In Royal City Musical Theatre’s upcoming production of 9 to 5: The Musical, based on the 1980 film, Maia Beresford plays Doralee Rhodes—a character immortalized onscreen by Dolly Parton. Beresford has had ample inspiration to prepare for a role so synonymous with female empowerment. For starters, she watched her mom defy the odds while she was growing up.

Twelve years ago, singer-songwriter Krystle Dos Santos embarked on a journey to discover the true inspiration of her love for soul music. Dos Santos had been passionate about soul from a young age, influenced by such icons as Aretha Franklin and Etta James. But having grown up in Edmonton, decades after the height of those soul icons, Dos Santos experienced imposter syndrome—questioning whether her voice was authentic enough to do justice to the genre. 

Vancouver playwright Dave Deveau truly knows what it means to build a family. Over the past six years, he and his partner Cameron Mackenzie have become fathers to two children, thanks to surrogacy arrangements with close family friends. But when the couple tried to include books in their bookshelf that would help their children see similar families in the pages, they realized there weren’t many.

“The new thing is definitely going to walk in with a scream—and that is me,” Sasha Velour asserted, when asked by RuPaul why she would deserve to win season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race.  She won. And the scream she mentioned? One could argue this was a foreshadowing of her advocacy for LGBTQ2SIA+ rights and drag and queer history education.