Keynotes

David Buckland

David Buckland is an artist and filmmaker whose lens-based works have been exhibited in numerous galleries in London, Paris and New York and are found in the major collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Getty Collection, Los Angeles; and others. His 1999 solo show of digitally mastered portraits of performers at London's National Portrait Gallery attracted over 100,000 visitors. Buckland continues to produce and exhibit his artworks.

In 2001 Buckland created and now directs the Cape Farewell project, bringing artists, writers, filmmakers and climate scientists  together to collectively address and find a creative engagement with the world's climate challenge. To date, Cape Farewell has mounted nine Arctic expeditions and one in the Andes where more than a hundred prominent artists have worked in the field with the scientific community. The artistic product from these expeditions has been monumental: two films shown worldwide; Ian McEwan's novel Solar; two major exhibitions touring globally with an audience in excess of 850,000; two books; digital media; and the SHIFT festival in London. [return to top]

Gil Favreau

Gil Favreau is director of Social Action and Responsibility, Global Citizenship at Cirque du Soleil. His career at Cirque began in 2000, following a stint managing a social action group in Montreal. His initial appointment was as social action coordinator for the Americas, liaising between local organizations and touring shows throughout North and South America, and overseeing donations and benefit performances while developing Cirque du Monde sites in the US. In his first year, he established four new Cirque du Monde sites: in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orlando and New York. 

Cirque du Monde is a social action program that uses circus arts as an alternative educational approach toward personal growth of at-risk youth around the world. Circus arts offer young people the chance to open up, express themselves and use their marginalized status as a tool to forge new links with a society that often excludes them. This is how Cirque du Soleil has developed its international expertise and leadership in social circus. 

Favreau went on to become supervisor of Social Action and International Cooperation before taking up his current position as director of Social Action and Responsibility at Cirque du Soleil. In this capacity, he continues to contribute, along with his Global Citizenship colleagues, to maintaining the company's core values. Achievements include implementation of an Ethical Procurement Policy for all Cirque departments and adding a Social Responsibility Clause to all new partnership contracts, which opens dialogue with Cirque partners and encourages responsible behaviour on all sides. Favreau has made it a priority to work towards improving the Cirque's environmental performance, actively seeking new solutions to reduce the company’s ecological footprint. [return to top]

Ian Garrett

Ian Garrett is a producer, designer and administrator dedicated to innovative arts infrastructure. He is executive director of the Fresh Arts Coalition in Houston, Texas, and co-founder and director of the Los Angeles-based Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a leader in the conversation on sustainability development and the arts. In 2007, he received the Richard E. Sherwood Award for emerging theatre artists from the Center Theater Group for the integration of ecologically sustainable practice into theatre production.

Garrett serves as lighting curator for Scenofest at the Prague Quadrennial and is the resident designer for the Indy Convergence, an annual artistic open-space in Indianapolis. He has designed more than 100 productions including Permanent Collection at the Kirk Douglas Theatre (2006 LA Weekly Theater Award for best lighting) and Song of Extinction with Moving Arts Theater (2008 LA Weekly Theater Award for Production of the Year). As a producer, his work includes the premiere of Richard Forman and Michael Gordon’s What to Wear at REDCAT and Week 42 of Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days / 365 Plays in Houston.

Garrett has served on the staff of Stages Repertory Theatre, DiverseWorks, CalArts, the Will Geer Theatricum Botancium and the regional arts service organization L.A. Stage Alliance. For the past four years, he has taught for the School of Theater at CalArts, including courses on production and management technology and sustainable practice. He holds dual MFAs in Lighting Design and Producing from CalArts and a BA in Architectural Studies and Art History from Rice University. [return to top]

Katherine Knight

Katherine Knight is an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, Toronto. Her photographic work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery Museum, London, Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.  

In 2006 Knight founded Site Media Inc, a company dedicated to the production of documentaries of creative individuals in extraordinary places. Site Media has produced four documentary films on Canadian artists, including Annie Pootoogook and Kinngait: Riding Light into the World. In 2009 Knight directed Pretend Not to See Me: The Art of Colette Urban, which received Special Mention at the 2010 Ecofilm Festival in Rhodos, Greece. Knight’s documentary on the artist Wanda Koop was the gala opening night selection for the Reel Artist Film Festival, Toronto in February 2011. Knight is currently developing a film on the architecture of Todd Saunders. [return to top]

Theresa May

Dr. Theresa May is one of a handful of scholars working at the intersection of ecology and performance. She is artistic director of Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS), which presented the 2009 Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and Symposium at the University of Oregon, where she is assistant professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and affiliate faculty of the Environmental Studies Program.

May's community-based theatre work, such as Salmon Is Everything and the Women and Rivers Project, explores the connections between human and biotic communities in the US Pacific Northwest.  Her publications include Greening Up Our Houses (with Larry K. Fried), the first book on sustainable theatre management. Her articles on the intersection of theatre and ecology have appeared in Theatre Topics, New England Theatre Journal, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, On Stage Studies, American Drama and Theatre Studies. “Remembering the Mountain: Grotowski’s Deep Ecology” appears in Performing Nature:  Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, Gabriella Giannachi and Stewart Nigel (eds.) Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang (2005).

