Small Wooden Shoe

sabotage , noun, French, from sabot – … 3b : deliberate subversion
sabot – French, noun – a small wooden shoe.

Artistic Director: Jacob Zimmer
Artistic Producer: Erika Hennebury

Founded in 2001 by Jacob Zimmer in Halifax, Small Wooden Shoe is a theatre company now based in Toronto.

Small Wooden Shoe engages with the world around us in a curiously critical manner while maintaining the need to perform – to step up and to entertain. By being direct, honest and genial we hope to ease or transform the possible alienation between performers and audience. We do this in an attempt to find ways to ease or transform the possible alienation of contemporary living.

Believing that developing a sound artistic practice shouldn’t limit us to one performance style or genre, our work has included political agit-prop (Delayed Knee Jerk Reactions Series), hard-boiled live-to-air radio (The Mysterious Death of WB), Chekhov adaptations (The Orchard), multi-media solo shows (No Secrets) and durational task based performances (Mostly Just Doing the Saturday Crossword) and the casual formalism we’ve become best known for (Perhaps in a Hundred Years and Dedicated to the Revolutions.) We have also convened Christmas concerts, on-line think tanks, public meetings, taught workshops, given keynote lectures and work on publications, all of which we consider to be part of the same larger project that is Small Wooden Shoe.

Small Wooden Shoe performances are created in collaboration, led by Jacob Zimmer. Jacob brings the conceptual framework and starting points to the collaborators and the show is the result of the responses to his propositions and his response to those responses. This creative feedback-loop expands the work beyond the possibilities of a single maker, with all participants having a personal investment in the work, while maintaining a distinct and rigorous artistic vision that identifies the work as a Small Wooden Shoe production.

We envision a local, national and international conversation about the world and about performance. Our participation is maintained through travelling and meeting: essential ways of extending the reach of the company and our projects work while also engendering vital feedback and inspiration.

>> WHAT THE PRESS SAYS

Performances:
Currently touring: Dedicated to the Revolutions
In development: Brecht’s Life of Galileo (workshop 2010)
Upper Toronto (concept development 2010)

Past Performances: