Small Wooden Shoe

The core Upper Toronto team: Jacob Zimmer and Tim Maly

The Company for Dedicated to Revolutions
Frank Cox-Connell, Chad Dembski, Ame Henderson, Erika Hennebury , Erin Shields, Trevor Schwellnus, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Evan Webber, Jacob Zimmer, Gillian Lewis

Dedicated to the Revolutions has been developed since 2006 with the additional collaboration of: Daniel Arcé,Brendan Gall, Misha Glouberman, Harbourfront Centre, Dustin Harvey, Brendan Healy, Sasha Kovacs, Tim Maly, Laura Nanni, Kilby Smith-McGregor, Theatre Passe Muraille and Jacob Wren.

BIOGRAPHIES

JACOB ZIMMER, DIRECTOR/PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Jacob Zimmer is the director of Small Wooden Shoe, a mostly-theatre company bent on proving that good ideas are entertaining and that pleasure and critique require each other. Jacob works in dance as the Dramaturge and Animateur at Dancemakers and in an on-going dramaturgical collaboration with choreographer Ame Henderson. He is the inaugeral Toronto Fringe Research Chair looking into a “Populism we can stand behind.” Jacob has lead composition and performance workshops in Halifax, Toronto and St John’s. He’s given talks at Performance Creation Canada (Halifax 2008, Caravan Theatre 2010) the Glenbow Museum (Calgary 2010) and at universities. With Misha Glouberman, he organizes the UnConference on the Future(s) of Toronto Performance.  Jacob studied at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and in 2004 was a technical intern with The Wooster Group. Jacob received the 2008 Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors..

ERIKA HENNEBURY, ARTISTIC PRODUCER/COLLABORATOR
Erika Hennebury is Associate Producer for Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Rhubarb Festival Director (2006 – present) and Artistic Coordinator for Audience Relocation 2007. Erika is on the steering committee for Performance Creation Canada Toronto (April 2 – 5, 2009) and is a collaborator in the inter-disciplinary performance collective, The Notary Public, with Laura Nanni. Upcoming projects include: (WE) ARE HERE, a new performance collaboration with Dustin Harvey and Secret Theatre (Halifax, NS); producing and tour managing with dance artist Susanna Hood’s company hum and producing and tour managing Small Wooden Shoe’s Dedicated to the Revolutions. Erika was co-recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for 2000 and is a proud recipient of a 2007 Harold Award. A graduate of Dalhousie University’s Theatre Department and a former member of the Irondale Ensemble Project (Halifax) and Les Vaches (Halifax/Toronto). From Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Erika has been creating and producing independent theatre in Toronto since 1997. Erika is on the Board of Directors for FADO Performance Art Centre and Public Recordings.

FRANK COX-O’CONNELL, PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Frank Cox-O’Connell creates and performs original theatre with Small Wooden Shoe, Public Recordings (300 Tapes) and One Reed Theatre (Nor the Cavaliers, Never Underestimate The Power, Little Iliad). He also acts in plays, such as The Mill (Theatrefront), The Epic of Gilgamesh (Groundwater), Shakuntala (Pleiades, Harbourfront’s World Stage), Sanctuary Song (Tapestry, Luminato), The Drawer Boy (Passe Murialle, and a tour with Farnham Maltings, UK), Bach at Leipzig (Theatre Athena) and The Demonstration (Theatre Direct). Frank is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. As a musician, he plays drums with Boys Who Say No.

CHAD DEMBSKI, PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Chad Dembski is Artistic Director of surprise performance; a company based in Montreal.  Most recently he was at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Wales in May of 2010 with Hamletown, a reworking of an earlier work save us [Hamletown] that was presented at HATCH performance projects at the Harbourfront Centre in March of 2008.  As a collaborator with Public Recordings performance projects on Manuel for Incidence (Montreal/Toronto 2005), /Dance/Songs/ (Toronto/Montreal – FTA/Terni, Italy/St.John’s/Halifax) and the most recent project relay (Toronto – World Stage 2010). He has previously has worked with Small Wooden Shoe on Perhaps in a Hundred Years (2005).