May holds a PhD in from the University of Washington and an MFA in acting from the University of Southern California. She founded and from 1988 to 1996 served as artistic director of Theatre in the Wild in Seattle, where she devised earth-centered, site-specific performances. She is the author of Dragon Island (Rain City Press, 1994) as well as a number of community-based plays and adaptations. [return to top]

Michael J. Morris

Michael J. Morris is currently pursuing a PhD in dance studies at Ohio State University. His dance practices include choreography, Labanotation and various contemporary, improvisational and somatic movement forms, including Butoh, which he has studied within the US and at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in Yokohama, Japan. His current research investigates ecosexuality as a theoretical framework and a corporeal condition/practice. Ecosexuality was introduced to him by the Love Art Laboratory (Annie M. Sprinkle and Elizabeth M. Stephens), with whom he performed in Purple Wedding to the Appalachian Mountains in 2010. [return to top]

Catriona (Cate) Sandilands

Catriona (Cate) Sandilands is Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Toronto. Her work in the past ten years has explored the intersections of sexuality, gender, nature and culture; in the process, she has written extensively about such topics as environmental literature, art, dance, parks, communes, bodies, policies and politics. Her most recent book is a co-edited anthology (with Bruce Erickson) titled Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics Desire (Indiana UP, 2010), and she is currently working on a manuscript on queer eco-public culture in the works of Canadian lesbian author and activist Jane Rule. In her other life, she has worked with Graham, Butoh and other contemporary dance traditions. [return to top]

Colette Urban

Colette Urban is a performance artist, farmer and founder of the artist residency Full Tilt Creative in McIvers, Newfoundland where she lives. She holds a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Victoria, BC and is professor emeritus of the Visual Arts Department at the University of Western Ontario, London/Ont.

Urban has performed her works at the following venues: Duende, Rotterdam; Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery, Halifax; Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga, Ont; Presentation House, Vancouver; Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor/Ont; Mercer Union, Toronto; Eastern Edge, St. John’s, Nfld; La Centrale, Montreal; Norwich School of Art and Design, Norwich/UK; Sala Uno, Rome; Sir Wilfred Grenfell Art Gallery, Corner Brook, Nfld; MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Banff Centre for the Arts; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Alberta College of Art Gallery, Calgary; Niagara Artist’s Company, St Catharines/Ont; Open Space, Victoria, BC; Western Front, Vancouver.

Urban’s work has been featured in numerous catalogues and art journals including Fuse, Art in America, Vie des arts, and BlackFlash. Pretend Not to See Me, a film by Katherine Knight documenting Urban’s work, received Special Mention at the 2010 Ecofilms festival in Rhodos, Greece. [return to top]

 

Panels

Joy Angela Anderson

Joy Angela Anderson has worked as a museum educator and independent curator motivated by the intersections of social, environmental justice, political activism, community and cultural arts education and public art as social practice. She is a graduate student at University of Southern California in the Public Art Studies program of the Roski School of Fine Arts. [return to top]

Mary Elizabeth Anderson

Mary Elizabeth Anderson’s research explores the intersections of place and performance training paradigms. At Wayne State University, she teaches courses in performance studies, applied theatre, acting and interdisciplinary creative practice. She is founding director of Performance/Exchange, a devised theatre ensemble and educational outreach program that generates new works about the city of Detroit. [return to top]

John Andreasen

John Andreasen is an associate professor in dramaturgy at Aarhus University, Denmark, where he teaches theatre production and cultural politics. His publications include Drama Teaching & Mnemonics (1995), “Community Plays – a Search for Identity” in TRI (1996), “Theatre - Five Futures or Fuwtuwrews” in Interlitteraria (2002) and Multiple Stages (2007). [return to top]

Emma Arnold

Emma Arnold is an environmental professional as well as a practicing artist. Her academic and professional background is in geography, environmental assessment, environmental sciences, policy and management. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, where her research focuses on the role of art in environmental discourse. [return to top]

Susan Aaron

Susan Aaron is a PhD student at the University of Toronto. She researches an embodied process of academic creativity in life. She holds a fine arts degree in dance and theatre, a Masters in drama and a Masters of Education in creative inquiry in adult education. [return to top]

Dick Averns

Dick Averns is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose practice explores the commodification of space. Recent essays appear in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, Convergence and Diabolique. Notable exhibitions include War Art Now (Calgary), Art and Activism (Toronto), Revolver (Winnipeg) and Ambivalence Blvd (London, NYC, Ottawa, Toronto, Huntsville, Vernon, Vancouver, Calgary). [return to top]

Annett Baumast

Annett Baumast is a sustainability expert, lecturer, writer, consultant and researcher who has been working in this field for over 15 years. Her current focus is on sustainability in the cultural industries. She holds degrees in business administration and economics, cultural management and English literature. [return to top]

David Benin

David Benin is a digital media producer, educator, and PhD candidate in the Communication Department at University of California, San Diego. His research concerns technologies of affect coding and media. He has taught environmental media production at UC San Diego, Princeton University and Sonoma State University. [return to top]

Nancy Bleck

Nancy Bleck is an artist and educator whose work explores ecology, feminist figurations, photography and socially engaged art practices. Co-founder of the Uts'am Witness Society, she was recognized by the Squamish Nation with the name ‘Slanay Sp'ak'wus’ in a traditional ceremony. She is the recipient of the 2007 YWCA ‘Women of Distinction’ in Arts, Culture and Design award. [return to top] 

Chavisa Brett

Chavisa Brett graduated from Emily Carr University, Vancouver where she began studying intaglio printmaking. Committed to creative expression and sustainable long-term health, her work necessitated a shift to an environmentally conscious practice of drawing, painting, sculpture and performance. Her Master of Environmental Studies focused on health and its social determinants. [return to top]

Paul Brunner

Paul Brunner is technical director and head of theatre technology in the Department of Theater and Drama at Indiana University, where he teaches courses in stagecraft, technical management, electronics for theatre, structural and mechanical design for the stage, and drafting. He is a director-at-large for the USITT-Midwest Region Section and serves USITT nationally as vice-commissioner for programming for the Technical Production Commission and as a member of the Commission’s CAD Standards committee. He has studied alternative construction products for the stage for over 12 years. [return to top]

