ABOUT THE COMPANY

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

We create and perform work that is specific, rigorous and engaged with the world around us. Ranging between agit-prop puppet shows to pirate radio to collaborative creations, we work in radically different forms depending on the material and themes that obsess us at any given moment.

We believe that theatre’s future (and, in fact, past) lie in the recognition that we (makers, watchers) are sharing a space for a time. That recognizing this is not enough – acknowledgement is also required. That admitting we’re in it together permits dialogue.

We believe that divergent traditions and styles can and should share the stage. That this is only a place to start. That content and form require each other and lack of either sells us all short. That nothing is so serious that singing and dancing can’t help. That theatre must get into dirt of contemporary thinking and living.

We believe that investment and risk from all the collaborators are essential to making vital work. If the autonomy of collaborators is our starting point, then we all go farther.

That in order to communicate we need to rid ourselves of some of the larger fictions that have come to dominate the theatre. That the smaller fictions of the day-to-day provide ample opportunity to develop better questions. That, without these larger fictions, we may be able to get on with the work of changing the world. That this is a worthy goal that will most likely take many lifetimes. That this is no excuse not to start.

The Company for Do You Have Any Idea How Fast You Were Going?
Chad Dembski {bio}
Brendan Healy {(bio}
Ame Henderson {bio}
Trevor Schwellnus {bio}
Kilby Smith-McGregor {bio}
Jacob Wren {bio}
Jacob Zimmer {bio}

The Company for Perhaps in a Hundred Years
Jacob Zimmer {bio}
Ame Henderson {bio}
Chad Dembski {bio}
Kilby Smith-McGregor {bio}

Past (and future?) Collaborators (bio's as they come in)
Dustin Harvey
Sue Snyder
Louisa Adamson
Nate Crawford {bio}
Jesse Lund
Elizabeth Elliot
Jocelyn White {bio}
Andrèa Lalonde
Simon Henderson
Sally Morgan
Beth VanGorder
Susan Leblanc-Crawford {bio}
Sean Passmore
Kersti Tacreiter
Gaven Sheehan
Mark Loeser {bio}
Justin Evans {bio}

Biographies

Jacob Zimmer
is a writer, dramaturge, director and occasional performer. His work has shown in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, St John’s, Saint John and Montreal. He founded Small Wooden Shoe in 2001 to produce and present contemporary performance. As a founding member of sabotage group (1999-2001) he assembled and directed WasteLand, Pleasure is so hard to remember, ...Open Wound for the Rhubarb! Festival and the directed reading of Other than War. He has an on-going dramaturgical collaboration with choreographer Ame Henderson and is a member of HUB 14. He wrote All Statements are Insecure Questions for Canadian Theatre Review (Issue 119, ed. Brian Quirt and DD Kugler). Jacob studied at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. In 2004 he was a technical intern with The Wooster Group and studied with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Current projects include working on Chad Dembski’s Please (January ’06), developing and touring Perhaps in a Hundred Years, completing another article for CTR, and a new collaboration with Ame Henderson and Public Recordings, continuing to develop the Dedicated to the Revolutions series with Small Wooden Shoe. (return to top)

Ame Henderson
is a choreographer, performer and designer originally from the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Ame received a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University in 1998. After the completion of her formal studies, Ame co-founded les productions f.efect, a performance group dedicated to experimental dance work and cross-discipline collaborations. With f.effect she co-created the performances A Chemistry Experiment (1999) and A.C.E (2000), and the thematic performance series the living room dances (1999/2000). Ame was also an instigator in the creation of Solid State, an all-girl alliance of street dancers. As a performer, Ame has appeared in the work of Solid State, f.effect, Catherine Lipscombe, Katie Ewald, Julie Duzyk and Karni Keidar. In 2001, Ame was invited to spend six months as a guest artist at The School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her Amsterdam-based performance project, Blue* *Disco was presented in Amsterdam and in Croatia. Ame's time abroad has had a marked and lasting effect on her direction as a dance artist. Relocating to Toronto in 2003 and founding her company Public Recordings, she is dedicated to the production and dissemination of innovative new works of an interdisciplinary nature. In June 2004 Ame presented the solo research project memories and statements in Ottawa and Montreal. Ame was an invited participant in the panel discussion "Fragile Positions: Performance in the 21st Century" in October 2004 in Halifax. Her newest full length choreography Manual for Incidence was performed in Toronto (May 2005) and Montreal (June 2005). Ame was a co-creator and performer in Small Wooden Shoe's Perhaps in a Hundred Years (Toronto, Halifax, Saint John, Montreal) and is a founding member of Hub 14. (return to top)

