Six performers, not in any way experts in science and not apologizing for that, attempt to understand and question our notions of progress and knowledge and share that with an audience using things they found around the house.
With whiteboards, unrehearsed questions and answers, songs, and demonstrations.
Conceived and Directed by Jacob Zimmer. In Collaboration with Ame Henderson. Created with and Performed by Frank Cox-O’Connell, Chad Dembski, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Erin Shields, Evan Webber. Created with and Designed by Trevor Schwellnus. Created with and produced by Erika Hennebury
A show for adults and a winner of six
Children Choice Awards at Magnetic North Theatre Festival 2010
Jacob answers “what were he thinking?”
When we made Dedicated to the Revolutions, I was thinking a lot about expertise and knowledge – about broader social questions of specialization and the assumptions that go along with them.
A culture in which some people are allowed to speak of certain things and others (hairdressers, artists and the like) should just sit quietly and then applaud at the end is what I was thinking about. I was thinking that science (and art) are areas where this opinion is particularly strong – areas where nonexperts fear to venture due to possible scorn and humiliation at the hands of the experts.
It’s an attitude that can lead to catastrophe as expertise removes itself from the everyday and we suddenly find ourselves with an economic crisis we can’t understand, a world we have to take on faith and hairdressers that aren’t allowed to do anything else.
I was thinking about how there might be room for something other than a particular kind of virtuosity and showing-off. And I love virtuosity and showing-off, but I wonder about other options – of proposing other strategies.
Of proposing vulnerability and even the importance of exposing our vulnerability in public. The show is loose and goofy in parts but always intentional. The act of standing in front of people and trying to think – as opposed to recite – with pleasure, desire and not a small amount of vulnerability was a proposal for the loosening of the structures that dictate who can think about what.
Questions of expertise and virtuosity in art are long standing and always shifting, but those aren’t the most important questions – taste in theatre and the people involved will change and change back. It’s the social questions I return to.
In bringing together thinking, vulnerability and pleasure, I wanted to find a way – for myself, my collaborators (without whom none of this would be possible) and the audience (without whom none of this would be possible) – to unite some parts of ourselves that are often pulled apart. The separation and alienation of aspects of ourselves and our culture into more specialized and exclusive chunks seems like a terrible idea to me.
Of course a 75-minute performance isn’t going to solve these problems. But maybe we can be part of a
discussion; maybe we can open up the conversation even just a bit.
That’s a least part of what I was thinking.
Jacob Zimmer
Artistic Director, Small Wooden Shoe
Production History:
Full Premiere: Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2009
Touring:
Canoe Festival (Edmonton, 2010)
High Performance Rodeo (Calgary, 2010)
Magnetic North Theatre Festival (Kitchener-Waterloo, 2011)
Super Nova Theatre Festival (Halifax, 2011)
Dedicated to the Revolutions Series:
It’s a Matter of Scale (Rhubarb Festival, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2008)
I Keep Dropping Sh*t (Toronto Fringe Festival - MaRS Centre, 2007)
Reasonable People, Reasonably Disagreeing (HATCH, Harbourfront Centre, 2007)
Connect the Dots (Audience Relocation Series, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2007)
Do You Have Any Idea How Fast You Were Going? (Rhubarb Festival, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2006)