Good Women would like to introduce you to the 2021 Creative Incubator participants and share a bit of information on what they’ll be working on throughout the workshop series.
What a good looking and talented group of artists – read all about them!
Christine Lesiak and Tara Travis (Small Matter Productions)
Christine and Tara are 2/3 of the members of Small Matters Productions, an Edmonton-based theatre company dedicated to creating and performing original works of modern clown theatre.
This duo is writing a physical theatre, dark-comedy, duo show called The Spinsters that tells the story of the Ugly Step-Sisters from Cinderella from their perspective. The adaptation to the classic fairy tale is seen through an adult lens to deconstruct and invert these characters that exist in stereotype, and give them dimension, emotional complexity and behavioral context. There will be puppets! And some other very cool experimental theatre magic that we’re keeping secret for a little bit longer.
Braden Butler
He is an emerging queer actor, mover, writer, producer and recent graduate of the BFA Acting Program at the University of Alberta. Braden is passionate about new play development, multidisciplinary theatre creation, and re-imagining Shakespeare from a queer perspective.
Braden will be exploring how movement and physical impulse can inform the development of his new play, IMELDA.
Molly McDermott
Molly has worked with a variety of wonderful artists and companies, with the opportunity to tour Europe, Asia and North America. Molly has recently made the decision to move back to her hometown of Edmonton, AB, to continue her life in dance while being closer to family.
Molly is working on a solo project that explores the physical remnants along the maternal line. Looking at gestures, movement patterns and physical instinct, she wonders what might be reflective of the generations before me on my maternal side. I am curious about what resonates in my cells, organs, bones, and ultimately, movement choices.
Krista Lin
A graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Krista has studied with renowned instructors in Israel, Taiwan, Montreal, Vancouver and more!
Krista’s focus for Creative incubator is a new project that explores conversational gesture and the extrapolation of those gestures into grandiose movements. After six videoed interviews with six diverse people, Krista will compile a library of conversational gestures to explore and create sequences during the Creative Incubator. “I am highly influenced by Tedd Robinson, Justine Chambers and Margie Gillis – drawing on both precision and improvisation to make dance.”
David Gagnon Walker
David Gagnon Walker (he/him) is a writer, performer, and dramaturg. Recent work includes Premium Content (High Performance Rodeo 2020), Everybody’s Everybody’s Autobiography (Verb Theatre 2020), and This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear (upcoming at Found Festival 2021). With multimedia designer Tori Morrison, he makes interdisciplinary projects as Strange Victory Performance. Find him online at www.davidgagnonwalker.com.
His new work ENTRANCES researches the relationship between writing and performing. Starting with 59 pages of poetry about memory and embodiment written during the weird summer of 2020, Strange Victory Performance is experimenting with contemporary dance strategies for staging this text without “adapting” it into a “play”. We are wondering where in the body writing comes from, and how language passes through and reconfigures space and time.
Kayla Henry
Kayla is the Founder and Artistic Director of Noble Riot Dance Theatre in Victoria BC (2021), and is deeply inspired by her recent journey with cancer. Upon graduating from The School of Contemporary Dancers in 2011, Kayla joined the company, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, and danced with them for three seasons. She has worked with many choreographers including Constance Cooke (Victoria BC), Odette Heyn (Winnipeg MB), Helen Husak (Calgary AB), Christina Medina (Austria), Paras Terezakis (Vancouver BC).
“The beautiful thing about darkness, is finding the light within that space. The inspiration for my research will come directly from my personal journey towards health,healing and the global movement currently happening. I am very interested in the idea that we can have one thing, yet still have something else happening simultaneously. I am inspired to explore the ranges between fear and love, beauty and horror, and power and weakness. The main idea of my research will be to focus on two parallel stories happening at the same moment to one individual.” – Kayla
Elena Eli Belyea
Elena (or Eli) Belyea is an award-winning queer playwright, performer, producer, and arts educator from Amiskwaciwâskahikan (colonially known as Edmonton) whose plays have been produced across the country. They’ve performed in 500-seat regional theatre, ex-roller rinks, and 1-car garages from Wells, BC to Halifax, NS. She’s a graduate of the University of Alberta and National Theatre School of Canada (Playwriting) and an Olympic crier (classic Pisces).
Elena will be working on a new, queer, one-person “musical”.
Caitlin Kelly
Caitlin (they/them) is a settler of mixed European ancestry who grew up in Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory. They are currently a visitor to Tkaronto, Toronto, on Treaty 13, Dish with One Spoon territory. Caitlin is a queer, non-binary, actor, creator, writer, and collaborator.
They will be developing a multidisciplinary film piece exploring presence and process.
Mika Haykowksyans and Breanna Barrington
The Yielding Effort Group (YEG), is an art collective that calls for contributions from the public for artistic output; this group is currently cohabitated by Mika Haykowsky and Breanna Barrington. Part of our shared practice involves offering instruction prompts, in this case that would generate a “Night Routine” or collective ritual that will be explored throughout the week. How has the pandemic created a shift in how we relate to activity/productivity and dormancy/slumber? We hope to facilitate a shared transformative experience with a focus on sleep as a time of healing, and dreams as gateways.
Andrew Ritchie
Andrew is a director and theatre maker who returned to Edmonton mid-pandemic after five years working across Canada. He has his MFA in Directing/Creation from York University, a BA in Drama from the University of Alberta, and is a graduate of the Citadel/Banff Centre’s Professional Theatre Program. Recently he was the Sandbox Series Coordinator and Theatre School Director at Globe Theatre in Regina, SK. Currently he is an ensemble member with Rapid Fire Theatre, artistic associate with Thou Art Here Theatre and artistic director of You Are Here Theatre.
Andrew is devising his second solo theatre creation that explores his personal experience as a bike food courier in Toronto, the politics of active transportation, and the ongoing impacts of the gig economy.
Stacey Murchison & Mũkonzi Mũsyoki
Mũkonzi Mũsyoki is a writer, director and a dramaturg. He is a second-year PhD student at the University of Alberta in Performance Studies. His research is on Postcolonial Theatre and Performance, Dramaturgy, Urban Discourse and Identity Politics in contemporary East Africa. Stacey Murchison is a dance artist and dance scholar. She is also a DJ, certified yoga instructor, and has been independently producing experimental dance videos since 2006.
During the creative incubator, the creators will explore the early stages of a research-creation piece based on the performance practices of Kīkãmba and North American magic.
Lisa Calverley
Lisa Calverley’s dancing (46 years), teaching of dance, and choreography (30 years), has brought her
from West to East to West, and finally to the Prairie’s. She trained on Vancouver Island and Vancouver,
B.C., finished her formal dance training in Montreal, PQ (E.S.B.Q. and L.A.D.M.M.I.), returned to
Vancouver to teach dance, perform, and choreograph, and has now been in Rural Alberta for 16 years.
While she has had opportunity to direct 2 dance studios here in AB while raising her 3 children, an
increasing passion throughout her career has been choreography. She has choreographed hundreds of
student works, quite a few pre-professional and professional works, and many solo’s that she created
for herself (which was the start of her love of choreography). She still feels excited to grow and develop
continually in the art of choreography.
For this Choreographic Incubator Lisa Calverley will work on the piece Shards (working title), a solo work
in progress that she will re-work. It is inspired by the art of Kintsugi and several poems by Canadian
Poets Patrick Lane and Sally Ito. She looks at the beauty of brokenness; how this can be a pathway of
shaping the individual.