Anais Mateusz West.Photo by Chelsey Stuyt.
anais mateusz west
Anais Mateusz West (they/he) is a bilingual queer and trans playwright, performer and creative producer. They are also a settler of Polish descent, based on occupied Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories (colonially called Vancouver, BC, Canada). Mateusz’s work is text-based and interdisciplinary, forged in collaboration with dancers, musicians, and media artists. They merge prose, poetry and dialogue with devised theatre approaches, disrupting boundaries within gender, sexuality, culture and language. Mateusz’s practice also spans grantwriting, facilitation, dramaturgy and translation (French to English.)
Mateusz's written works include Tomboy (Chłopczyca) (the Cultch and the frank theatre), Nuits Claires (The National Arts Centre French Theatre), The Café (Aphotic Theatre, ISTAZOO and PuSh Festival), Underground Absolute Fiction (Rumble Theatre's Tremor's Festival, 2020),and Poly Queer Love Ballad (Queer Arts Festival, the frank theatre and Zee Zee Theatre, Vancouver, and Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto). He was the 2023 winner of the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition for Tomboy (Chłopczyca), the 2018 co-winner of PTC’s Fringe New Play Prize and the 2018 winner of Georgia Straight Critic’s Choice Award. He has been nominated for two Jessie Richardson Awards, including Outstanding Original Script.
Mateusz’s writing has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the City of Vancouver and the PuSh Festival, and they’ve been part of residencies with What Lab, Playwrights Theatre Centre, the Deer Lake AiR Program, Odd Meridian Arts, Queer Arts Festival, Rumble Theatre and Theatre Replacement’s New Aesthetics. Most recently, their writing was published in This Is Beyond: A Time Capsule of Queer Experience (Playwrights Canada Press) and Nuits Claires (Éditions Prise de parole.)
As an actor, Mateusz has worked with Orange Noyée, The National Arts Centre French Theatre, Savage Society, The Firehall Arts Centre, Théâtre la Seizieme, the Only Animal, Rumble Theatre and more.
Mateusz was the frank theatre company’s Artistic Producer from 2018-2026. During his tenure, he co-produced cabarets at Club PuSh; a queer youth writing program, Telling It Bent; and a range of productions, including Ayibobo III: Little Dollhouse on the Praire by Elle Barbara (with Danse-Cité and QAF), How Black Mothers Say I Love You by Trey Anthony (with the Cultch), the audio-drama I Cannot Lie to the Stars That Made Me by Catherine Hernandez, the digital performance film Be-Longing (with the Cultch) and She Mami Wata & The Pussy WitchHunt by d’bi young anitrafrika (PuSh Festival). Mateusz is a graduate of Studio 58.