Press Releases


June 16, 2014 For Immediate Release:

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Media Contact: 
Ella Batten - Project producer
ella.batten@hotmail.com
647-231-0502
All artists are available for interview.

Full text:

The Summer Spectacular from Small Wooden Shoe at the 
Toronto Fringe Fringe Festival July 2-13

Labyrinths, A-Bombs, wings, wax, the internet, the sun and overzealous despots. Oh my.

Jacob Zimmer and Small Wooden Shoe return to the Toronto Fringe Festival – this time in a park. We’re making a show that brings our interests in science, history and internet into the bright daylight of outdoor theatre. The story we’ll tell weaves the mythic, historic and science fictional into a walking tour of Frankel Lambert Park (north of Dupont on Christie. [MAP LINK])

An experience that starts intimate and ends spectacularly. 

With giant puppets, miniature vistas and performers including Christopher Stanton, Sochi Fried and Georgina Beaty, collaborators Susanna Fournier, Leora Morris, Michaud Garneau, Vicki Hargreaves, Ella Batten, Rashida Shaw and more.

Performers and audience begin in small groups. We tell stories as we walk, using the environment, objects, miniatures and architecture to our best advantage.

At the end of the walk the audience and performers regroup with a radical change of scale and giant puppets.

The Summer Spectacle is a return to Zimmer’s previous life as a puppeteer and outdoor spectacle participant. He wants to go back to the park without losing any of the smarts, intimacy or humour that have made Small Wooden Shoe one of Toronto’s most intriguing and influential independent theatre companies.

The Summer Spectacle was successfully crowd-funded through the Fringes’ FWYC program and will showcase a park and neighbourhood that gets little attention despite being at the centre of much demographic change in Toronto.

The stories we’ll weave:

  • The story of Greek legend Daedalus and his son Icarus. Often this story is used as a warning for youth to “mind their manners” and “know their place.” We wonder about why they were imprisoned on an island by a tyrant and whether maybe that was the problem. 

  • Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz was a bright light of the internet and one pursued and prosecuted for downloading academic journals until he took his own life in 2013.

  • A near future science fiction about a Canadian scientist prosecuted for sharing.

Show times

  • Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Thursday, July 3, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Friday, July 4, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Saturday, July 5, 2014 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm    

  • Sunday, July 6, 2014 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm    

  • Monday, July 7, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Tuesday, July 8, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Wednesday, July 9, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Thursday, July 10, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Friday, July 11, 2014 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm    

  • Saturday, July 12, 2014 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm    

  • Sunday, July 13, 2014 - 5:00pm - 6:30pm

Show Location:

Frankel Lambert Park – 340 Christie St
Entrance to park on west side of Christie St north of Dupont. Google map: https://goo.gl/maps/W6Epr

Full Credits:

  • Conceived and arranged by Jacob Zimmer 

  • Created with and performed by Georgina Beaty, Sochi Fried, Christopher Stanton and Jacob Zimmer 

  • in collaboration with Susanna Fournier

  • Puppets by Michaud Garneau

  • Producer: Ella Batten 

  • Production co-ordinator: Rashida Shaw 

  • Community co-ordinator Vicki Hargreaves

Lead artist biographies:

Jacob Zimmer is a director, writer, dramaturge and performer. As the founding director of Small Wooden Shoe Planning and Performance he has conceived and/or directed over a dozen works including Dedicated to the Revolutions (Buddies in Bad Times, High Performance Rodeo, Super Nova, Magnetic North), Perhaps in a Hundred Years (Summerworks, OFFTA), Life of Galileo (for Tracy Wright), Upper Toronto and Antigone Dead People. Jacob works in dance as a dramaturge with Dancemakers and in an on-going collaboration with choreographer Ame Henderson/Public Recordings. He also teaches artists and non-artists, gives talks, facilitates meetings and coaches people who give presentations. 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. Jacob received the 2008 Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors.