Chad Dembski
Born and raised in Waterloo, Ontario where he first directed at the age of seventeen. Studied at Studio 58 theatre school in Vancouver, B.C. Moved to Toronto in 1995, where he first directed stuck by David Rubinoff (Rhubarb! 1996, Toronto Fringe Festival 1996, Theatre Passe Muraille 1997 and N.Y.C. 1997) which won a Chalmer's Award in 1998. He co-founded the experimental performance company OOmph. OOmph shows include The Day Room by Don Delilo (The SPACE 1997), A Hunting of the Snark (Poor Alex Theatre 1998), me@sure 3.1 (Toronto Fringe Festival 1999, Catskills Experimental Theatre Festival 2000), inertia (Canadia dell'Arte 2000), inertia [phase two] (The Theatre Centre), Exhibit (Summerworks 2002, The Theatre Centre 2003), and most recently the commissioned piece TIMESHARE for the 2004 FreeFall festival (Katherine Mulherin Art Gallery).
Recently directed TAPE by Stephen Belber which was presented by Crate productions at the Gladstone Hotel in room 67 (Dora Award nominated for Best Actress). He has also directed Hamlet, remake (Zietgeist productions, site specific), Bunnyfucker (Rhubarb! 2000), The Living, Breathing Will (Rhubarb! 1997), Obedience by Robin Fulford (Rhubarb! 2003), Crux (Toronto Fringe Festival 2000), and CUT! (Winner of Best Director and Best Play at Power Plays Theatre Festival in Waterloo, 1995).
Chad has created and performed with critically acclaimed multi-disciplinary performance company Bluemouth Inc. in What the Thunder Said (Summerworks 2003), and their five and half hour site specific trilogy Something About a River (Nominated as Best Male Performer, Independent Division and the show won Best Production, Independent Division, 2004).
With Small Wooden Shoe he co-created and performed in Perhaps in a Hundred Years.
His most recent work, Please, is being workshopped with the supoort of VideoCab
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Kilby Smith-McGregor
was recently script dramaturge and lyricist for Theatre Asylum’s collectively written BeBe at the Theatre Centre. She has also provided dramaturgical support for many of director Diana Leblanc’s projects including the upcoming production of Martin Sherman’s Rose at the Saidye Bronfman Centre. Kilby is the artistic director of Imaginary Alphabet, and workshopped her newest play Charlotte: (unfinished) at SummerWorks ‘04. As a playwright, she has developed work in association with Nightwood Theatre, Stranger Theatre and the Tarragon Theatre, where she was the inaugural Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist-in-Residence. Also for Tarragon: script associate on Russell Hill, script assistant on Little Mercy’s First Murder, and assistant director for Hello...Hello. Kilby has worked with Soulpepper Theatre Company (Betrayal, The Maids) as an assistant director and dramaturge. She has been an instructor with Soulpepper Youth Outreach, a Tarragon youth mentor, and currently co-facilitates the Paprika Festival Playwrights Unit.(return to top)

Brendan Healy
Selected actor: Girls!Girls!Girls! (Festival de théâtre des Amériques) Selected director: PHAE – A Trailer Park Trash-edy (Summerworks 2002), First You’re Born (Summerworks 2003), Down the Main Drag (Summerworks 2005 and Hatch 2006), Swipe (Hysteria 2005) Selected other: Richard Maxwell’s New York City Players Intern 2002, Anne Bogart and SITI Company Training 2004, National Theatre School Directing Program 2005.(return to top)

Trevor Schwellnus
designs sets and lights for a number of companies (Aluna, April Productions, Independant Aunties, K'Now, Obsidian, mammalian diving reflex). His play meeting playce was produced at SummerWorks 2003, and he's currently writing a piece for six actors who have no common language. Check out the blog.(return to top)