Beth Carruthers

Beth Carruthers is a Canadian artist-philosopher, writer, educator, and independent curator and consultant in the area of arts, environment and sustainability. For more than 25 years she has explored the human-nature relationship in her work. As an academic with research interests in eco-phenomenology, ethics, ecocriticism, posthumanism, ontology, and the role of the aesthetic in engendering environmental values, she writes, publishes and lectures internationally. Currently, she is working on a book on ethics and aesthetic engagement. She is a member of an international advisory to the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World in Devon, England. . [return to top]

T. Nikki Cesare

T. Nikki Cesare is an assistant professor at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto. She has published articles in Performance Research, Theatre Journal and TDR, where she is also editor of Critical Acts, and chapters in Key Concepts in Performance Studies (Routledge) and Performing Xenakis (Pendragon Press). Dr. Cesare has dramaturged experimental music-theatre productions in New York City, Chicago and Morelia, Mexico. [return to top]

Miles Cohen

Miles Cohen trained at the Canadian Mime School and Vancouver Playhouse and has been performing professionally for 30 years. His credits include Second City and Mime Co Unlimited. [return to top]

Laura Lee Coles

Laura Lee Coles is currently a Master of Arts candidate at the School of Interactive Artists and Technology at Simon Fraser University, Surrey, Brittish Columbia. She has an interdisciplinary artistic practice with an extensive background in modern dance, theatre, music, performance art, installation and photography. [return to top]

Shannon Crossman

Shannon Crossman is an artist and educator whose practice focuses on bringing the ideas and methodology of cultural and ecological sustainability through an art, food and garden process to the work she does with children, youth and the public. She currently works as a program coordinator at Toronto’s Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. From 2008 to 2010, she was artist-in-residence at Evergreen Brick Works. She is co-author of The Spiral Garden Resource Book and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal. [return to top]

Jordan Dalton

Jordan Dalton is a media practitioner, experimental geographer, fish listener, urban gardener and environmental activist. His work explores the role of sound in ecologies, built and otherwise, and the situated use of media to educate and activate. He is an MFA candidate in the Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo. [return to top]

Joey DAMMIT!

Joey DAMMIT! is an award-winning mixed media pop artist. His art has been described by The Toronto Star as "Warhol in a head-on collision with David Lynch." [return to top]

Sébastien Darchen

Sébastien Darchen holds a PhD in Urban Studies (INRS-UCS, Montreal) and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Canada Research Chair of the Socio-Organizational Challenges of the Knowledge Economy in Montreal (Teluq-UQÀM). He is currently an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University. [return to top]

Lesley Delmenico

Lesley Delmenico teaches theatre and performance studies at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. She recently devised a performance about water issues in Mumbai, received a Mellon grant to study water, globalization and the environment, and studied local initiatives in Rajasthan, India. In fall 2010 she directed the US premiere of Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan (about rising sea levels), Grinnell’s event for 350.org’s 10.10.10 global action day. [return to top]

Micah Donovan

Micah Donovan is an artist working in food and technology. He has worked with Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab and Sketch to develop arts/garden-based programs, and has co-created and produced food and science television series. Currently he is experimenting with basement food farming techniques and fuel-efficient pizza-making. [return to top]

David Fancy

Dr. David Fancy is associate professor and Chair of the Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University, St. Catharines/Ont. He is a practising playwright and director, and is currently publishing on immanence and performance as well as electromagnetics, performance and social control. [return to top]

Caitlin Fisher

Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture, directs the Augmented Reality Lab in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, Toronto. An international award-winning digital storyteller, Fisher is currently working to construct and theorize spatial narrative environments and create expressive software tools that enable artists and storytellers to make meaningful content using emerging technologies. [return to top]

Nicole Fournier

Nicole Fournier is an artist, activist and founder and director of InTerreArt. She has exhibited her art internationally for more than two decades. Since 1996, her practice has embraced the interdisciplinarity of art, communities and environment through research and the development of concepts and actions with polyculture-food-medicine systems. She holds a BFA and a PGDipEnv. [return to top]

Lois Frankel

Lois Frankel is an associate professor and past director at the School of Industrial Design at Carleton University, Ottawa. The primary focus of her work is simplifying the relationship between people and computer-enabled products. [return to top]

Christy Gast

Artist Christy Gast is known for conflating the landscape and the body (often her own) through folk performance conventions. She has exhibited at museums and galleries in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Zurich and Santiago, Chile. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2004. [return to top]

Tanja Geis

Tanja Geis is an artist and researcher interested in socially and environmentally engaged art practice and its potential to transform the human/environment relationship. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Yale University, USA and a MRM in Marine and Coastal Management from the University Centre of the Westfjords, Iceland. [return to top]

Sandra Lee Gönye

An aspiring farmer and traditional papermaker, Sandy Lee Gönye is constantly inspired and amazed by nature’s gifts and what is given in abundance. This includes the human-created overflow of waste in urban areas. Gönye is a Montrealer happily in tune in British Columbia. [return to top]

Alicia Grace

Alicia Grace is a performer, writer and dramaturg who specializes in socially engaged and improvisatory practices. She currently works as a dance dramaturg and as a writer commissioned to write new work on the hidden poetics of Devon for Aune Head Arts rural arts agency. She holds a masters degree in Arts and Ecology fom Dartington College of Arts, England. [return to top]

