HAUI

HAUI (born Howard J. Davis)^[1] is a British Canadian multidisciplinary artist who directs, designs, and devises cross-disciplinary work. His practice explores themes of race, gender, identity, and sexual orientation, and engages with underrepresented narratives, mythologies, and histories.^[2]

HAUI was born in Bath, Somerset, of Cuban, Jamaican, and European descent.^[3] His professional name represents an approach to Hybrid Art with a Unique Interpretation, serving as a framework for a multifaceted practice that reflects his mixed heritage.^[3] He is a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University.^[4]

HAUI joined the Shaw Festival acting ensemble in 2015, appearing in productions including Pygmalion and Sweet Charity.^[5] In addition to his work at the Shaw Festival, he has appeared as an actor with companies including Factory Theatre, Outside the March, and Neptune Theatre.^[6][7][8] He later returned to the Shaw Festival in subsequent seasons, contributing as a designer, including on Oh What a Lovely War in 2018.^[9] In 2023, HAUI was part of the design team for Shadow of a Doubt, which won for Outstanding Design; the production was designed alongside Gillian Gallow and Bonnie Beecher and directed by Peter Hinton-Davis.^[10] He has also worked in assistant and associate directing roles at major Canadian institutions, including the National Arts Centre,^[11] the Grand Theatre (London, Ontario),^[12] and as an associate director at Canadian Stage.^[13]

Alongside his acting and directing work, HAUI has contributed design work for major Canadian institutions including the Stratford Festival, Luminato Festival, Theatre Calgary, Black Theatre Workshop, and Tarragon Theatre.^[14]

HAUI’s screen work include his 2017 short film C’est Moi, which explores the life of Marie-Josèphe Angélique. It engages with Canada’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism, using symbolic storytelling to foreground suppressed historical narratives.^[15] Internationally, the film was recognized for its visual symbolism, poetry, and educational value.^[16]

HAUI directed his documentary feature-film debut MixedUp. The film was co-produced with trans filmmaker Jack Fox and produced in association with OUTtv (Canada).^[17] It examines mixed-race identity, queerness, and personal history through a multidisciplinary lens. Etalk host Traci Melchor praised the film’s ability to “allow people to begin to heal.”^[18] He also directed and devised the 2SLGBTQIA+ installation Private Flowers, commissioned by the City of Toronto for Pride 2023. The work centered on queer histories and memorialization through movement, memory and music.^[19]

In 2024, HAUI wrote, directed, and co-composed Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White, a theatrical work created in collaboration with conductor-composer Sean Mayes.^[20] The piece, which centers on African Nova Scotian contralto Portia White, premiered at the Canadian Opera Company and was described by Opera Canada as “an exciting testament to the wealth of innovative creativity alive in our local contemporary opera… showcas[ing] more diverse voices.”^[21] It received the 2025 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Opera/Musical and Outstanding Ensemble in an Opera.^[22]

At the age of 33, HAUI became the youngest person to direct an opera at the Canadian Opera Company (COC).^{[23][24][25][26][27]}

In 2025, HAUI was an artist-in-residence at The Watermill Center in New York, an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts founded by avant-garde director Robert Wilson (director).^[28] That same year, HAUI premiered the installation Aunt Harriet: An Ontario Oratorio.^[29] The work is inspired by Harriet Miller, a Black woman who lived in rural southern Ontario in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and features dub poet Ahdri Zhina Mandiela in the title role. Blending poetry, portraiture, and performance, the project reflects what scholar Saidiya Hartman terms critical fabulation—the merging of historical record and imagination to recover suppressed histories.^[30] Through this approach, HAUI and mandiela highlight the presence, commonness, and fullness of Black women’s lives within Canadian history. As HAUI told CBC Radio, “History is what is recorded: Myth is what is remembered”.^[31] a reflection of his broader practice, which blurs the line between fact and imagination to restore erased histories.

He is married to the Canadian stage and opera director Peter Hinton-Davis. The couple met in 2015 during a Shaw Festival production of Pygmalion and were married in 2018 at their home.^[32] HAUI has spoken about how his marriage represents a milestone for his queer identity, particularly regarding the historical context of LGBTQ+ rights in Canada.^[33]

• 2023 – Isadore Sharp Outstanding Recent Graduate Award.^[4]

• 2025 – Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Opera/Musical and Outstanding Ensemble in an Opera^[22]

• 2025 – Chalmers Arts Fellowship^[34]

• Official website