Artist Bios – Factory Project
2boys.tv (Aaron Pollard and Stephen Lawson) creates and tours transmedia performance pieces that conjure up phantasmagoric ghosts from the vaults of gothic and film noir popular culture. These darlings of the Montréal cult cabaret scene have produced multimedia videos, installations and performances in clubs, galleries and cabarets internationally. 2008/09 activities for 2boys.tv include a large scale performance intervention for Festival Nuit Blanche (Toronto), a collaboration with Festival Voix d’Amériques (Montréal), new installation work with Studio 303 (Montréal), and tours within Canada, U.S.A., U.K. and South America.
Their official site: www.2boys.tv
Video on Youtube: www.youtube.com/profile?user=gigiETpipi
Their Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17087028471&ref=ts
Sky Gilbert is a writer, director, and drag queen extraordinaire. He was co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (North America’s largest gay and lesbian theatre) for 18 years. His novels and poetry have been critically acclaimed. He has received two Dora Mavor Moore Awards and the ReLit Award (for his fourth novel An English Gentleman, 2004). Dr. Gilbert holds a University Research Chair in Creative Writing and Theatre Studies at The School of English and Theatre Studies at Guelph University and has recently published a novella (Wit in Love) with Quattro Books. http://home.istar.ca/~anita
Anna Papadakos is the co-founding Artistic Director of Dummies Theatre in Montreal, whose interdisciplinary expressionistic creations were presented in found spaces on The Main. A writer, performer and director in theatre, Anna’s work with Dummies culminated in 2000 with the production of two successful trilogies. Since, Anna has written three plays, several short stories, performance pieces, poetry and created/directed a high school production in the alternative public school system where she continues to work. In February of 2008 she presented her first visual arts exhibition.
Teatro Berdache
As an actor and arts educator, Steve Gin has worked in professional theatres across Canada, including The Citadel Theatre, Native Earth Performing Arts, Magnus Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, and Lunchbox Theatre. Steve’s association with Andy Warhol stems back to 2002, when he was invited to inhabit Warhol’s persona as part of a touring exhibition mounted by the New York Museum of Modern Art. Two years later, he recreated the role for a major Warhol retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery. www.teatroberdache.com
Chris Dupuis is a Toronto-based artist creating video, performance, and text based work that has been presented across North America and Europe. He also works as a freelance arts journalist, contributing regularly to a variety of publications, in addition to editing the own art criticism blog Time And Space. Upcoming work: The ANTI-Festival (Kuopio, Finland), and the Performing the World Festival (New York). www.chrisdupuis.com
The Other Theatre is an award-winning company which has presented installations, collective creations and works by international avant-garde writers, such as Heiner Müller, Fernando Arrabal, R.W. Fassbinder, and Sarah Kane. Artistic Director Stacey Christodoulou and designer Enrique Enriquez team up again after their last collaboration on Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, presented at The Centaur Theatre. Stacey Christodoulou’s commitment to alternative forms of dramatic expression spans seventeen years and includes work in theatres, warehouses, mall windows and a moving elavator. Enrique Enriquez is a designer in multiple and diverse projects in collaboration with international people in architecture, urbanism, theatre, film, television, art-installations and special events. Recently his project «Urban port» was nominated as a notable entry in the USA competition «Restore – Green Innovation for a healthy urban economy». www.othertheatre.com
Gray Fraser is an artist creating artist’s books. He is also a professionnal graphic designer and has his own company, productiongray editions, since 1989.
Beau Coleman is a performance/installation artist and theatre director whose work has been performed and/or exhibited in Canada, the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Previous gallery and site-specific exhibitions have included live art, spoken word, interventions, video, sculptural and new media installation. Beau’s work explores themes of isolation, suspension, identity, memory, gender and sexuality. She received her training at the National Theatre School of Canada and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Beau is on faculty at the University of Alberta where conspires to blur the boundaries between the various art disciplines.
Mieko Ouchi is an actor, writer and director. Her plays have been finalists for the 4-Play Series at The Old Vic, Governor General’s Award and Edmonton Book Prize, winning the CAA Carol Bolt Prize. She can be seen on Global TV’s The Guard.
