Sheena Bernett

Biography

Dr. Sheena Bernett is a singer, actor, dancer, songwriter, composer, choreographer, director/facilitator, and neurodiverse performing and creative arts educator and scholar from Montreal. She has just completed her Ph.D. at Concordia University with a ranking of "outstanding" by all committee members and has been nominated for the 2023 Governor General Gold Medal Award. Sheena holds an MA in Musical Theatre from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a B.F.A. in Music Composition and Classical Voice from Concordia University where she graduated with distinction. She is a musical theatre graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York and studied Classical voice at Vanier College. Sheena has had a diverse career as a multidisciplinary artist; appearing in film/TV, on stage, and with her own theatrical musical project Darling Ghost. In 2014, Darling Ghost was part of TedxGlasgow and premiered internationally at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. During the festival, Sheena also captured audiences with her comedic portrayal of Grandma in the Addams Family musical and appeared as the bratty Queen Bella in The Girl Who... a new musical inspired by the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books. Sheena is also an accomplished dancer and has trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and l'École Supérieure de Danse du Québec.

As a Performing and Creative Arts Coach, Sheena specializes in teaching voice, acting, musical theatre, ballet/dance and music composition/songwriting. As a guest lecturer at post-secondary institutions she has taught workshops on various performing and creative arts topics. Her workshops include topics ranging from musical theatre performance, character and audition preparation, to voice and body work, as well as experimental methods of interdisciplinary composition and performance practices. She has taught extensively as a private coach with both professional and emerging artists. Sheena is a member of The National Association of Teachers of Singing.

Sheena's research interests are situated in performance and perception/sensation, she investigates radical approaches to creation and performance practices that transcend disciplinary paradigms—with the aim of utilizing the performing/creative arts as a practice and languaging that facilitates neurodiverse thinking-doing. Sheena is committed to neurodiversity as a concept and movement that attends to the diversity of perception and full range or ways of being/becoming.