About Cassel

When I was seven years old we moved from Kingston, Jamaica to Scarborough, Ontario. At nine I learned how to play hockey while also taking tap dancing lessons. At seventeen I saw the movie Fame and found my path.

The Best of Broadway was my first professional job at Canada’s Wonderland’s. There were dance scholarships with George Randolph in Toronto and Steps on Broadway in New York City. There were dance companies such as Judith Marcuse’s Repertory Dance Company of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, and The National Tap Dance Company of Canada. Musical theatre shows, the Shaw Festival, the Stratford Festival; man I was dancing as fast as I could.

THEN came Canadian Stage Company’s, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and a Dora Award nomination. Me? The dancer? Acting? That was unexpected. Even more unexpected was the opportunity to play ‘Mr. Bojangles’ in the U.S. National Tour of Fosse and to be directed by Ann Reinking. Wow, I was on my way I thought. That is when the passion suddenly left. One evening backstage while warming up for Fosse I said to the Stage Manager, “Artie, it’s not fun anymore.” It’s like that line from A Chorus Line, (in which I played in Vancouver) when the director, Zach, asks the company, “What would you do if you couldn’t dance anymore?” For ten years, from 2004 to 2014, I didn’t know.

Luckily I met a wonderful man who saw in me what I couldn’t see. We moved from downtown Toronto, and my position as a concierge at The Fairmont Royal York Hotel, to buy my parents’ house in a town thirty minutes north of Kingston, Ontario. And that’s when the passion started to come back. But it wasn’t dancing, it was acting; in community theatre shows and semi-professional productions. During one of those shows, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, for Bottle Tree Productions in 2018, I met a writer named Charles Robertson. I told him about a dream I had to create a show about Josiah Henson. See, back in 2004, during a very bad bout of depression, I saw a documentary about Josiah Henson. Something about his story penetrated deeply and stayed with me all those years.

About JOSIAH

Charles created a first draft in December 2018 of a show with just me alone on a bare stage, with no props and no set. With just a bucket, a cap, and a handkerchief Josiah Henson: From Slave to Saviour was born. We did the first workshop presentation in Kingston at the Baby Grand Studio Theatre for Black History Month 2019. Rosemary Doyle invited us to present at The Red Sancastle Theatre in Toronto in May 2019. Charles produced a one off presentation in October 2019 at The Grand Theatre in Kingston on the main stage. The show played at the Storefront Fringe in Kingston, the Central YMCA in Toronto (where Charles had renamed it, JOSIAH), at Sheridan College in Oakville and five high schools in Kingston. Then came COVID. Gratefully it was produced by Theatre Orangeville in a purpose-built tent at Mount Alverno Resort for their 2021 COVID season.

Charles and I parted ways in 2022. In 2024 Jim Garrard wanted to produce it. He believed that the show “had legs” and should be toured. He approached Charles to broker a deal and on September 24, 2024, Charles signed off an Assignment of Rights Agreement drafted by entertainment lawyer, Derrick Chua. It would be a new version based on the original 2019 version. Charles wanted nothing to do with the revision and would recieve this credit, “Josiah” was originally co-created by Cassel Miles and Charles Robertson, and written by Charles Robertson. With the Agreement in place,  Jim and I began collaborating to rework the show with new direction and a greatly refined script creating a whole new ending which brought the hero from Indiana to the shores of Canada.

Anne Marie Mortensen had designed the costume and created the show poster for the 2019 presentations. She came on board as Technical Director with her original sound and lighting design. Amanda Doerrie, who is the Marketing Strategist and Content Creator for Theatre Orangeville, came on board to lead our marketing and advertising campaign creating the website, social media platforms, poster and programs. That man who all those years ago had seen in me what I could not see became the co-producer of the show and learned how to run lights and sound. Sandy McFadden evolved into the Stage Manager. JOSIAH now had a fully dedicated production team. It played, successfully, at the Alumnae Theatre in Toronto for Black History Month 2025. We are just getting started. This is the time of JOSIAH.

The work is the play. The play is to inspire.