Into The Portal
Your Sweet Spot Life
Based in Saint John New Brunswick this project allows creative professionals to step into a fully immersive, work-first environment. This residency is designed for artists who want time, space, and continuity — not a drop-in workshop or a short showcase.
For performers and creators, Saint John offers something increasingly rare: the ability to relocate temporarily, focus on a single body of work, and collaborate daily with the same ensemble. Actors, singers, dancers, writers, directors, and producers are working together on the same project over an extended period, allowing roles, performances, and material to deepen rather than reset every few days.
The city’s scale makes it possible to live, rehearse, build, revise, and film within close proximity. This supports ensemble development, sustained creative risk, and real production momentum — conditions that are difficult to achieve in larger, more fragmented markets. Participants come to Saint John not just for exposure, but to do the kind of concentrated creative work that typically only happens inside long-running companies or studio systems.
Into The Portal Artist Residency in Saint John, New Brunswick is a relocation-based creative residency and competition designed for actors, singers, dancers, writers, directors, producers, and multidisciplinary creators who want to build and perform inside a concentrated, ensemble-driven production environment. Participants relocate to Saint John to collaborate daily, develop material, rehearse, and compete through a structured set of creative challenges that culminate in a professionally produced mini-series.
The story at the heart of the production follows Phoenix and Colten—two elite performance artists whose partnership becomes both volatile and transformative. Phoenix is a fiercely talented dancer/musician who carries the aftershocks of a past that weaponized her craft against her. Colten is a disciplined, grounded performer who pushes for excellence while offering something Phoenix has rarely had: steadiness without control. Their relationship unfolds inside a larger mythic framework: Prince Michael, watching from a “Portal Tree” that exists outside ordinary time, writes and witnesses the turning points of their lives as if the characters are being guided toward the brink where art, choice, and healing collide. The series blends grounded contemporary relationships with a stylized, poetic meta-layer that gives the project its signature tone and visual language.
Compensation is structured in phases. During the one-month competition period, the organization covers participants’ living expenses (food and accommodation). Competitors are responsible for their own travel to Saint John. During this phase, competitors who complete all required challenges are free to continue their other work and are given opportunities to use local studio, maker, and co-working spaces, as well as connect with creative professionals and organizations in the region. Following the competition, selected winners transition into paid cast and crew roles for a three-month production period at average income rates. After the production is released and streamed across multiple platforms, artists are granted the right to license and sell the completed work to other organizations and through their own networks, supporting longer-term income and professional reach beyond the initial contract.
This residency exists to do something specific: bring high-calibre creators from across Canada into one city, build a real working ensemble, and produce work that is ambitious, emotionally resonant, and commercially viable—while strengthening Saint John’s creative ecosystem through sustained collaboration, shared infrastructure, and new professional connections.