John Turner >
Michael Kennard >
Karen Hines >
JOHN TURNER
John is best known
as the "Smoot" half of the award winning Canadian clown duo Mump & Smoot,
who have delighted audiences throughout North America for the past 20
years. After three sold out fringe festival tours in 1989, '90, '92 Mump
& Smoot have gone on to play regional theatres across the continent
with great success. These theatres include the Astor Place Theater (Off
Broadway), Yale Repertory Theater, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Dallas
Theater Center, the American Repertory Theater (Boston), Baltimore Center
Stage, the Canadian Stage in Toronto, Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary,
and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre to name but a few.
John began teaching the Pochinko
style of clown in 1991 at Equity Showcase in Toronto. He taught there
for 7 years before opening his own studio, The SPACE, with Michael Kennard
(Mump) where he continued to teach, direct, and work on Mump & Smoot
shows for the next 6 years. He currently teaches at Laurentian University
in the innovative Programme d'Arts d'Expression and throughout the summer
on his farm on Manitoulin Island (see The Clown Farm website at www.theclownfarm.com).
He also has had ongoing teaching gigs at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre
(5 years) and the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Company (past 5 years). Other
teaching stints have included the Yale School of Drama Graduate Program
where he was an associate artist for seven years, Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health (Workman Theatre Project), the University of Tel Aviv,
Bishops University, the University of Guelph, California State University,
Michigan Tech, the Humber Comedy Centre and the Stratford Festival.
John is also the director of Karen Hines' Citizen
Pochsy, one of the acclaimed trilogy of Pochsy
Plays on which John has collaborated for over
a decade, (recently nominated for the Governor General's Award for Drama).
Other directing credits include the workshop production of Michael Kennard's Puzzle Me Red,
Emelia Symington Fedy's Patti Fedy in
Lovers Rock, Clown
& Such... at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre,
Tomson Highway's A Trickster Tale for the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group, Louis Negin's The
Boy Scouts' Manual, Susanna Hamnet's Lacrimosa,
and Linda Brokenshire's The Lecture and The Hero.
Along with his long time partner and collaborator Michael
Kennard, John has used his extensive performance and show creation experience
to create more advanced workshops specifically designed for the student
that wishes to use this work in a professional capacity. Some are performance
oriented and some are creation oriented but there are as many reasons
for taking them as there are students.
MICHAEL KENNARD
Michael is best known as performer and co-creator,
with John Turner of the Canadian clown duo, Mump
& Smoot. Their shows have enjoyed great success in the Fringe
Festivals as well as at the Yale Repertory Theatre, the American Repertory
Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Dallas
Theatre Centre, Off-Broadway in N.Y. and most recently at Canadian Stage
in Toronto. Michael has been teaching in Toronto at The SPACE-Studio for
Physical and Clown Exploration for the past six years. Prior to that,
Michael taught clown at Equity Showcase in Toronto for seven years. Michael
and John have also taught at the University of Tel Aviv, Bishops University,
the Yale School of Drama in the graduate program where they are associate
artists, and at California State University. Michael is a graduate from
the University of Guelph Drama program and has studied extensively in
clown, improvisation, movement, physical comedy, and bouffon with Richard
Pochinko, Ian Wallace, Phillipe Gaulier, Fiona Griffiths, John Towsen
and The Second City. Michael’s directing credits include; The
Christmas Carol, The
Hobbit and The
Wizard of Oz at The Globe Theatre in Regina,
iand The Second City’s Family Circus
Maximus and Insanity Fair in Toronto. He has also directed
many clown based shows including, Chandeleirva, Penitentiary of Love, The
Burnt Marshmallows in Stuck, Mamakin, The World of Tocar, and Rutabagan
in Downtown.
KAREN HINES
Karen Hines is an award-winning
performer, writer and director. Her acclaimed theatre company, Keep
Frozen: Pochsy Productions, presents Hines’ highly theatrical,
absurdist, satirical, neo-cabarets and comedies, including Pochsy’s
Lips, Oh, baby
(Pochsy’s Adventures by the Sea), and Citizen
Pochsy (Head Movements of a Long-Haired Girl).
These solo satires have been presented across Canada and in the U.S. at
venues including One Yellow Rabbit, Factory Theatre, Actors Theatre of
Louisville, Dallas Theatre Centre and Alice’s in New York. Now published
together, The Pochsy Plays (published by Coach House Books) have received numerous production and
literary awards and nominations, including the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Alberta
Writer's Guild Award, and finalist for the Governor General's Literary
Award for Drama.
Karen also wrote the musical play Hello
... Hello (A Romantic Satire), and co-composed
it with her long-time collaborator Greg Morrison. Hello...Hello was presented at Factory Theatre and by the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto,
and has been nominated for six Dora Mavor Moore Awards, three Canadian
Comedy Awards, and for the Chalmers Award for play writing.
Karen has been a long-time collaborator with Canadian horror clown duo Mump & Smoot,
and is the Dora Award-winning director of all of their productions to
date, including Caged, Ferno, Something
Else and Flux;
from the Fringe Festivals to CanStage, from Yale Rep to the La Jolla Playhouse.
Karen has been a series regular on Ken Finkleman’s acclaimed television
series The Newsroom (CBC), she co-starred in his mini-series Foreign
Objects (Rhombus) and in his teleplay Escape from the Newsroom (CBC). and starred
in his cult hit Married Life (Comedy Central/Atlantis), for which her performance was nominated for
CableAce and Gemini awards. Other credits include The
Second City, Angels
in America (Canadian Stage) Swollen
Tongues (Necessary Angel), The
Drowsy Chaperone (Mirvish Productions), Hedwig
and the Angry Inch (Killer Films), Man
of the Year (Barry Levinson) and Douglas Coupland's September 10 (Royal Shakespeare Company).
Other directing credits include Linda Griffiths' Age of Arousal (ATP) and Darren O'Donnell's Over (Buddies, Toronto), as well as master classes and seminars at Yale University, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Queens University and at the Universities of York, Victoria, Toronto and others.
She wrote, directed, produced and performed in the short film, My Name is
Pochsy: An Industrial Film (Bravo!FACT 2007), one in a series of short films in development featuring the character “Pochsy.” She is currently writing her first feature-length black comedy, Crazy Like a Girl.
For extra information on Karen please visit www.pochsy.org
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