AME HENDERSON, CO-DIRECTOR/COLLABORATOR
Ame Henderson lives and works in Toronto where she is the artistic director of Public Recordings. Henderson completed a BFA at Concordia University and holds a MFA in Choreography from the Amsterdam School for the Arts. Her works Blue**Disco (2002), memories and statements (2004), Manual for Incidence (2005), /Dance/Songs/ (2006), Open Field Study (all together now) (2007), It was a nice party (Dancemakers, 2008) and The Most Together We’ve Ever Been (with Matija Ferlin, 2009) have been presented in France, The Netherlands, Italy, Croatia and across Canada. Henderson has developed work in residence at Tanz Quartier Vienna, Le Groupe (Ottawa), Studio 303 (Montreal) and Tangente (Montreal).

TIM MALY, COLLABORATOR, PROJECT MANAGER
Tim Maly is a writer, presenter and project manager making the transition to artistic performer. He writes about cyborgs, architects, and our weird broken future at Quiet Babylon. He was the Creative Director at Pleiades, a firm devoted to using virtual worlds in humanities education, and works with Public Recordings – a collaborative dance company – on models for making sustainable art. He is the debate coach of Small Wooden Shoe and contributed to the creation of Dedicated to the Revolutions. He’s one of the co-founders of award winning game studio Capybara Games and he co-designed the infinite auction for Project Wonderful. He is a founding member of bohmLAB, a collaborative experimental research group at Waterloo Architecture Cambridge. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, East of the Web, Icon, The Atlantic, and Volume Magazine. He created and ran 50 Posts About Cyborgs, a month long multi-participant, multimedia celebration of the 50th anniversary of the coining of the term. Maly grew up in Halifax. He lives in Toronto.

AIMÉE DAWN ROBINSON, PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Aimée Dawn Robinson is an improvising dancer, musician, landscape gardener, writer and visual artist/video maker. She has performed, studied and taught dance in Canada, the United States, Malaysia and Japan.  Aimée spent the summer of 2008 in Hakushu (Japan) farming and studying dance with Min Tanaka on Body Weather Farm. She returned to Tanaka’s farms (Body Weather and Tokason) in September/October (2009) to continue her studies. Aimée holds her Master’s of Arts from York University. Her current research project, A Body of Memory, explores the roles of memory and forgetting in improvising, butoh and Canadian Aboriginal dance. Aimée co-founded the dance series Up Darling and the founder/director of multi-disciplinary performance series, A Month of Sundays.

TREVOR SCHWELLNUS, PRODUCTION DESIGNER/COLLABORATOR
Trevor Schwellnus is a Toronto-based Scenographer, Designer-in-Residence at the Theatre Centre, and Artistic Producer of Aluna Theatre. He has recently collaborated with: Dancemakers (Double Bill #2), Ame Henderson’s publicrecordings (relay, /dance/songs/, and the upcoming 300 tapes), Aluna Theatre (La Comunión), Crow’s Theatre (Out the Window), Buddies in Bad Times (Silicone Diaries). He has 2 Dora Awards for his work with Aluna. In November 2010 he takes his collaborative dance-theatre work-in-progress,Nohayquiensepa (NoOneKnows), to Bogotá, Colombia.

ERIN SHIELDS, PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Erin Shields is a playwright and actor who trained at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama in London, England.  She is a founding member of Groundwater Productions through which she creates, develops and produces much of her work including If We Were Birds which premiered at Summerworks 2008 and was part of the Tarragon Theatre’s 2009/2010 season.  If We Were Birds is currently being translated into German as part of The German Theatre Exchange.  Upcoming Erin will remount Montparnasse(Groundwater in Association with Theatre Passe Muraille), winner of the Alberta Theatre Projects’ Enbridge Emerging playRites Award.  Erin is also a playwright in residence at Tarragon Theatre.