Volatile Works is a five member autonomous film and media arts collective that has been active in Montréal, Québec since 2003. Our works embrace a range of mediums, genres, and spaces of intervention, with a marked affinity for lo-fi/DIY tactical forms of production and engagement. They have appeared in over 150 film and new media festivals in over 30 countries around the world. We organize regular screenings and events, and have collaborated with other collectives and bands on community-based screenings, workshops in activist video, and music videos. Practices include digital video, super-8, 16mm, animation, web art, sound, installations, DIY of all kinds. www.volatileworks.org
Sasha Wentges co-founded as artistic director, Mea Culpa Productions in Montreal, 1994. Since re-locating to Toronto she has assistant directed on One Night Stand (Carol Bolt) at the Belfry Theatre (Victoria) and then directed at Theatre Passe Muraille Back Space. Recent credits include: The Darling Family (Linda Griffiths) as actor/producer; Uninvited as Director, (Sheldon Inkol) at New Ideas Festival, Two Acts and a Pie Festival and Summerworks Festival; Maggie Mae and Saucy Sue as Director at Hamilton’s Staircase Theatre and upcoming projects include: giving birth to her first child, summer, 2007; and Director: The Factory Project (curated by David King) in Montreal, 2008. www.meaculpaproductions.ca
Skidmore is called a trans-media trans-disciplinary performer, a stand-up word artist, and the hottest guy in bow tie. A cunning linguist regardless of the box, Skidmore chomps at the bit of text-based work. From page to stage, Skidmore established a salient voice as a Montreal-based art and culture critic throughout the 90s, experimenting with conventions of poetry, comedy, and narrative storytelling after dark. Since ending her longterm relationship with the media in 2003, this reluctant exhibitionist devotes herself completely to writing and aural fixations. Performances have included appearances at: Toronto’s Power Plant; Voix des Ameriques spoken word festival; The Ottawa International Writer’s Festival; and the Ubud Writers Festival in Bali. Playwrights Workshop recently presented a short sound piece, Last Seen Missing, in their Montreal artist-walk series. www.skidsofrenic.com
Straddling the divide between the worlds of experimental electronic music and the blackest comedy, Alexis O’Hara paints narrative atmospheres with her voice, a gaggle of electronic friends and the chimerical properties of electricity. She has been known to wear clothes that run on batteries. Sampling and processing her voice in real-time, she creates live performances that combine electro-acoustic maximalism, sexy beats and good old-fashioned story telling. Her recent interactive performance work strives to explore social connectivity as a means to combat isolationism. Mutating, delinquent and fearless on stage, Alexis owes a great debt to Montreal’s lively cabaret and avant-noise scenes. The eclecticism of her work attracts international programmers from various disciplines from performance poetry and sound art to live art and music. www.dyslex6.com
Way before the recent trend of artists working with found objects, Hubert Soucy worked to create with the old discarded bits and pieces and the stuff that nobody seemed to be able to do anything with: doll lamps, recycled furniture, ceramic vases covered in tiles, library drawers, ironing boards, shutters, and record players morphed into coffee tables… His creations demonstrate how having an overactive imagination can lead to a successful career in skilled recycling. Since 1988 he has scanned back alleys for odds and ends in order to construct a unique collection of objects that ask no more than to be reconstructed and re-imagined. Even the tools themselves become part of the materials: paint brushes on walls, oil and latex tubes on canvases. Everything can be rethought, re-seen and remade. Each creation also delivers a secret to its origins, the poetry of its past life and the fragments of its history. It carries with it its own nostalgia. In 2006, Soucy joined forces with Marie-Claude Parenteau-Lebeuf, interior designer and co-founded Monde Ruelle. Both artists possess a new, curious and playful eye on old objects. All the better for us to see with. To have a look, please visit www.monderuelle.com
Patsy and Kathy are a song and dance duo who have been entertaining the crowds together for many years.. most notable: 1993 John Peterson High Graduation pre-ceremony assembly, 1997 Dickey Family Christmas, 1998 Dickey Family New Year reunion.. to name a few. Patsy and Kathy’s mantra has always been, and will always be, “we entertain, we jazzertain, we’re Pizzazzertainers!”
Sherwin Tjia is a Montreal-based writer and illustrator. He is the co-founder of Montreal’s Slowdance Night, and Advice Night. He has written four books and illustrated two. His next book, The Hipless Boy, a collection of short stories in comics form, will be out in Spring 2009.
Marie Darsigny believes that the link between a person’s body and its exterior drapings (its clothes) are all too often belittled to the level of pure vanity or aesthetic whimsy. As a result, she is argumentative, moves about a lot, organizes her fabric by colour tone, and works to improve her closet as well as the closets of other people
Sasha Wentges gave birth to her son, Joshua a year ago. It was a 30 hour labour. She was happy to see the epidural. She wonders why it’s not a street drug. She is also the artistic director/founder of Mea Culpa. www.meaculpaproductions.ca
Consummate 21st Century live wire, Bob Loblaw (played by Skidmore) is the wizard behind the wildly successful online advice column, Man Handled: Turning Q&A into T&A. Though currently in litigation with the sitcom star who stole his name, right out from under him, Bob holds to his claim he was unaware the woman under him (in wardrobe stolen from Joanie loves Chachi) was a man. A sucker for culture, Bob Loblaw continues to impart his wisdom live in, 2000 and ate. www.skidsofrenic.com
Dayna McLeod is a video and performance artist who likes to poke and prod feminism, homophobia, and sexually oriented stereotypes with irony, sex toys, and funny business. She has travelled extensively with her performance work, and her videos have played from London Ontario to London England- across Europe, North America, South America, Asia and a few times on TV. She majored in Sculpture in college, Open Media in grad school, and is currently working on a three-part animation with funding from le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec about the trials and tribulations of Vagina Dentata. Dayna is a Gemini. www.daynarama.com
Miss Janet is a montreal based musician and hair stylist.
Bobby Abate grew up masturbating to LOW-RES dot-matrix porn collages. For years, he was the SysOp (System Operator) of his own on-line Bulletin Board System that no one visited before deciding to become an artist and filmmaker (LOL). Since 2002, he has spent at least one day a week doing Karaoke in the boondocks of Brooklyn and has yet to show one iota of improvement. “It’s like cheap therapy,” he once mused before going to sleep. Today, he spends his days drawing pictures of Britney Spears riding horses, taking nude photos of himself, and writing screenplays about girl groups and proper nutrition. Good health to you! www.sweetkitty.com Share on Facebook
