Jason Rayner (he/him/his) is a Toronto-based writer, director, and actor. As a creator and proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, it is his personal artistic mandate to tell stories that are honest, fresh, and uncompromisingly queer. 

He has been awarded several major grants from the Canada Council of the Arts and the Harold Greenberg Fund for his feature-film scripts Operation Soap (about the 1981 bathhouse raids) and Pink Triangles (about the AIDS crisis in Canada), as well as La Ronde (a modern all-queer adaptation of Arthur Schnitzer’s play of the same name), which he starred in as well as co-wrote and directed. He has also written, directed, and starred in several short films including The Winner Is…, Elevator Love Story, and The First Message, which have screened at film festivals all over the world. 

In addition to making queer art, he spends time fantasizing about what it would be like to live in a Pedro Almodóvar movie (lots of red), memorizing Mariah Carey verses (an underrated lyricist), and learning as much Oscar trivia as possible (with a special focus on the actress categories, natch). If you have a cat, he’d love to meet them.