Small Wooden Shoe

“The ideal might be a standing community of collaborators who work on projects together for months or years and also, if needed, create a play in twenty minutes to be performed that night. The rigour of the long projects would inform the knee jerks, and the energy of knee jerks would inform the deep questions.”
– Jacob Zimmer,  All Statements are Incomplete Statements, Canadian Theatre Review 2004.

Perhaps in a Hundred Years was conceived by Jacob Zimmer and created and performed by Chad Dembski, Ame Henderson and Jacob Zimmer in collaboration with Kilby Smith-McGregor

Small Wooden Shoe Reads Difficult Plays and Sings Simple Songs is curated by Leora Morris

The Company for Antigone: Dead People
Evan Webber, Jacob Zimmer, Maev Beaty, Philip Shepherd, Brendan Gall, Frank Cox-O’Connell, Liz Peterson, Antonio Cayonne, Sky Gilbert, Lindsey Clark, Leora Morris, Christopher Willis, Vanessa Fischer, Harmony Cohen

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 Artistic Director
Jacob Zimmer is a director, writer, dramaturge and performer who has shown work across the country. Born in Cape Breton and growing up in Halifax, he now lives in Toronto. Along with founding Small Wooden Shoe, Jacob works in dance as a dramaturge with Dancemakers and in an on-going collaboration with choreographer Ame Henderson/Public Recordings. He was the inaugural Toronto Fringe Research Chair looking into a “Populism we can stand behind.” 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 (a partnership with Canadian Stage, Small Wooden Shoe and Dancemakers.) He has organized and facilitated events for Upper Toronto, the Literary Managers and Dramaturges of the America’s, Harbourfront Centre and MASS LBP among others. Jacob studied theatre at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and was an intern with The Wooster Group and studied Viewpoints, Suzuki and Composition with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Jacob received the 2008 Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors and is currently nominated for the Pauline McGibbon Award from the Ontario Arts Council.

EVAN WEBBER Antigone, Dedicated to the Revolutions
Evan Webber is a writer and performer who works collaboratively in theatre. He was a founding member of One Reed and frequently contributes to performance works and projects with companies like Small Wooden Shoe, Public Recordings, and surPrise Performance (Save Us!! Hamletown). He has held writing and performance-making residencies at The Theatre Centre in Toronto, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annamakherrig, Ireland, and with Crow’s Theatre and Small Wooden Shoe. His play Little Illiad was presented by The Absolut Fringe, Dublin Ireland, where it received a nomination for the festival’s Best Production award. His newest play, Ajax will be presented with Little Iliad at Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage. Evan is also engaged in criticism and curation. He works as a programming consultant on special projects in performing arts at Harbourfront Centre, and his writes about theatre, visual art and performance.

MAEV BEATY Antigone
Maev Beaty is an actor, writer and voice artist whose favourite theatre credits include: Wide Awake Hearts (Tarragon Theatre), Ritter Dene Voss (La Mama, NYC), Taming of the Shrew (Theatre By the Bay), Another Africa (Volcano/ Luminato/ Canadian Stage), Birnam Wood (Theatre Rusticle), Parfumerie (Soulpepper), The Mill, Parts I and II (TheatreFront), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Canadian Stage, Globe Theatre, Resurgence), and Palace of the End (Canadian Stage).She was named Best Emerging Female Actor of 2007 in NOW Magazine, and has been nominated for Outstanding Performance Dora awards for Montparnasse and Dance of the Red Skirts. Maev is also co-Artistic Director of Belltower and Sheep No Wool Theatre companies and an associate of Groundwater Productions whose projects include ma jolie and The Unforgetting, both by Alan Dilworth and Goblin Market, Montparnasse which she co-created.  Her voice can be heard on commercials, documentaries and animated series.

PHILIP SHEPHERD Antigone
Philip Shepherd is an actor, director, teacher and writer.  His interest in world theatre has often taken him abroad.  He traveled to India and Japan to study Kathakali and Noh.  In London, England he was a founding member of the Play Room and performed with Tavistock Repertory Theatre.  In New York he performed with Linda Mussmann’s Time and Space Limited Theatre, touring Switzerland and Poland.  He trained intensively with director Ho Ying Fung, and they mounted one-man show, Shades, which performed in Toronto and Hong Kong.  He trained in Denmark with Eugenio Barba’s company, and played the lead in Steven Rumbelow’s Dr. Faustus in Chicago and Toronto.  For the past twenty-three years he has been a director of Toronto’s Phyzikal Theatre, a company that combines classic principles of theatre with avant-garde theatricality.  He wrote a book, New Self, New World, published in 2010 and has been widely praised as a masterpiece. philipshepherd.com.

