Support Material for Nuit Blanche
Housing Deeds is a citizen documentary. The project draws on our respective experiences making interactive and public performance works. This page provides examples of previous works that we’ve created that focus on creating immersive and public collaboration experiences.
Five Support Material Items
Co-Creator examples: Cole Lewis
Co-Creator examples: Patrick Blenkarn
Co-Producer examples: Mammalian Diving Reflex
Accessibility Dramaturg: Emily Macrae
Collaborator examples: Helen Yung + Tom Kuo + Sam Ferguson
1. Cole Lewis
Cole Lewis (she/her) is a mom and mad theatre artist from St. Catharines, Ontario. She specializes in creating live performance from design ideas, exploring new modes of storytelling, and fusing technologies to the stage. Her practice includes directing, playwriting, and the design of moving image works. She is Co-Artistic Director of Guilty by Association. Twice nominated for Dora-Awards, Cole’s practice uses humour, design, and technology to explore notions of violence, expose questions of bias, and unsettle standard conceptions of ‘truth’ to explore alternative futures. She has an MFA in Directing from Yale and her thoughts on performance have been shared at LMDA, Howlround, FOLDA, Yale CCAM, and Canadian Theatre Review.
RECENT: Co-created 2021 at Tarragon Theatre’s 2024 Greenhouse Festival. Began a new play about social welfare and neoliberalism at Caravan Farm Theatre’s 2024 National Playwright Retreat. Co-researched Dramaturges of the Unreal through Nightswimming’s 2024 PureResearch. Lead Artist Mentor (2023 + 2024) for Suitcase in the Point’s Electric Innovations program. Attended 2023 LaMama Umbria with Thomas Ostermeier, Iman Aoun, Dmitry Krymov, and Keng Sen Ong. Completed the first draft of Grief Redux for Stratford Festival (seed commission). Adapted Kyo Maclear’s Virginia Wolf for Montreal’s Geordie Theatre.
SELECT DIRECTING/CREATION: Wrote and directed 1991 which was presented by Why Not Theatre’s RISER Project through Guilty by Association. Conceived and directed these violent delights at SummerWorks. Wrote and directed Moderato Cantabile at SummerWorks. Directed the Canadian premiere of Anne Carson’s Antigonick at SummerWorks. Led the devising process and directed AGMI at ArsNova’s AntFest. Originated the direction and co-wrote Suitcase in Point’s Dora nominated Keith Richards: A One Woman Show.
SELECT INTERDISCIPLINARY: Development Workshop for Untitled Visit, an exploration in VR and MoCap, with GbA and Lauren Dubowski at Yale’s CCAM. Directed Redshift Music Society’s Still Life Continuum at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre. In collaboration with Niagara Artists Centre, directed Canada’s largest wearable art show, STRUTT and The Wine King Parade Float designed by graphic novelist, Seth.
STRUTT (2008-2011)
directed by Cole Lewis
Seth Float (2009)
directed by Cole Lewis
Still Life Continuum (2018)
created by Redshift Society; directed by Cole Lewis
2. Patrick Blenkarn
Patrick Blenkarn (Vancouver) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, and economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books.
His work and collaborations have been featured in performance festivals, galleries, museums, and film festivals, including the Festival TransAmériques (Montreal), the PuSh Festival (Vancouver), Inteatro Festival (Ancona), Mayfest (Bristol), Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, the Humboldt Forum (Berlin), Festival of Live Digital Art (Kingston), STAGES Festival (Halifax), Banff Centre for the Arts, Risk/Reward (Portland), SummerWorks (Toronto), RISER Projects (Toronto), and the Festival of Recorded Movement (Vancouver). In 2020, he was nominated for Best Projection Design at Toronto’s Dora Awards. In 2022, his work with Milton Lim, asses.masses, received the National Creation Fund from the National Arts Centre of Canada.
Patrick has frequently been an artist in residence at galleries and theatres around the world, including The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), the Spitsbergen Artist Center (Svalbard), GlogauAIR (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver), Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland), VIVO Media Arts (Vancouver), and The Theatre Centre (Toronto).
Patrick is also the co-founder of and a key archivist for videocan, Canada’s video archive of performance documentation. He has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King's College and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. His writings on the politics of theatre have been published in Performance Matters, Theatre Research in Canada, GUTS, SpiderWebShow, and Canadian Theatre Review.
FUNFUG FORUM (2025)
created by Patrick Blenkarn + Milton Lim
Developed in collaboration with high school students at Thomas Mann Gymnasium, FUNFUG FORUM is an Escape Room x Scavenger Hunt in Berlin’s Humboldt Forum exploring the rules and behaviours of cultural and historical institutions. Curated by Darren O’Donnell (Mammalian Diving Reflex) and Alice Flemming. (Unfug, in German, means horseplay or nonsense. Funfug is just Unfug with an extra dose of “Fun”.)
asses.masses (2023)
created by Patrick Blenkarn + Milton Lim
asses.masses is a custom-made video game designed to be played on stage by a live audience; an epic narrative about the struggles of unemployed asses navigating the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant; and a collaborative journey designed to be experienced in its totality, from beginning to end in one sitting, over 7+ hours and 10 episodes. It currently tours internationally in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Turkish. Patrick is the translation manager.
culturecapital (2018-present)
created by Patrick Blenkarn + Milton Lim
culturecapital is a competitive card game about performing arts economies that is developed with real public funding data and an extensive interview process with local artists and arts workers.
