Mump & Smoot in "Something Else" - photo by Gary Mulcahey

Teacher Bios

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. She has also taught clowning and bouffon across Canada, and has given seminars at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and at the Yale School of Drama.

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).

Most recently she has directed Linda Griffiths' Age of Arousal at ATP's PlayRites Festival, and is currently writing an Ideas episode for CBC, and completing the third in a series of short films about Pochsy.