BRENDAN GALL Antigone, I Keep Dropping Sh*t
Brendan Gall is a graduate of George Brown Theatre School. Brendan has performed with companies such as The Grand, Repercussion Theatre, Resurgence Theatre and Birdland Theatre, and created new works with companies such as Small Wooden Shoe, Tarragon Theatre, Public Recordings, Convergence Theatre, Absit Omen/Belltower, Unspun Theatre, his own company Single Threat, and The Room, where he is one of three Artistic Directors. A playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre, Brendan has been nominated for four Dora Mavor Moore Awards for writing since 2008, the K.M. Hunter Artists Award, and a 2011 Governor General’s Award for his book Minor Complications: Two Plays. His plays have been translated into Italian and German.

LIZ PETERSON Antigone
Liz Peterson is a performer and writer based in Toronto. Since 2002 she has been working to create theatre that experiments with form and aesthetic. Together with longtime collaborator Alex Wolfson, Liz has developed a history of presenting plays in art galleries. A founding member of the theatre collective AmmoFactory, Liz has also created and performed with theatre collective  Birdtown and Swanville. Liz also collaborated with Adam Paolozza & TheatreRUN and Toronto performer and artist  Jon McCurley. Most recently she performed Express Yourself, co-created with Sean O’Neill (Summerworks 2011, winnner: Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation.) Liz is a graduate of the University of Toronto in Drama and French Linguistics.  In 2007 she interned with Richard Foreman’s theatre company the Ontological Hysteric in New York.

FRANK COX-O’CONNELL Antigone, Dedicated to the Revolutions
Frank Cox-O’Connell is a theatre creator and musician living in Toronto. A founding member of One Reed Theatre, he is also a regular collaborator with Small Wooden Shoe with whom he developed Dedicated To The Revolution. He has also created original, devised performances with Public Recordings, Stranger Theatre, Groundwater, The Vertical City and Theatre Direct and has worked as a performer and facilitator with UK’s Stan’s Café on Of All The People In All The World for Harbourfront’s World Stage. Other theatre acting credits include The Mill Series (TheatreFront), The Drawer Boy (Theatre Passe Murialle as well as a British Tour with UK-based Farnham Maltings), The Epic of Gilgamesh (Groundwater), Shakuntala (Harbourfront’s World Stage, Plaides), Bach at Liepzig (Theatre Athena), The Demonstartion (Theatre Direct) and Sanctuary Song (Tapestry New Opera, Luminato). Frank is a graduate of The National Theatre School of Canada’s acting program. As a musician he plays drums and banjo with Boys Who Say No.

SKY GILBERT Antigone
Sky Gilbert is a writer, director, teacher, and drag queen extraordinaire. He was co-founder and artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre for 17 years. He has had nearly 40 plays produced, and has written 6 critically acclaimed novels, and three award winning poetry collections. He has received three Dora Mavor Moore Awards (including one for his recent play The Situationists) and the Pauline McGibbon Award for theatre directing, and he was the recipient of The Margo Bindhardt Award (from the Toronto Arts Foundation), The Silver Ticket Award (from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts), and the ReLit Award (for his fourth novel An English Gentleman, 2004). Dr. Gilbert is an Associate Professor and holds a University Research Chair in Creative Writing and Theatre Studies at The School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

LINDSEY CLARK Antigone
Lindsey Clark is a graduate of the Acting program at the National Theatre School of Canada and also completed the University College Drama Program at the University of Toronto. Recent acting credits include work with Rose Plotek, Philip McKee, Jordan Tannahil, Alex Wolfson, Nightwood’s New Blood Cabaret, Groundwater Productions, Natasha Mytnowich, Ruth Madoc-Jones and Alisa Palmer As a creator and performer, Lindsey was also involved in Don’t Dream With the Lights On and Moustaches and Lipstick (both for Rhubarb 2010), and Like My Life, My Dreams are Marked by Your Absence (SummerWorks Performance Gallery 2009.)

CHRISTOPHER WILLES Antigone
Christopher Willes is a musician, composer and interdisciplinary artist living in Toronto. Through concerts, exhibitions, performance and theatre events his work is exploring a practice of music and sound within various collaborative activities. His projects have been presented at the Music Gallery, the Nuit Blanche Festival, and Labspace Gallery in Toronto, and he has participated in residencies and workshops at the Banff Centre, STEIM foundation in the Netherlands. Christopher’s collaborations in theatre and dance have been shown at the Harbour Front Centre, the Toronto Fringe Festival, Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, and Studio 303 in Montreal. In 2010 he created the music for a work by Myra Davies presented at the X-avant festival at the Music Gallery in Toronto, and performed at the 2010 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK with Contact Contemporary Music Group. He studied music at the University of Toronto. He likes noodles.

ERIKA HENNEBURY Dedicated to the Revolutions
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.

CHAD DEMBSKI Dedicated to the Revolutions, Perhaps in a Hundred Years
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 Dedicated to the Revolutions, Perhaps in a Hundred Years
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 Upper Toronto, Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing
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 Dedicated to the Revolutions
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 Dedicated to the Revolutions
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 Dedicated to the Revolutions
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.

GILLIAN LEWIS, STAGE MANAGER Dedicated to the Revolutions
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 HEALY …Any Idea…, Connect the Dots, I Keep Dropping Sh*t, Galileo
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 …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 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 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 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 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.