John Greyson

John Greyson is a Toronto video artist/filmmaker whose features, shorts and installations include Fig Trees (Best Documentary Teddy, Berlin Film Festival, 2009), Proteus (Diversity Award, Barcelona Gay Lesbian Film Festival, 2004), Lilies (Best Film 'Genie', 1996), Zero Patience (1993 - Best Canadian Film, Sudbury Film Festival), The Making of Monsters (1991 - Best Canadian Short, Toronto Film Festival) and Urinal (1988 - Best Feature Teddy, Berlin Film Festival). An associate professor in the Department of Film at York University, he was awarded the 2007 Bell Canada Award in Video Art. [return to top]

Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir

Elísabet Gunnarsdóttir is the director of the FOGO Island Arts Corporation and a consultant for the design and building projects the Shorefast Foundation is undertaking on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. She comes to the Shorefast Foundation and the Arts Corporation from her position as director for the Nordic Artists’ Centre in Dale, Norway. She has extensive experience working as an architect, curator and catalyst for various contemporary art and design projects, mainly in Northern Europe.  [return to top]

Richard Haley

Richard Haley is an artist and professor currently residing in the Metro Detroit area. [return to top]

Cynthia Hathaway

Cynthia Hathaway is an independent Creative Consultant and Designer trained and residing in The Netherlands. Her works range from product, services and research. She teaches Design in various Academies in Holland and is currently developing a new city concept for Droog Design inspired by her travels to the Artic.

Wallace Heim

Wallace Heim researches, writes and teaches on performance and nature. She holds a doctorate in philosophy on ethics, rhetoric and social practice art. She is co-editor of The Ashden Directory, and taught on the MA Arts and Ecology at Dartington College of Arts. She is a director of the research communication group PublicSpace, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a trustee for PLATFORM. She serves on the editorial board for the upcoming Journal of Performance and Ecology. She co-curated the conference/event Between Nature and co-edited Nature Performed. Environment, Culture and Performance. Her first career was as a set designer in theatre, and she was among those who started the Gate Theatre in London. [return to top]

Angela Iarocci

Angela Iarocci is a Toronto-based designer and educator, teaching full-time in the York University/Sheridan College Joint Program in Design. Her practice investigates intersections of art, design and craft. She is the recipient of several grants, awards and commissions and her work has been exhibited and published in Canada and internationally. [return to top]

Hilary Inwood

Dr. Hilary Inwood teaches art education in the Initial Teacher Education program at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on integrating art education with environmental education to develop learners’ environmental literacy in school and community settings. Her work as an educator and artist extends beyond the classroom to include school gardens, outdoor education centers, parks and galleries. She can be reached at: hilary.inwood@utoronto.ca [return to top]

Basia Irland

Basia Irland is an author, poet, sculptor, installation artist and activist who creates international water projects featured in her book, Water Library. She works with scholars from diverse disciplines restoring riparian zones, filming and producing water documentaries, and creating waterborne disease projects around the world. [return to top]

Claire Ironside

Claire Ironside is a professor in the Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design at Sheridan College, Oakville/Ont. and a member of moimoi design, a confederacy of ‘makers’ dedicated to trans-disciplinary collaboration.  Her creative focus centres on producing socially innovative and sustainable work which draws on and/or combines ecological imperative, information visualization and participatory interaction. [return to top]

Sharon Kallis

Sharon Kallis discovers the material potential in a landscape with a “one mile diet” approach to sourcing art materials. Involving community in connecting traditional hand techniques with invasive species and garden waste, site-specific installations are created that become ecological interventions. Based in Vancouver, Kallis has engaged with communities at home, the US, Ireland and Spain. [return to top]

Sarah Kanouse

Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist examining landscape, public space and cultural memory through arts practice and writing. Her creative work takes many forms, including web platforms and multimedia, print materials, group events, and audio and video projects. Her artwork has appeared in exhibitions, screenings, and events mounted by Concordia University (Montreal); the University of Michigan; the Smart Museum (Chicago); Artlink (Belgrade, Serbia); University of California Berkeley; Columbia College (Chicago); Indiana University; University of Wisconsin Madison; and the Centro Cultural Rosa Luxemburg (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and many other festivals and artist-run spaces.

Kanouse's writings have been published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Leonardo, Acme, The Democratic Communiqué, Critical Planning and Art Journal. She received her undergraduate education from Yale University (1997) and an MFA in studio art from the University of Illinois (2004). She is an assistant professor of art at the University of Iowa, where she teaches specialized classes in video/time-based media and art and ecology. [return to top]

Ali Kazimi

Ali Kazimi is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have been screened in festivals around the world, broadcast nationally and internationally. As part of the interdisciplinary initiative 3DFLIC (Film Innovation Consortium) he has been researching stereoscopic 3D digital cinema at York University, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Film. [return to top]

Assunta Kent

Dr. Assunta Kent (Theatre, Womens and Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine) is a theatre historian, director, dramaturg and author of Maria Irene Fornes and Her Critics. A recent article for UNIMA discusses the fusion of puppetry and live action in the USM production of Shakuntala. [return to top]

Louisa Krátká

Louisa Krátká obtained her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999 and has worked in the arts and arts education. Currently a Masters student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, her focus is environmental health and toxics in the visual arts, problematizing these issues from the personal sphere to systemic. [return to top]

Ernie Kroeger

Ernie Kroeger’s artwork has been shown in exhibitions across Canada and in Europe. In 2007 he led the ‘Walking + Art’ residency at the Banff Centre. Currently he teaches in the visual arts program at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, where he is also a founding member of the Walking Lab. [return to top]

Jonathan Lachance

Jonathan Lachance is a PhD candidate and junior lecturer in art history at the Université du Québec in Montreal, specializing in the history of architecture in Canada. Recipient of a scholarship from the FQRSC, his thesis aims at recovering the reaction of Canadian architects against the ecological crisis since 1973. [return to top]