Soliloquy in English (2016)
created by Patrick Blenkarn
Soliloquy in English is a documentary-book about the English language designed to be read by a small group of readers. It is printed on paper handmade from a destroyed Oxford Dictionary.
3. Co-Producer: Mammalian Diving Reflex
Led by Darren O’Donnell, Mammalian creates performances by looking for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. We create site and social-specific performance events, theatre productions, participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds by bringing people together in new and unusual ways. Their most well known works include:
You’re invited to take part in an event that will test your courage and faith in the future through a whimsical relational performance that playfully engages with the enfranchisement of children, trust in the younger generation, and the thrills and chills of vanity.
Through the power of walking, teens and adults are brought together for a unique social experience in a shared place and time, following common paths and connected futures.
Teens collide with courageous artists to reach across the gaping intergenerational chasm, to see if they can connect even just the tips of their fingers and, together, have a very frank discussion about three of the most confusing topics in the universe.
A community of wise elders offer advice gleaned from their vast life expertise. Our elders have a lot to teach us and a lot to share, while showing that aging can yield a way of being open, generous and fearless.
4. Accessibility Dramaturg:
Emily Macrae
Emily Macrae is a disabled writer, organizer, and twin. Having lived and worked in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver, and rural Quebec, her work combines policy analysis and lived experience to build accessible urban and digital environments. Her words have appeared in Canadian Architect, Spacing, and NOW magazines, as well as publications in Britain and the United States. Jenny Hiseler is an accessibility professional who started her career as a wheelchair technician. Since then, she has worked with architects and designers, arts groups, universities, and more to make policies, spaces, things, and events more accessible. She still keeps tape measures at her desk.
5. Collaborators:
Helen Yung (Scenography)
Helen (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, researcher and consultant. Helen’s multifaceted practice is rooted in an approach she calls Marginalia: a reflective practice of commentary, connection, creativity and criticality. Interactions, installations (environments) and interventions emerge from the margins of policies, situations and intersectional issues. In 2016, she was named a Global Cultural Innovator by Salzburg Global and Canada Council for the Arts. She has been honoured with nominations for the Toronto Dora awards in the general theatre section (Outstanding Production, Scenic Design, Costume Design, and Lighting Design) and Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Helen has been presented and supported through commissions, grants and residencies by organizations in Canada, Germany, USA, France, Argentina, UK and Australia.
Tom Kuo (Technical Director)
Tom (he/him) is an award-winning audio-visual designer, curator, producer, technical director and installation artist. A versatile professional Tom has worked across the spectrum of experimental, fine arts, performing arts, techno culture, and commercial branding contexts. His graduate project at the CFC Media Lab was called PaCuBox, an urban outdoor gallery system designed to engage participatory cultural responses from the public. The project was selected for presentation at the Cultural Olympiad in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. His clients and collaborators are diverse, ranging from leading theatre and dance companies to award-winning creative agencies. His practice has been anthologized in books by music scholars and legends such as Denise Benson, Dr. Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker.
In 2021, Tom made his debut with Vancouver Mural Fest (VMF) as their inaugural Curator for the world’s first-ever augmented reality festival. VMF Winter Arts transformed 17 public spaces across Vancouver into an open-air gallery featuring 24 AR artworks, by local and international artists, including Syrus Marcus Ware, Indigenous Matriarchs 4 Media Lab, Mediah, Extra Crunch, Will Selviz, and Casey Koyczan. In partnership with Vancouver Public Library (VPL), free online public workshops and discussions highlighted participating artists, and offered opportunities for dialogue and connection around the artwork. Topics included: “How Is Indigenous Storytelling Transforming Immersive Technology?”, “Get To Know The Artists Behind VMF Winter Arts”, and “Augmenting Your Art: How To Get Started As An AR Creator.”
Tom is a founding member of the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence where he has mentored Indigenous youth, created music with newcomers, produced an outdoor community performance, and helped other members and collaborators workshop their ideas.
SAM FERGUSON (SOUND DESIGNER)
Sam Ferguson is an award-winning sound designer/composer from Toronto. After moving to Vancouver to study under acclaimed electroacoustic music composer Berry Truax he returned to Toronto where he became involved with theatre. This experience led him to enroll in the Yale School of Drama where he received an MFA for sound design. Since graduating he has returned to Toronto and has been working in the industry ever since.
In addition to his theatrical work Sam has also been involved with audio postproduction on several documentaries/films, teaching microphone technique at Toronto Metropolitan University as well as the development of creative digital signal processing.
Previous credits include The Visit (Iseman Theater), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf (Centaur Theatre), 1991 (The Theatre Centre), Boy’s Girls and other Mythological Creatures (FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre), Philosophers wool (documentary), Love, Oran (Super Channel/ Amazon) and Mom Jail (short, winner of the HFX 72hour film challenge).