2025-26 Artists-in-Residence: Janna Martin and Amir Al-Azraki

Brubacher House is delighted to announce its 2025-26 Artists-in-Residence, Janna Martin and Amir Al-Azraki! Through engaging local Mennonites and Indigenous peoples in participatory theatre, they will facilitate an exploration of shared histories, allyship, and reconciliation. Their approach brings forward a bold artistic vision: to use theatre not only to represent tension but to make space for the audience to embody possibility, courage, and change. Watch for their upcoming publications and Forum Theatre events in Spring and Fall 2026.

Janna Martin

Janna Martin is a white settler of Swiss-Mennonite ancestry. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph and a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Community Based Research. Her PhD aims to braid Indigenous and Mennonite histories in the Waterloo Region as a public history praxis towards settler decolonization. She is working alongside Mennonite organizations to explore transformative pathways to truth, reconciliation, and allyship with Indigenous peoples. Janna is currently co-leading the development of a forum theatre play, to reflect on present day Indigenous-Mennonite relations, their connection with the past, and possibilities for the future.

At the Centre for Community Based Research, Janna conducts research and evaluation on a variety of topics across different sectors utilizing qualitative and mixed methods. Her passion is working alongside organizations to advance equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. Beyond research reports and academic articles, Janna has led knowledge mobilization outputs such as community forums, photovoice, podcasts, infographics, website design, and the development of a community play.

Janna’s interest in the connection between collective narrative, identity, and social change has informed her leadership in projects about polarization on the university campus, urban heritage of equity-deserving communities, and the co-curation of a museum exhibit about Indigenous presence in Guelph. Janna’s academic background is in Sociology (BA), Peace and Conflict Studies (MPACS), and Social Practice and Transformational Change (PhD candidate). She has published articles in Settler Colonial Studies, the Engaged Scholar Journal, and the Journal of Mennonite Studies.

Amir Al-Azraki

Amir Al-Azraki is an Arab-Canadian playwright, literary translator, and theatre scholar whose work bridges cultures and confronts urgent questions of war, exile, and identity. Currently, Al-Azraki is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures program at Renison University College. As a practitioner of Theatre of the Oppressed, he has collaborated with artists, educators, social workers, students, and refugees in Canada and abroad, using performance as a catalyst for dialogue, social justice, and community healing.

His plays have been staged internationally, bringing Iraqi and Arab experiences into global conversations on displacement and resilience. As a translator and editor, he has introduced Arabic drama to English-speaking audiences through Contemporary Plays from Iraq (Volumes I & II, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama) and has co-translated Arabic poetry published in Consequence, The Common, The Poetry Foundation, and Talking Writing.

Al-Azraki’s scholarship reflects his commitment to theatre as a tool for critique and transformation. He is co-author of Theatre in Iraq under Occupation, 2003–2011 (University of Iowa Press, 2025) and “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), as well as the author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic). He also translated Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary (McGill–Queen’s University Press) and has published critical studies on the representation and rituals of Black people in the Arab region.