About

KENDRA FANCONI is a director, writer and creator of original site‑specific theatre works. She co‑founded The Only Animal, a company uniquely dedicated to theatre that springs from a deep engagement with place and led the company as Artistic Director for 17 years. Kendra is known for her love of the impossible.

Selected credits for directing/writing: Magic Hour, directed by Kim Collier; Slime, written by Bryony Lavery; tinkers, based on the Pulitzer‑Prize winning novel by Paul Harding; Nothing But Sky, a living comic book; NiX, theatre of snow and ice, at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad; and Sea of Hearts with 1,000 climate protestors.

Over 20 years Kendra was lead artist on more than 30 shows which were nominated for over 30 Jessie and Betty Awards—winning twenty, including Outstanding Production and three Significant Artistic Achievement awards. Her work received the David Suzuki Foundation National Rewilding Award and the PACT Inaugural Green Award in 2022. Her play in a pool, The One That Got Away, won the People’s Choice Award for the Best Show in Festival History at Magnetic North Theatre Festival (National).

Recent work includes eco‑restorative project, 1000 Year Theatre, was featured at the Rewilding Exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa in 2025. Other recent work including writing and co-directing four short films that  set on a submarine called The Deep, at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Kendra is currently bringing her immersive theatre approach to a contract as the Creative Director of the St Roch Revitalization exhibit at Vancouver Maritime Museum.

Kendra founded and led the Artist Brigade, bringing arts and artists to the front lines of the climate movement. The Brigade commissioned 19 works and contributed to the preservation of the old‑growth forest, Dakota Bear Sanctuary and the Songbird Forest. Kendra also contributes on the national level as a founding member of SCALE (Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) and on the Sunshine Coast as an artist with the Living Forest Institute. She teaches her unique brand of eco‑restorative creation at universities in Canada and the US and often speaks about the intersection of art and climate.

Kendra lives and works on the ancestral, unceded lands of the shíshálh and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations.

Kendra is a farmer, a forager, and mother to two kids who are real characters.