EVAN WEBBER, PERFORMER/COLLABORATOR
Evan Webber is a writer and performer who works collaboratively in theatre. He is a founding member of One Reed Theatre (relativesafety.com), whose works include Nor The Cavaliers Who Come With Us, It’s hard to count to a million, and (never underestimate) The Power. Evan is a frequent contributor to projects with companies like Small Wooden Shoe, Public Recordings, and surPrise Performance, and he writes about art and performance online and in print for Alternatives Journal and Canadian Theatre Review. Recent works include text for the plays 2 Modern Feelings, at New Waves, 2009, and Little Iliad, which was shown at Free Fall ’10, and will be presented in Dublin in the fall.

GILLIAN LEWIS, STAGE MANAGER
Gillian is a graduate of Ryerson University’s Theatre – Technical Production program and works professionally in both dance and theatre.  Recent credits include: Assistant Stage Manager for the National Ballet of Canada’s for the spring 2009 & winter 2009/2010 seasons at the Four Season’s Centre for the Performing Arts including: Carmen, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker and the Stage Manager for Small Wooden’s Shoe’s Alberta tour of Dedicated to the Revolutions. Upcoming, Gillian will be focusing more on Production Management with projects for: Gailey Roads Productions (Hart House Theatre June, 2010) and Eldritch Theatre (Theatre Centre October, 2010) as well as, the final year of Theatre Centre Residency with a show in development with Public Recordings (Theatre Centre October,  2010).

BRENDAN GALL, collaborator: I keep Dropping Sh*t
Since graduating from George Brown Theatre School in 2000 Brendan Gall has had the good fortune to work with companies such as Public Recordings, Tarragon, Theatre Network, Convergence, UnSpun, Teatro Della Limonaia (in Florence, Italy), The Grand, Absit Omen, Belltower, Resurgence, Birdland, Repercussion and, of course, Small Wooden Shoe. He has been nominated for three Doras for writing and a Sterling for acting. Brendan is a Playwright-in-Residence at Tarragon Theatre, associate artist with UnSpun Theatre, artistic director of his own company Single Threat, and a co-artistic director of The Room. He lives in Toronto.

BRENDAN HEALY, collaborator: …Any Idea…, Connect the Dots, I Keep Dropping Sh*t
Brendan Healy is originally from Montreal where he studied Theatre Performance at Concordia University. Following graduation, he pursued acting professionally and appeared, most notably, in Greg MacArthur’s Girls!Girls!Girls! directed by Peter Hinton and presented at the 2001 Festival de théâtre des Amériques. It was at this festival that Brendan met Richard Maxwell, artistic director of the multiple OBIE Award winning companyNew York City Players. This meeting led Brendan to New York City where he interned under Mr. Maxwell. In 2003, Brendan entered the National Theatre School’s directing program. At NTS, Brendan was mentored by Chris Abraham, Sarah Stanley, Keith Turnbull and Daniel Brooks, among others. In 2004, Brendan studied under Anne Bogart and the SITI Company during their summer intensive. Recent projects have included: Swipe: an Operetta (Hysteria 2005), Down the Main Drag (SummerWorks 2005 and HATCH/Harbourfront 2006), and Emergency Exits and Garden (both Summerworks 2006). Along with Independent Auntie Theatre, he has been a member of the Theatre Centre’s Artist-in-Residence Program where they has been developing a new piece entitled Breakfast (slated for production in 2008). Other upcoming projects include: I Am My Own Wife (Saydie Bronfman Centre, Montreal); Dying To Be Sick, and a new translation of Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid (Pleiades Theatre and the National Arts Centre). Brendan was the recipient of the 2006 Ken McDougall Award for Emerging Director. He is the current Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

JACOB WREN, collaborator: …Any idea .., Dedicated to the Revolutions (workshop)
Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His recent books include Unrehearsed Beauty (Coach House Books), Families Are Formed Through Copulation (Pedlar Press) and the upcoming novel Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize (1998), Unrehearsed Beauty / Le génie des autres (2002), La famille se crée en copulant (2005) and the ongoing HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series: 1: The Title Is Constantly Changing (2007), 2: Gradually This Overview (2010) and 3: Individualism Was A Mistake (2008). In 2007 he was invited to Berlin by Sophiensaele to adapt and direct Wolfgang Koeppen’s 1954 novel Der Tod in Rom and in 2008 he was commissioned by Campo in Ghent to co-create (with Pieter De Buysser) a new performance entitled An Anthology of Optimism. He frequently writes about contemporary art.