Jess Larson

Jess Larson is an associate professor of studio art and holds a Masters of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in group and solo shows, including the 1999 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and the Jerome Book Arts Exhibition at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts. [return to top]

Brenda Longfellow

Brenda Longfellow is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and film theorist who teaches in the Department of Film at York University, Toronto. After completing Weather Report (2008), a feature-length television documentary which explores the effects of climate change on communities around the world, she embarked on a series of musical shorts exploring the complex web of delusion, dream and willful complicity that informs the evolution of the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta. [return to top]

Tania Love

Tania Love currently lives and works as a visual artist and yoga instructor in Toronto. She received her degree in fine arts from the University of Guelph and has exhibited internationally. Her practice continues to grow through concentrated periods at artist residencies including India, US and Poland and in her Toronto studio. [return to top]

Gary Markle

Gary Markle is is a performance artist, fashion designer and artistic director, and an assistant professor at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Much of his scholarly work revolves around sustainability in the fashion industry. [return to top]

Janine Marchessault

Janine Marchessault is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media and Globalization at York University, Toronto. She is the author of Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Media (Sage 2005) and is the (co)editor of several collections including Mirror Machine: Video and Identity (YYZ Books+CRCCI 1994); Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women’s Cinema (University of Toronto Press 1999); Wild Science: Reading Feminism, Medicine and the Media (Routledge 2000) and Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema (University of Toronto Press 2007). She is a founder of York's Future Cinema Lab which is devoted to “new stories for new screens” and the director of the Visible City Project + Archive which is examining artists’ cultures in the context of globalization. She is a founding member of Public Access, a curatorial collective that seeks to experiment with the public places available for the display and experience of art works. [return to top]

Karla McManus

Karla McManus is a PhD student in art history at Concordia University, Ottawa specializing in contemporary landscape photography and the visual representation of environmental change. She was awarded a SSHRC doctoral fellowship in 2010. McManus holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba (2004) and a Master's in art history from Carleton University (2009). [return to top]

Melissa Memory

Melissa Memory is an archaeologist and chief of Cultural Resources at Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks in South Florida, USA. She has lived and worked in various locales around the United States. Her career has focused on the study of frontiers and making the past meaningful to modern discourse. [return to top]

Chris Mitchell

Chris Mitchell holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University. She has over twenty years of experience including arts administration, curatorial projects, and development of collaborative partnerships and entrepreneurial models for creative and arts based projects. Recently in the position of Director of Exhibitions for Toronto's Gladstone Hotel, she developed and implemented the visual arts strategy and business model for the hotel's non-traditional gallery and studio spaces. Currently she is the Visual Arts Manager at Workman Arts and Project Lead for art procurement for public spaces at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health's Queen Street Redevelopment Project. Chris has a portfolio of more than twenty curatorial credits including independent projects for Toronto's CONTACT Photography Festival and Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. [return to top]

Sarah Moon

Sarah Moon is a theatre artist, educator and environmental activist. The 2010 recipient of Cape Cod Community College’s Sustainable Practices Recognition Award, she uses the freshman research project as an opportunity for education on sustainable themes. As Boston-based Green Schools’ Student Ambassador Adviser, she coordinates youth leaders initiating environmental efforts in their schools and communities. She is also the co-founder of New York Loves Mountains, an arts and activism organization. Light Comes, her play on the impact of mountaintop removal, was performed at the 2010 Boston GreenFest. Her plays have been produced in Boston, New York, Minneapolis and Washington DC. She holds a BA from the University of Puget Sound and an MFA from Brandeis University. [return to top]

Seónagh Odhiambo

Seónagh Odhiambo is an assistant professor of dance at California State University, Los Angeles. She has presented her choreography in the US, Canada and Edinburgh, Scotland. She asks audiences to reflect on their agency in social issues through contact with dance movement. She holds a PhD in dance from Temple University and is a Fisher Center Fellow. [return to top]

Meg O’Shea

Meg O’Shea is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Resources, the Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. She earned a BSc in chemistry at the University of Lethbridge and an MA in dance at York University. O'Shea researches the embodied nature of sustainable behaviours at community and neighbourhood scales. [return to top]

Justin King Rademaekers

Justin King Rademaekers researches the ways environmental issues are communicated to the public, and how this communication can improve. He has worked as an environmental scientist in public and private sectors and is currently teaching writing and studying in the doctoral program of Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. [return to top]

Heather Read

Heather Read is an art educator who has worked in various public and private camps, schools and museums throughout North America. She is also a proudly amateur ceramicist. She holds a Master’s degree in folklore from Memorial University, Nfld and is presently a PhD student in adult education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. [return to top]

Reinhard Reitzenstein

Reinhard Reitzenstein is an artist who has exhibited his work in more than 100 solo exhibitions and over 300 group shows throughout North and South America and beyond. abroad. He has completed more than a dozen public art commissions and as many private commissions. His work is represented in over 50 public and corporate collections internationally.

German born, Reitzenstein studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto 1968-71. He was represented by Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto for 20 years (1971-1991) and since 1993 has been represented by Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto. For the past decade he has been represewnted by Lutz Teutloff Media Projects in Germany.

