This special The Bellows episode features carpenter Kevin Hutson, our moderator, joining writer/director Kat Sandler, technical director Dean Johnson, independent producer Aislinn Rose, technician and stage manager Pip Bradford, and designer and technician Rebecca Vandevelde discussing how to work with your friends while remaining professional. It was recorded live at Theatre Passe Muraille on January 18th. The first 10 minutes of the introductions was lost because SOMEone forgot to hit record: it happens. This audio starts with with Rebecca Vandevelde introducing herself. As well, the audio has been panned in order to facilitate the identification of the speaker with the audio field being layed out as they presented: Kevin, Kat (who joins later), Dean, Aislinn, Pip, and Rebecca.
Bios
Kevin Hutson
Kevin is the head carpenter at The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto and one of the founders of The Bellows. Kevin has also performed as a production manager, technical director, lighting designer and general technician in Toronto for may years.
Dean Johnson
Dean is a technical director, carpenter and technician in Toronto. He freelances as a technician at Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Direct, Roseneath Theatre, St. Michael’s College. He has worked as production stage manager for Theatre Brouhaha for Punch-Up, We are the Bomb, The Unseen Hand and has also lent a hand on a few other Brouhaha productions.
Kat Sandler
Kat is a writer/actor/director working in Toronto. She is the Artistic Director of Theatre Brouhaha, and has staged six or her original plays; LOVESEXMONEY (Next Stage Festival), Help Yourself (Best of Fringe, winner of the Fringe New Play Contest), Delicacy (Summerworks), Rock (Storefront Theatre), We Are the Bomb (Toronto Fringe, Sucker (Storefront Theatre) and directed Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton, and The Unseen Hand (Playwrights Project). As an actor she has appeared onstage with Theatre Gargantua in the world premieres of FiBBer and Imprints. She is a graduate of Queen’s University. Kat will be writing Retreat while in Tarragon’s Playwrights Unit.
Aislinn Rose
Aislinn is an independent producer, theatre maker, member of the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts’ Board of Directors, and Co-Chair of TAPA’s Indie Caucus. She recently joined the producing team for Luminato’s 2013 festival as Associate Producer, and produced the festival’s L’Allegro by the Mark Morris Dance Group, Feng Yi Ting directed by Atom Egoyan, and Ronnie Burkett’s The Daisy Theatre. This year she will be guest curating Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH 2014 season along with her Praxis Theatre colleague, Michael Wheeler.
As the Artistic Producer of Praxis Theatre & Co-Editor of praxistheatre.com, she led the Open Source Theatre Project for Section 98 at Harbourfront Centre, created the experimental Dungeons & Dragons (not) The Musical, was Artistic Producer of You Should Have Stayed Home, and Producer for Jesus Chrysler in Association with Theatre Passe Muraille. She will be producing their upcoming cross Canada tour of You Should Have Stayed Home in Whitehorse, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. She and Michael Wheeler were named Theatre VIPs for 2012 by Toronto paper, The Grid, after having been named “People to watch” that year by Torontoist.
Last year she produced Aluna Theatre’s inaugural PANAMERICAN ROUTES Festival of Theatre for Human Rights, and was Co-Producer with Fides Krucker on the electroacoustic opera Julie Sits Waiting (nominated for 5 Dora Awards including Outstanding Production – Opera/Musical). Other recent projects include producing The Lesson For Modern Times Stage Company (nominated for 8 Dora Awards, including Outstanding Production).
Social media experiments include working as a consultant & online creator for the sold-out run of Michael Healey’s Proud and developing “The Brain”, the online counterpart for Liza Balkan’s Out The Window for The Theatre Centre’s biennial Free Fall Festival.
Aislinn is the recent recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development grant as an Independent Theatre Producer.
Sarah ‘Pip’ Bradford
Pip has lived and worked in the Toronto theatre community for the past five years. She freelances as a technician and stage manager for many companies in Toronto, including The Randolph Academy of the Performing Arts, Aluna Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, Steady State Theatre, and the Toronto Fringe. Pip has a BA in Technical Theatre and Scenography from The University of King’s College in Halifax, is the founder of Art Is Hard, a grassroots arts philanthropy project, and sits on the board of Steady State Theatre Project.
Rebecca Vandevelde
Rebecca is a designer, technician, and anything-manager based in Toronto. Career highlights include creating interactive installations like Flip the Table with Art is Hard, PM/TD with Theatre Columbus/Common Boots, lighting design for Broadfish (Hatch at Harbourfront Centre), production SM for You Should Have Stayed Home (Praxis) video co-design for Red Snow (Red Snow Collective at the Shanghai International Contemporary Theatre Festival & Theatre Passe Muraille); an apprenticeship in lighting/video design with Trevor Schwellnus; and production work for many festivals. She holds a BA in Drama, History and speaking French sometimes from Glendon College at York.