MISHA GLOUBERMAN, host: Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing, Unconference Misha Glouberman is very interested in how groups of people do things together. He hosts the Trampoline Hall Lecture, a barroom lecture series where people give talks on subjects on which they are not professionally expert. He runs “Terrible Noises for Beautiful People”, a series of classes and events in which groups of non-musicians participate in improvised experimental music, taught through the semi-fictional Misha Glouberman School of Learning. Misha also organizes, designs, and facilitates highly participatory events and conferences for arts organizations and other groups. You can find him on the web at www.mishaglouberman.com

DUSTIN HARVEY, collaborator, Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing
Halifax-based collaborator, writer, performer, and director Dustin Scott Harvey has created The Common: For As Long A You Have So Far, (We) Are Here, Another City Another Life, Instruction For Tomorrow, Best Wishes, Cowboy Show, and Winding Up Godot for Secret Theatre, productions that have been seen in Halifax, Toronto, Calgary, and St.John’s. He has also collaborated with Jacob Zimmer and his company Small Wooden Shoe. Together they co-created No Secrets, and Hold On Tightly. In 2008, Dustin was invited to Berlin, Germany by the Canadian Embassy and the International Theatre Institute to talk about his work with new forms of dramaturgy. His writing about performance has been published in Canadian Theatre Review (Issue 126, 134). He has a BA in Theatre from Acadia University, and a Post Graduate Diploma from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (UK).

EVALYN PARRY, collaborator, Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing
Evalyn Parry’s performances have taken her to music, theatre, storytelling and poetry festivals from coast to coast of North America. She has released three critically acclaimed CDs of music and spoken word, and her work has been widely broadcast, commissioned and anthologized; she was the recipient of the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award (Ontario Arts Council), nominee for the KM Hunter Award (music), and winner of the recipient of the 2009 Ken MacDougall Award for Upcoming Director.  Evalyn is an Associate Artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, where she is the director of the Young Creators Unit and a founding director of PrideCab, the annual Youth Program production. She is a founding member of the Independent Aunties (www.independentaunties.ca), with whom she has co-authored and performed five plays including the Dora-nominated Breakfast (Buddies in Bad Times 2010, Theatre Centre 2008) and the multiple-award-winning, fringe favorite Clean Irene & Dirty Maxine.  Other recent theatre credits include directing Fishbowl (Buddies in Bad Times), The Emergency Monologues (SummerWorks Festival, Audience Choice Award), and What A Cad! (Sour Brides, Yukon); performing in The Pastor Phelps Project and Leni Riefenstahl vs the 20^th Century (Ecce Homo), and Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing (Small Wooden Shoe). Her new show SPIN will be produced at Buddies in March 2011. www.evalynparry.com

DANIEL ARCÉ, collaborator, Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing
Daniel Arcé has a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Diploma in Software Development. He runs the Cultural Studies New Media Lab at York University. His video works have been shown at the /Images Festival/ in Toronto and /Video Archeology/ in Sofia, Bulgaria. He has presented at the /Impakt Festival/ in Utrecht, the /Next Five Minutes/ in Amsterdam, and at the /Looking Glass Gallery/ in Brussels. He has done live VJ sets with Montreal filmmaker Ian Cameron for DJ Swamp and Afrika Bambaataa. His work is included in /Making Art with Databases/ published by V2 press in Rotterdam, and /Connected!/LiveArt published by the Waag Society of Old and New Media, Amsterdam. He has done Live Stage Video for Ame Henderson’s choreographies performed in The Netherlands, Croatia, Montreal and Toronto.