Reitzenstein has taught sculpture and interdisciplinary studies at numerous universities and colleges. Since 2000, he has been director of the sculpture program at SUNY Buffalo, including a three-year stint (2003-06) as director of Graduate Studies. [return to top]

Andrew Roth

Andrew Roth is technology manager of the Future Cinema Lab at York University in Toronto and an instructor in the Interactive Arts and Sciences department at Brock University, St. Catharines/Ont. As an artist and researcher, he has collaborated in interactive installations, augmented reality experiences, and the creation of tools for digital media artists. At the 2008 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Singapore, he co-presented the augmented reality project 52 Card Psycho: Re-imagining Cinema. His current research involves the use of augmented reality as a participatory learning tool and the use of graphical programming languages as an interface to optical tracking technologies. [return to top]

Ray Schultz

Ray Schultz is an associate professor of theatre arts at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He has published articles on Terrence McNally, Lanford Wilson and Tony Kushner. His professional acting credits include roles in Angels in America, Doubt and Take Me Out; directing credits include The Laramie Project, Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, among others. [return to top]

Joshua Schuster

Joshua Schuster is an assistant professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, London/Ont. He has published essays on modernist American poetry and contemporary philosophy and is currently working on a book, The Ecology of Modernism, which studies how modernist poets perceived some environmental problems but not others. [return to top]

Annette Seip

Annette Seip is an emerging photographer currently exploring commercial photography and her fascination with Adobe Photoshop. [return to top]

Lola Sheppard

Lola Sheppard is Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. She is a Partner in Lateral Office, and founding Director of InfraNet Lab. Sheppard has recently co-authored “Coupling: Strategies for Infrasrtuctural Opportunism” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). She is a co-editor of the forthcoming “Bracket 2: Soft Systems” (Actar, 2011). [return to top]

Don Sinclair

Don Sinclair is an associate professor and coordinator of the Digital Media Program in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University. His interests and creative research revolve around physical computing, interactive sound art, laptop performance, web art, database art, interactive dance, video projection, cycling art, sustainability, green architecture and choral singing. [return to top]

Robert Vine

Robert Vine has been tending and pretending in Spiral Garden since 1987. He has helped and been helped by people of all ages, skills, and abilities. With this community he, his puppets, and his clown have planted ideas and seeds that have been the harvest of seasons, cycles and celebrations. [return to top]

Molly Wallace

Molly Wallace is assistant professor of English at Queen’s University, Kingston/Ont. where she teaches courses in contemporary literature and ecocultural studies. Her most recent articles treat questions of genetic engineering and the ecology of war. She is currently at work on a book manuscript on contemporary literature and global risk. [return to top]

Lisa Walter

Lisa Walter is an artist, activist, educator and journalist. She likes curved shapes and the colour red. [return to top]

Jai Wax

Jai Wax is a self-taught painter who strives to reflect a victory of reconciliation between madness and beauty in his art. [return to top]

jil p. weaving

jil p. weaving is coordinator of Arts & Culture for the Vancouver Park Board. She has worked in the arts for over 30 years and in participatory and environmental arts practices for more than two decades. She has also worked with the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council and on the boards of numerous arts organizations. [return to top]

Shana Weber

Shana Weber is an ecologist and educator with a research background in climate change impacts. As the director of Princeton’s Office of Sustainability, she engages the university community in implementing a comprehensive vision for sustainability. She also raises chickens and rabbits with her family and enjoys cycling, music composition, gardening and monitoring the status of the American pika in the Rocky Mountains. [return to top]

Peter Wehrspann

Peter Wehrspann is an award-winning designer whose work has been showcased internationally. He believes good design enhances our daily lives physically and psychologically. His work is guided by the search for simple beauty and function. Currently, he is a Masters of Design candidate at Carleton University, Ottawa, where he is researching the benefits of an interdisciplinary design process. [return to top]

Mason White

Mason White is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. He is a Partner at Lateral Office, and founding Director of InfraNet Lab. White has recently co-authored “Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). He is co-editor of “Bracket 1: On Farming” (Actar, 2010). [return to top]

Louise Wrazen

Louise Wrazen is associate professor and Chair of the Department of Music at York University, Toronto. Her research interests include music and gender; place, memory and transnationalism; transmission; musical intimacy and vocality with focus on the music and dance of southern Poland. She is currently co-editing (with Fiona Magowan) the volume Performing Gender, Place and Emotion. [return to top]

David Wright

David Wright is co-ordinator of Social Ecology and co-ordinator of Research Higher Degree students in the School of Education at the University of Western Syndey, Australia. He teaches in the overlapping fields of social ecology, transformative learning, creativity and sustainability, with research interests in the fields of cognition, embodiment, performance, creativity and learning. He approaches this work through the lens of social ecology, which looks at the relationships that facilitate understanding. Wright has published nationally and internationally on imagination, learning, drama, embodiment, constructivism and creativity, and has written plays for performance as well as creative fiction. [return to top]

Tarah Wright

Tarah Wright is associate professor of Environmental Science at Dalhousie University. Her research focuses on the emerging field of education for sustainable development and she has published papers covering a wide range of issues in sustainability and higher education. [return to top]

Byron Au Yong

Byron Au Yong composes songs of dislocation scored for voices with Asian, European and handmade instruments. His musical events have been performed in concert halls and site-specific locations that include the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Germany; Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, On the Boards, the Portland Center for the Performing Arts and the Seattle Aquarium in Seattle, Washington; and the Tokyo Art Museum, Japan. [return to top]

Workshops

Cynthia Ashperger

Cynthia Ashperger is director of the acting program at Ryerson Theatre School, Ryerson University Toronto where she has taught since 1994. She is the author of The Rhythm of Space and the Sound of Time: Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique in the 21st Century (Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 2008). Dr. Ashperger’s recent research has been two-fold: creating exercises that blend process-oriented psychology and Chekhov technique in order to aid actors in overcoming creative blocks, and developing new methods within the rehearsal process through intercultural and interdisciplinary hybrids. [return to top]

