PICK 7

Pick 7 has finished for the season - thanks so much to those that came out and to those that participated and we look forward to seeing you in the fall.

Past Editions:
Tuesday Feb. 28 2006 - John Patrick Robichaud and Valerie Calam
Tuesday January 24 2006 - Shary Boyle and Alissa York
Wednesday November 16 - Susie Burpee + Darren O'Donnell
Wednesday October 19 - Kevin Rees-Cummings + Scott Maynard
Thursday September 22 - Nadia Ross + George Acheson

Curated by: Jen Johnson, Ame Henderson, Meagan O'Shea, Jacob Zimmer

Administrative Support: Katherine Harris

Supported by the Toronto Arts Council

ARTIST BIO's

John Patrick Robichaud graduated from York University's Visual Arts program in 1997, and has been working as a stage manager and lighting designer in Toronto's independent theatre scene ever since. He has stage managed for such companies as Mammalian Diving Reflex, STO Union, Volcano, DNA Theatre, and Theatre Smith-Gilmour, both in Canada and around the world. His performance work is primarily time-based, and plays with ideas of stillness, suspension, tension, and endurance. He created performed sculptures for the 2002 and 2003 Rhubarb! festivals at Buddies In Bad Times, as well as a piece for Artscape's Red Light performance event this past September. He will be performing every Sunday night in this year's Rhubarb! Festival, and is working on a new piece he hopes to perform this summer. He can be reached at troismarteauxATgmailDOTcom, or through his blog, troismarteaux.blogspot.com.

Originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Valerie Calam moved to Toronto to study at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program, as a scholarship student. Ms. Calam worked with the Danny Grossman Dance Company during their 98/99 season. In 1999 Valerie joined Toronto Dance Theatre and is currently in her seventh year with the company. She has worked independently with David Earle, DNA Theatre, Sharon Moore, Sasha Ivanochko, Michael Trent, CORPUS and Julia Alpin. She has also choreographed her own works, recently presenting a new solo in the Series 8:08 Season Finale this past April. She just finished "Danny Grossman's Greatest Hits Volume 1" in performance, and her most recent choreographic piece was for the "Four at the Winch" mixed program in October 2005. In addition to dance, Ms. Calam has been studying audio sequencing, video editing and projections, to incorporate into her choreography.

Shary Boyle is a Toronto-based artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture and live “projected light” performance. In 2005 she presented a celebrated art/ music collaboration with Feist at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, researched the origins of European porcelain in eastern Germany, performed “live drawing” for the Sonar Festival in Barcelona and maintained a painting studio in Tampere, Finland. Foreign residence and travel is central to her creative methodology, her images map an intensely personal location within international transience. Boyle’s porcelain sculptures have been recently acquired by The National Gallery of Canada, and her work is featured in the Los Angeles drawing anthology Kramer’s Ergot #6, to be published in Spring 2006.

Alissa York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, writer/filmmaker Clive Holden. Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, and in the collection, Any Given Power, published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing in 1999. Her first novel, Mercy, published by Random House Canada in 2003, was a Canadian bestseller. The Dutch edition appeared later that year, and the US edition was released in fall, 2004. York has recently completed a novel entitled Effigy, to be published by Random House Canada in 2007.

Susie Burpee is a Toronto-based choreographer, dancer, and teacher.Originally from Manitoba, she trained at the Senior Professional Program ofContemporary Dancers, and augmented her studies at the Cunningham and Limon Schools in New York. She was a company member of Ruth Cansfield Dance, Le Groupe Dance Lab, and is presently in her fifth season with Dancemakers. Independently, she has danced for Yvonne Coutts, Lesandra Dodson, Sasha Ivanochko, Tedd Robinson, and other prominent Canadian artists. Ms.Burpee’s choreographic works are distinct in their theatrical sensibility and development of character, and they have been performed at the Canada Dance Festival, National Gallery of Canada, Dusk Dances, and Harbourfront Centre. Her last creation, Mischance and Fair Fortune, received Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Choreography and Outstanding Performance. Recent projects include rehearsal direction for Platform 33 (a collective for international artistic exchange), and a collaborative duet with award-winning pianist Sageev Oore, titled Miniature Suite for Ground Owls. Ms. Burpee teaches contemporary dance at Dancemakers, 509 Collective, and Canadian Children’s Dance Theatre, and she is a board member of the Dance Umbrella of Ontario.

Darren O’Donnell is a writer, director, social acupuncturist, designer and artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His shows include A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, Diplomatic Immunities, pppeeeaaaccceee, [boxhead], White Mice, Over, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Radio Rooster Says That’s Bad and Mercy! He has organized The Toronto Strategy Meetings, a durational project focusing on self-responsibility as a social act, The Talking Creature, a continuing experiment in public discourse and the upcoming Haircuts by Children, an event offering free haircuts to the public by children aged 8-12 years. He was the 2000 winner of the Pauline McGibbon Award for directing, the 2000 Gabriel Award for broadcasting and has been nominated for a number of Dora Awards for his writing, directing, and acting, winning for his design of White Mice. His first novel, Your Secrets Sleep with Me was published on May 6, 2004 and has been called by The Chicago Reader "a bible for the dispossessed, a prophecy so full of hope it's crushing".