Jacob Wren
is a writer, film maker, interdisciplinary artist and theatre director. He co-founded Candid Stammer in Toronto in 1990 and in 2002 became co-artistic director of PME. His work attempts to find a way of speaking to the audience casually - through both words and movement - that is ironic and sincere in acknowledging the fact that communication is often uncomfortable. Theatre productions include: How An Intellectual Can Aspire To Savagery!; But Love Is Too Simple To Save Us; I Cut, You Bleed; En francais comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize; Recent Experiences (co-written and co-directed with Nadia Ross) and Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des Autres. Interdisciplinary performances include: Every Song I Have Ever Written (Reich & Berühmt, Berlin), Five Important Books (Mercer Union, Dare Dare & Kyber Centre for the Arts) and Spontaneous Collaborations. Published books include: My Tongue, My Teeth, Your Voice; 62 Rock Videos For Songs That Will Never Exist (both Exile Editions) and Unrehearsed Beauty (Coach House Books). His work has been performed in Norway, the Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, France, England, Wales, Croatia, Sweden, Austria, Australia, Belgium and Japan as well as in New York, Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, Quebec City and Montreal. (return to top)

Nate Crawford
is an actor, writer, and director based in Halifax Nova Scotia. He's worked with a fair bunch of Maritime Canadian theatre companies and one or two in Alberta. Never was a Boy Scout, never a Cub. With Small Wooden Shoe, Nate appeared in the radio drama The Mysterious Death of WB. Jacob put together a "cool" (the Halifax Chronicle Herald) lighting design for a production of Beowulf that Nate directed. Heroes: Tintin, Rupert Bear. (return to top)

Jocelyn White
latest show is Sticks and Stones, her fourth production in the Halifax Fringe Festival. She previously appeared in Forecast, Spendthrift and, in her first Small Wooden Shoe piece, Chalk Circle Trial. She followed up CCT with Delayed Knee Jerk Reaction II: Taking Measures and The Orchard. Jocelyn has twice appeared in the official V-Day Vagina Monologues and is becoming involved in community theatre, appearing in the Theatre Arts Guild's Wuthering Heights and I Hate Hamlet. Jocelyn is currently working with Shadowlands Theatre, creating a roster of radio plays for CKDU. (return to top)

Susan Leblanc-Crawford
is an actor, teacher and theatre producer from Halifax. Since 1999 she was been a member of the acclaimed company Zuppa Circus Theatre where she has co-created six performances. With Zuppa Circus she is currently creating a new show, Radium City, to be presented in November.
Along with acting with other Maritime theatre companies (Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, Mermaid Theatre, Live Bait Theatre and the Atlantic Theatre Festival), Susan has taught theatre at Dalhousie University and is currently teaching at Armbrae Academy. She is also the co-coordinator of the Nova Scotia High School Drama Festival. (return to top)

Mark Loeser
has had ongoing dialogue and collaboration with Small Wooden Shoe's artistic director since 1995, on a night when Jacob ended up sleeping under a poster (Mark's fault). Since then, he has contributed film projection and writing to ...Open Wound and Other than War as a member of Sabotage Group.
His film and video practice extends from 1989 to present. Current projects include a feature length, abstract video shot on a digital photo camera; a 16mm film regarding genetically modified food; new hand processed motion film; and several DVD presentations. Photography and incognito music making remain secondary pursuits. Mark is based in Montreal. (return to top)

Justin Evans
makes music and writes. He somehow managed to play at the FIMAV with Sam Shalabi this spring, and also threw garbage at other bands. The wire called it "petulant and purile"... must have been someone's idea of fun. Recently I played disco, poorly, to a bunch of people in quebec city, and knocked myself out on stage, as part of the "glitter soul orchestra" www.neverprint.com/natacha. Stuff I've been working on has gotten some radio play (thanks bravenewwaves and rien a voir). And I am in a new band that is a bunch of french curses strung together that (roughly translated) mean in English: "Hostofthechristskulltabernaclechalice" or something like that. I also helm a big improvising band called Rivers and Mountains that has gotten entirely unwieldy, who performed with an ex-Arkestra member and a rotating bunch of freaks from montreal. Email me for a copy of our DVD, it's insane.
I have done some soundtrack work for the recent Lossy DVD of experimental films by Mark Loeser and Graham Watson, made some sound design and written for the (now defunct?) theatre co-operative Sabotage Group and pretend to be a "web" designer, which is pretty funny. (return to top)