Paul Brunner

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Sylvia Defend

Sylvia Defend has been a costumer in professional theatre for some 25 years, including working as costume designer, cutter and dyer, and as wardrobe coordinator and buyer. For the past 11 years, she has worked primarily as a cutter/draper for the Toronto-based theatrical costume company Seamless Costumes. Her credits include large-scale productions for Broadway and Toronto's Mirvish Productions of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Sound of Music, Rock of Ages, Mamma Mia, Mary Poppins, The Producers, Hairspray and The Lion King. She also teaches costume technology in the Department of Theatre at York University, and maintains a keen interest in the art of fabric dyeing and surface design. [return to top]

Gwen Dobie

Gwen Dobie is co-founder and co-artistic director of Out of the Box Productions, a theatre company launched in Victoria, BC and now based in Toronto. Her research objectives are to encourage a collaborative artistic practice with opera singers, dancers and actors in order to push the artistic boundaries of each discipline; to investigate various configurations of the performer/audience relationship and its impact on artistic resonance; to experiment in the collaborative process of devised theatre; and to integrate sustainable design practice with live performance. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at York University. [return to top]

Grant Heggie

Grant Heggie has been a show biz veteran for over 20 years. Trained in Theatre production and design Grant went on to design and production manage over 300 shows. In 1993 Grant co founded Set/Reset, Accredited as North Americas first recycling company for the entertainment Industry. In 2007 Grant founded The Octopus Works and in January of 2010, readysetrecycle.com, the latter, having in its first year of operation, diverted an estimated 12 transport trucks of scenery and recyclable materials from landfill.

Set/Reset — Started in 1993 with a $1,000 in start up capital and became North America's first recycling company for the entertainment industry. Occupying a 30,000 square foot warehouse in downtown Toronto, Set/Reset proved that recycling scenery was not only possible but could be profitable.

In the first year of operation, Set/Reset processed over 150 tons of scenery. Set/Reset was a classic win win for its customers, users and the environment. As the company grew we built up the largest inventory of rental stock in Canada. [return to top]

Barbara Lounder

Barbara Lounder is a visual artist and educator whose work since 2007 has centered on the activity and artifacts of walking. Her artistic residencies, exhibitions and creative events involving walking have taken place in locations across Canada and in England and Bulgaria. [return to top]

William J Mackwood

William Mackwood is co-founder and co-artistic director of Out of the Box Productions, a theatre company launched in Victoria, BC and now based in Toronto. Over the past five years he has led the design team for productions of The Third Taboo, Prior Engagement, Sound in Silence and most recently Opera Erotique. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Dance at York University, where he teaches production, lighting design for dance, dance video and intermedial performance. The heart of his research lies in developing meaningful stories told through a ‘performance fusion’ supported by sustainable ‘design on demand.’ Mackwood holds a BFA and an MFA in design from the University of Victoria, Canada. [return to top]

James McKernan

James McKernan is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at York University, Toronto. His teaching and research centre on stage technology, with a focus on seeking and implementing new, more ecologically responsible theatrical production techniques. Collaborating with industry partners, his contributions in the field include the establishment and production of Sustainable Technology Forums, an ongoing series of symposia that explore emerging and green theatre technologies and how they can be successfully integrated into live performance, and professional development workshops for stage designers, producers and technicians.

McKernan served as set designer for Out of the Box Productions’ Toronto production of Opera Erotique (2010). The show was designed and produced with a view to minimizing its environmental impact, and was used as a case study investigating the methodology and feasibility of sustainable theatrical scenography.An active member of the Canadian Institute of Theatre Technology, he shares his research on the Theatre Artisan Green Skills website. [return to top]

Damond Morris

Damond Morris is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oregon. His dissertation topic focuses on the Oregon Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. At the UO he served as production manager for Earth Matters on Stage under artistic director Theresa May. His Master’s thesis, "Towards a Recycled Theater: Industrial Ecology Applications in the Theater Industry", is an analysis of real-world answers to the problem of waste in the theatre industry. [return to top]

David Rayfield

David Rayfield combines his work as a scenic artist, designer and educator in theatre with a multidisciplinary art practice that investigates the aesthetic power and repurposing of the byproducts and waste material generated within his shop. [return to top]

Don Sinclair

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Seema Sueko

Seema Sueko is the artistic director of Mo`olelo, a community-focused, socially-conscious, Equity theatre company in San Diego, California. Her directing and acting credits include The Old Globe, Yale Rep, San Diego Rep, The 5th Avenue Theatre, among others. She developed Mo`olelo's greening initiative and consensus organizing methodologies, and is developing a play by Chantal Bilodeau about the intersection of race, poverty and climate change. [return to top]

Ian Theaker

Ian Theaker's engineering career has focused on green, energy-efficient buildings and communities for more than 25 years. He co-authored “Building Environmental Performance Assessment Criteria”, an early Canadian forerunner to LEED; created Green Building Design and Construction Guidelines for Santa Monica, California; provided technical support for the New Green Buildings BC program, piloting the creation of the first provincially-funded green buildings; and worked as a volunteer with Vancouver's EcoDesign Resource Society and Association of Energy Engineers to green Southeast False Creek, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics Athletes Village. He created Interface Engineering's energy simulation team in Portland Oregon, whose signature projects include the LEED-NC Platinum OHSU River Campus and Portland's Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan, an AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten winner.
Theaker worked with the Canada Green Building Council as its first LEED Program Manager, leading adaptation of the LEED rating systems for Canada. Ian is Principal of Integral Design / Engineering, which provides strategic advice and green consulting services to the development sector. [return to top]

Robert Usdin

Robert Usdin is president of Showman Fabricators in New York, a company which provides scenery and automation for theatre, television, live events and architectural projects. Recent projects include the Jimmy Fallon Show, Disney’s The Little Mermaid, FOX News and FOX Business Channels, Nike Soho Showroom, and on-going productions for TV Food Network.

