immigrant kid who dared to dream beyond the limits of the box she was handed. She is a multidisciplinary theatre artist, cultural leader, and creative collaborator whose work spans performance, directing, producing, teaching, and devising. With a practice rooted in curiosity, community, and bold storytelling, she has worked nationally and internationally across Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, creating work that bridges cultures, disciplines, and audiences.
As an artist, Anjela moves fluidly between stage, screen, and interactive media. Selected credits include voicing the Bartender in the Peabody Award-winning video game 1000xRESIST by Sunset Visitor; directing Happy Valley (rice & beans theatre) and Fly, Love (Studio 58); performing in Walking at Night by Myself (Nancy Tam and A Wake of Vultures); the character of North in the short film chattering of sparrows (Ronnie Cheng, Andie Lloyd, and Amélia Simard) the Host in Theatre Conspiracy’s Foreign Radical; and serving as the Vancouver host of Pony Cam Collective’s acclaimed Off-Broadway endurance phenomenon Burnout Paradise. Valuing and supporting grassroots beginnings, she was a proud artist in buto buto:bones are seeds, a collective community creation by the Filipino diaspora, produced by National Pilipino Canadian Cultural Centre (NPC3) and South East Asian Canadian Heritage Society (SEACHS).
A champion of new work and artistic innovation, Anjela recently served as Interim Artistic Director of rice & beans theatre and was Artist-in-Residence for Upintheair Theatre’s Array 2025. She was the COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence with Theatre Replacement (2024–2026), where she developed it is for when you meet me, a new work born from an ongoing exploration of Balikbayan boxes, memory through objects, and bittersweet acceptance.
Deeply committed to artist development and accessible creation, Anjela is both facilitator and participant in Neworld Theatre’s LEAD program, a pioneering initiative that centres neurodivergent artists in collaborative theatre-making. Her own artistic journey was shaped by being the inaugural recipient of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s Emerging Director Award, through which she trained and worked alongside celebrated directors Bobby Garcia, Amiel Gladstone, Meg Roe, and Thomas Morgan Jones.
Annie Jang (she/her)
General Manager
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Annie was born and raised on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She graduated from UBC in 2009 with a BFA in Theatre Production & Design. She has a background in stage management and brings with her over a decade of experience in arts administration. Annie first joined vAct as a volunteer in 2010. Since then, she has weaved in and out of vAct in various capacities (including stage management, associate producer, and bookkeeper) and is proud to have witnessed the growth of the company under the artistic leadership of Joyce Lam, Donna Yamamoto, Derek Chan, and now Anjela Magpantay.
Karen Tsui (佢/any)
Creative Outreach Coordinator
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Karen is a second-generation Hakka-Chinese immigrant-settler living, working, and creating on the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Indigenous peoples. Holding a deep interest in the arts, community outreach, and social justice, she has been involved with the Memorial Society of BC, Vancouver International Film Festival, bc211, Humanize Consulting, UBC Geering Up Engineering Outreach, Rainbow Refugee, and Dixon Transition Society. Karen is a visual artist and a graduate of the UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (B.A., 2020).
Stephanie Wong (she/they)
Artistic Producer
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Born in colonial Hong Kong, Stephanie (she/they) lives gratefully on the ancestral and unceded lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ peoples. Their art is an invocation to imagination, expressed through a constellation of disciplines, including direction, dramaturgy, producing, creation, performance, and design. The intersectionality of their lived experience informs their creative ethos of expansiveness and abundance.
As the Associate Artistic Director of re:Naissance Opera and Producer at Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, she leads with the values of radical softness and collective care, committing herself to championing equity-deserving identities. Having graduated from Studio 58’s Acting Program, she has transferred her live performance skills towards transforming the digital landscape. Moving fluidly between mediums and disciplines, Stephanie believes that storytelling allows us to compassionately open ourselves up to the complexity of our world, holding true our nuanced interconnectedness, and asking ourselves what more is possible in creating our collective story.
Leslie Dos Remedios (she/they)
Artistic Producer
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Leslie Dos Remedios is an actor, director and dramaturge based in so-called Vancouver, the unceded ancestral land of the Coast Salish people. She has worked with many Vancouver companies including Green Thumb Theatre, Arts Club, Mitch and Murray Productions, Touchstone Theatre. They were an assistant director for As You Like It as part of the 2023 Bard on the Beach season and are honoured to be a part of vAct’s 2023 MSG Lab, and beyond. Leslie is a graduate of York University (2008) and Studio 58 (2012).
Kamila Sediego (she/her/siya)
Resident Dramaturg
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Kamila Sediego (she/her/siya) is a Filipinx settler, daughter of immigrants, sister, auntie, partner, playwright, and dramaturg grateful to live on the unceded and stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Her ancestral roots stretch across the Pacific, and are embedded in the lands of Iloilo, Cebu, and Manila, Philippines.
Most recently, Kamila participated in the PuSh Festival’s In Dialogue program, and was a playwright at Caravan Farm Theatre’s National Playwrights Retreat (2025). She was a Playwrights Theatre Centre Associate (2021-2024), and is a current Resident Dramaturg and co-lead of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s Creation Lab. Her play Homecoming is available for purchase, published by Playwrights Canada Press. With the care and support of many, she is developing a new play, Engkanto. www.kamilasediego.com
Penny Tham (she/her)
President
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Penny Tham is a retired corporate securities lawyer. She has extensive experience working in senior positions with international financial institutions around the world. After 25 years of living in Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, Singapore and London she returned to Vancouver where she grew up. She is an enthusiastic theatre goer.
Francis Chang
Vice President
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Francis Chang was born in Tokyo, grew up in Vancouver and studied, worked and lived in Montreal, New York, Toronto and Hong Kong. Francis previously practised law for over 25- years, including as a partner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP and as General Counsel at FOX Networks Group Asia and the Middle East. He is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio program at SFU, and his work has appeared in Ricepaper, CBC First Person, The Fiddlehead and WordWorks. He is an impassioned supporter of live theatre.
Wendy Lee (she/her)
Secretary
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Wendy retired as a partner of Koffman Kalef LLP, Business Lawyers after having practiced corporate and securities law for over 38 years. She is an avid theatregoer and supporter of various performing arts groups around Vancouver. Wendy had been involved in providing support and advice to vAct “behind the scenes” for many years before joining the Board in June 2019. She also serves as a Director and Board Secretary of the Chinese Canadian Museum.
Gail Nelson
Treasurer
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Gail Nelson retired as a corporate controller to become a stay-at-home Mom. She has served as Treasurer for several community-based theatre societies. She and her theatre buddies formed a society to create opportunities for children and adults to perform in Christmas plays. She loves the performing arts (ballet and musical theatre).