Interdisciplinary Playwright, Performer & Producer

Anais Mateusz West (they/he) is a bilingual queer and trans playwright, performer and theatre 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, media artists and theatre-makers. They merge prose, poetry and dialogue with devised theatre approaches, disrupting boundaries within gender, sexuality, culture and language. 

Mateusz's written works include Tomboy (Chłopczyca) (Premiering at the Cultch in March 2026), 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), Poly Queer Love Ballad (Queer Arts Festival, the frank theatre and Zee Zee Theatre, Vancouver, and Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto), and Kill Your Lovers, (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb Festival, Toronto, and the Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC). He was the 2023 winner of the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition for Tomboy (Chłopczyca.) They were also the 2018 co-winner of PTC’s Fringe New Play Prize and the Georgia Straight Critic’s Choice Award, and his work 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 Dance, 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 is also the frank theatre company’s Artistic Producer, where he recently co-produced How Black Mothers Say I Love You by Trey Anthony, the audio-drama I Cannot Lie to the Stars That Made Me by Catherine Hernandez, the digital performance film Be-Longing and She Mami Wata & The Pussy WitchHunt by d’bi young anitrafrika at the 2020 PuSh Festival. Mateusz is a graduate of Studio 58.

​

​