Usdin is a LEED AP (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional) as well as a Certified Green Advantage Contractor. He has advised clients on opportunities to green their entertainment projects, written numerous articles about sustainability in the entertainment industry, and serves as the Broadway Green Alliance Pre-Production Committee Chair, as well as making numerous presentations regarding sustainability in the entertainment industry including LDI, CUNY Graduate Center, NYU and Yale. [return to top]

Victor Wolters

Victor Wolters is manager of technical services for performance facilities in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, Toronto. He previously worked as a theatre lighting director and touring lighting designer where he explored the intersection between entertainment lighting and sustainability. This is an aspect he has been involved with since his appointment in 1994 as mainstage lighting designer for the Hillside Festival in Guelph/Ont. — a community-based music festival with a strong commitment to sustainability. Wolters also explored sustainable lighting techniques while touring across North America with a low-watt custom-built fluorescent lighting rig with the Canadian rock band Sloan.

At York, Wolters is co-founder, with Professor James McKernan, of the Sustainable Technology Forums, an ongoing series of symposia that explore emerging, ecologically responsible theatre technologies and how they can be successfully integrated into live performance. [return to top]

Marie Zimmerman

Marie Zimmerman did her doctoral work in literature and cultural studies, which she taught for many years before jumping in to help local festivals in her community stage arts events. What started as volunteer work eventually became paid planning work. She has been the artistic director of the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, a planner and publicist for the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, and a volunteer for the Guelph Jazz Festival, the Festival of Moving Media and the Going Carbon-Neutral group. Currently, she is executive director of the Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario. [return to top]

 

Staged Readings

Cynthia Ashperger

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Chantal Bilodeau

Chantal Bilodeau is a New York-based playwright and translator originally from Montreal. Her works has been presented in theatres across the US as well as in Canada, Mexico and Italy. She has received fellowships from the Lark Play Development Center, the Dramatists Guild, the National Endowment for the Arts and, most recently, The Arctic Circle – an expeditionary residency program bringing together artists, architects, scientists and educators to collectively explore a region of the Arctic. Her translations include plays by Mohamed Kacimi (Algeria), Koffi Kwahulé (Côte d’Ivoire), Étienne Lepage (Québec) and Larry Tremblay (Québec).

Bilodeau is currently at work on The Arctic Cycle, a six-play cycle that looks at different facets of the Arctic and investigates how theatre can participate in addressing the social, economic and environmental challenges faced by communities on the frontline of climate change. [return to top]

Katie McCulloch

Katie McCulloch is a Toronto-based theatre artist, choreographer and performer. In 2010 she traveled to Unquillo, Argentina to complete an artist residency with Foundacion Pluja and organized and taught acting workshops for youth in Nova Scotia. She served as co-production manager on Opera Erotique (Out of the Box Productions) and, assistant director of the reading The Trial of Jeremy Hinzman (Jack Grinhaus) and has lent her skills to the Wrecking Ball and City of Wine. As a performer her recent credits include  Winnifred in The Witch of Edmonton, Frog in Ti Jean and his Brothers, choreographing and playing Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rhonda in Lion in the Streets, and Sandy Arbuckle in What is the Mango Project? at the Toronto Fringe Festival. She recently performed as a dancer in Toronto's Series 808 and the UofT Festival of Dance with The Disciples of Dance. She is presently directing and choreographing a new physical theatre piece (No Fit State) and will be working with Bound to Create Theatre this summer on a new play, Jenny's Room. She is currently completing her BFA in acting at York University. [return to top]

Jade Rosina McCutcheon

Jade Rosina McCutcheon’s directing credits include over 50 productions at venues such as: the NIDA Theatre, Sydney; the Adelaide Festival; Bay Street Theatre; Wharf Theatre; Sydney Theatre Company; Colorado College Theatre; and Mondavi Center, UC Davis. McCutcheon developed a shamanic approach to acting as part of her doctorate from University of Technology, Sydney, and has presented workshops and papers on her work at conferences around the world. She has also directed and devised numerous productions for local and regional theatres, youth theatres, and educational institutions. A visiting scholar at New York's Tisch School of the Arts in 1996, she is currently co-convenor of the Performance and Consciousness working group for the International Federation of Theatre Research. Her research revolves around actor training, consciousness, the relationship between actor and audience, and theatre as a tool of communication.

McCutcheon received a prestigious grant from the Office of Research Integrity, ORI (located within the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services) for the development of laboratory management training materials that will make online and face-to-face instruction widely available to graduate students, postdocs, faculty and other personnel. Co P.I. with Dr. John Galland, P.I. (http://learning.ucdavis.edu/LabAct/). She was awarded the Rod Rose Award in 2008 from the International Society of Research Administrators.

Recent publications include: Awakening the Performing Body, Rodopi Press. “Theatre:Re-assessing the Sacred in Actor Training”, chapter in Performing Consciousness, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. “Post Human Interactivity on the Global Stage: The Culture of Simulation”, chapter in Performing Consciousness, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ‘Intuition as the Receptive Other’ chapter for ‘Technologies and Intuition’, YYZ Books, Montreal. ‘Actors as Teachers’McCutcheon and Galland. Article in PostDocket, vol.4 issue2‘New Institute Provides Research Leadership and Management Training For Postdoctoral scholars’. McCutcheon and Galland. article in Nature vol.440 ‘Under (Below) Standing Consciousness’ chapter in ‘Consciousness Theatre, Literature and the Arts’ Oxford Scholars Press. The Elephant’s Graveyard is McCutcheon’s first professionally produced play (Mondavi Centre, Davis,CA). [return to top]