Georgina Beaty is Co-Artistic Director of Toronto's Architect Theatre, with whom she has created and performed in Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show (cross Canada tour) and This Must Be the Place: The CN Tower Show (Passe Muraille) and directed the devised piece How Should You Be? (Revolver festival/ Studio 58). Select acting: The Huron Bride (Vertigo), My Turquoise Years (Arts Club), Unity (1918) (Alberta Theatre Projects), Not I (NTS), And So It Goes, Bone Cage (Downstage), The Notorious Right Robert and his Robber Bride, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Caravan Farm), The Shape of a Girl (Green Thumb Theatre, Jessie award), Ah, Wilderness!, Easter (Chemainus) and Le Portrait Gooble (Theatre la Seizieme). Upcoming: The Graduate (Segal Centre) and development on The Golden Spike (Architect Theatre) about pipelines in Northern BC. Georgina is a graduate of the University of Alberta and Studio 58.

Sochi Fried was most recently in the critically acclaimed production of Stencilboy and Other Portraits at the 2014 Next Stage Festival. Other recent credits include: Parts to Whole (One Little Goat/ CanStage Bash!) Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare BASH'd);The Misanthrope (The Guild Festival Theatre); The Charge of The Expormidable Moose (One Little Goat); Engaged (Rhubarb Festival); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Citadel Theatre); The Trojan Women (dir. Alexandra Seay); Swoon! (dir. Jason Maghanoy); Hedda Gabler (dir. Jane Carnwath); Richard III (dir. Jeremy Hutton); Yichud(Seclusion) (dir. Aaron Willis and Richard Greenblatt); Dead Cat Bounce (dir. Molly Thom). Sochi is a graduate of the Citadel/ Banff Centre Professional Theatre Program, Ryerson University's Theatre School, and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She was a member of Labyrinth Theater Company's (NYC) Intensive Ensemble last year. A great lover of puppets and outdoor theatre, Sochi grew up in New York City and Ottawa and currently lives in Toronto. 

Chris Stanton is a Toronto-based performer, director, sound designer, writer, musician. Selected stage performance includes Possible Worlds (Talk Is Free / BeMe Munich), Ajax & Little Iliad (World Stage Festival / Brisbane Festival), Assassins (TIFT/Birdland/MTC), Nohayquiensepa (Aluna/Corporacion Bogotá), New Electric Ballroom (MacKenzieRo). He’s also the Co-Artistic Producer of Toronto performance company ARC. Selected sound work includes Possible Worlds (TIFT / BeMe Munich), The Whipping Man (Obsidian / Harold Green), Ching Chong Chinaman (FuGen), Ajax & Little Iliad (Brisbane Festival / Harbourfront Centre World Stage), Gruesome Playground Injuries (BirdLand), The Tin Drum, A Quiet Place, and Minotaur (UnSpun). He has been nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards as a sound designer, one as a director, and four as a performer.

Company Background 

Founded in 2001 by Jacob Zimmer in Halifax and now based in Toronto, Small Wooden Shoe is a (mostly) theatre company that swings between the intimate and the epic. Believing that developing a sound artistic practice shouldn’t limit us to one style or genre, our work has included challenging staged readings (Life of Galileo [for Tracy Wright], Difficult Plays and Simple Songs), live-to-tape variety shows (The Fun Palace Radio Variety Show) adaptations of classic stories (Antigone Dead People), intimate conversations (Sedition – or Kindness Makes Me Cry Like Nothing Else, Perhaps in a Hundred Years) and the show about scientific revolutions we toured across the country (Dedicated to the Revolutions.) We have also convened a massive Unconference, 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.

Company Production History

The Fun Palace Radio Variety Show (Rhubarb Festival, Monarch Tavern 2013-); 3penny Christmas Concert (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Monarch Tavern 2009-); Antigone Dead People (2012); Difficult Plays and Simple Songs (independent, Koerner Hall/Nuit Blanche 2012); Sedition – or Kindness Makes Me Cry Like Nothing Else (Summerworks 2012); Perhaps In A Hundred Years (Hub 14, Summerworks 2011, independent 2005); Upper Toronto (Rhubarb Festival, Toronto Fringe, Polaris 25, Toronto Public Libraries 2011); Life of Galileo (for Tracy Wright) by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte with Jacob Zimmer (Convocation Hall, 2010); Dedicated to the Revolutions (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2009); It’s a Matter of Scale (Rhubarb Festival, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2008); I Keep Dropping Sh*t (Toronto Fringe Festival, 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)


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