Kevin Rees-Cummings
Born and raised in various outskirts of the GTA. Since having fled the suburbs Kevin has worked in capacities ranging from dish scrub to carpenter. He even once carried a badge as a civilian employee of the Peel Regional Police Force.
As a theatre artist he has performed for Clay & Paper Theatre: Mael Duin, Green Man's Return, Fornax DNA theatre: Phalanx, 3 Prong Attack, Pas de 2 a 6, the Oomph Group: Aureola, [email protected] 3.1, Die in Debt/Platform 9: Metropolis, Megatropolis, Modern Times Stage Co.:Bloom. in thy Spite, Cauchemar Deli/ Theatre Centre: Severe Blow to the Head. Also: Aminta, Crux, Crave, Bunnyfucker, Harlequin (Then & Now), Woo: Cases of Bloodletting and Natural Selection, and many more.
As a dancer he has worked for several choreographers including: Allison Rees-Cummings, DA Hoskins, Kate Alton, Julia Sasso, Justine Chambers, Eryn Dace Trudell & Cathy Gordon.
Kevin has co-founded two companies: HammerHeadBrand with director/ dramaturge/ academic Sam Stedman, that produced his five plays to date: Fast, Spite, Rabid (winner 2001 Summerworks Jury Award), Madder, and Oubliette
With fellow writer/actor Sean MacMahon he founded emergency.exit whose 8 projects: i like you, where you are now, Telescope (short film with live music), ULTRASOUND, not for all this (a little anthem before the lights go out), 8:00, Calgary Air-Show: 1975, and in-flight movie have been extremely successful, and been performed in Toronto, Montreal and Tehran
Most recently he is a collaborator and performer with the multi-disciplinary group bluemouth inc. in their 5 hour epic Something About a River which ran for 3 very successful weeks in November 2003. The company later won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Independent Theatre Production for this same piece. With bluemouth inc. Kevin has also collaborated on and performed in What the Thunder Said and Memory of Bombs.
As of November 2004 Kevin is also a published writer, a monologue from his play Rabid has been published in a collection of monologues for women titled She Speaks edited by Judith Thompson, published by Playwright's Canada Press.
Kevin also works as a theatre technician, draws, makes puppets, occasionally proof-reads, and is learning how to play as many instruments as possible.

Scott Maynard has been involved with music his whole life. As a boy he sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. Highlights include recordings with Elton John, the soundtrack for "The Falcon and the Snowman", and the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana. He studied classical piano for many years, and later improv with Casey Sokol, co-founder of the music gallery. He is a self-taught guitarist, bassist and drummer and has recorded and toured with the likes of By Divine Right, DoMakeSayThink and Selina Martin. He currently plays with Rock Plaza Central, Reflectiostack, and writes/records his own material under The Quiet Revolution. He also sings with the Tallis Choir and composes choral music. He has contributed music to the Oomph group, the Rhubarb festival, and the PLS, and has recently performed at the Red Cabaret and the Bang Sonic Threesomes. He makes his living as a teacher.

Nadia Ross is the Artistic Director and founder of STO Union Theatre (Toronto, Ontario) and a member of The Nature Residence collective in Wakefield, Quebec.
Her work as a director, writer, actor and producer includes 'Recent Experiences' (a collaboration with Jacob Wren), which premiered in 2000 (Toronto) and has since toured numerous international theatre festivals including: Le Festival de Théâtre des Amériques (Montreal); Theater der Welt (Germany); Vienna Festwochen (Austria); The Hong Kong Arts Festival (Hong Kong); The Melbourne International Theatre Festival (Australia); Kunsten Festival des Arts (Belgium); The Simple Life Festival (Berlin); Theater Mousonturm (Frankfurt); Theater Regentes (The Hague) and The Belfast Festival at Queen's (Ireland). 'Recent Experiences' has been independently produced in Iran (Tehran Center for Dramatic Arts) and in Stuttgart (Stuttgart Stadt Theater). Her new production (again with Jacob Wren), 'Revolutions in Therapy', premiered at the Montreal International Festival FTA/Théâtres du Monde in May 2004 and was presented in Toronto in June 2005 followed by a European premiere at Theater der Welt in Stuttgart, Germany. ‘Recent Experiences’ and ‘Revolutions in Therapy’ continue to tour worldwide.
Awards: As a writer, she won the Chalmer's Award in 1995 for 'The Alistair Trilogy' (with collaborator Diane Cave) and STO Union received a 1995 Dora Award (sound design for Richard Ferren) for 'Excerpts From The Emo Journals' (both productions at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto). As a performer, she won a Dora Mavor Moore Award (Toronto) for her ensemble work on 'The Lorca Play', and was nominated for Best Actress for 'The Alistair Trilogy'. She also won a number of academic awards at the University of Toronto and is a graduate thereof.
She has performed in independent Canadian short films and is currently working as a writer, producer and director on the documentary: 'This Far Apart' (a collaboration with architect Janine Debanné).
Along with touring STO Union plays, she is currently working on video and print projects with The Nature Residence collective.

George Acheson
Raised in a military family, George changed cities and countries every few years. Travel is still a big part of his life. He graduated from George Brown College as a hairdresser and barber. Later, he studied at the Toronto School of Art. He's worked as a writer/editor, painter and as a stylist. He now resides in Wakefield, Quebec and is a founding member of WAC, a multi-disciplinary artists collective.