Professor James McKernan, is a scenic carpenter and a professor at York University. He’sbuilt over 200 hundred shows which include: films, live theatre and dance, trade show displays and custom items for performance pieces. Along with his BFA in Theatre Production from York, James received a B.Ed. from OISE at U of T and started teaching at an arts high school in the GTA; from there he got my job at York. He still builds shows to support research, dabbles in sound design and production manages the odd show. Really, he just likes solving problems.
Category Archives: Behind the Scenes
Spotlight on Faculty: Heather Fitzsimmons Frey
1) Who are you? My name is Heather Fitzsimmons Frey and I am a Banting Post-Doctoral Fellow at York. I’m working with Marlis Schweitzer in Theatre Studies in Art, Media, Performance and Design. One of the reasons she is a great mentor for me is that we are both interested in performance-based historiography—that is, the …
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Spotlight on Faculty: Marlis Schweitzer
1. Who are you? I’m Marlis Schweitzer, and I’m a theatre and performance historian and love spending time in archives looking at scrapbooks, photographs, letters, and other documents from the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The weirdest “object” I’ve encountered during my time researching at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC was a well-preserved piece …
PlayGround Artistic Directors Kat Francis and Mackenzie Taylor
The 25th Annual PlayGround Festival took place from the 7th of February till the 10th. We wanted people to find out more about the behind the scenes of the festival, so we met up with the Artistic Directors Kat Francis and Mackenzie Taylor and asked them some questions about the shows. What kind of shows …
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2016-17 Season Advisory Panel
We are delighted that the following artist/scholars have joined our Advisory Panel for the 2016-17 season, which has the thematic focus Extraordinary Lives: Difference and Ability. Sage Willow Sage Willow is a local multidisciplinary queer non-binary Deaf artist and educator. Aside from their community work, they also provide performance interpreting in ASL for the local community, …
“Peeping” at Toronto Nuit Blanche
Theatre Prof Paul Lampert and course director Niki Landau‘s Theatre PANIK Art Project present PEEP, a live photography and performance-art drag show, at 2015 Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto. Inspired by the original peep shows, when people gathered around “wonder boxes” to peer at lit-up images (both popular and forbidden), PEEP feastures recreations of 10 iconic …
Scenes by Design Opens this Week with the Companion Redux Project
The Theatre Department’s annual exhibition showcasing the work of the Design and Production area, Scenes by Design, opens on Tuesday, March 31st, 2015 at 6:00 pm in the Joseph G Green Theatre. Scenes by Design offers an insider’s look at the creative work done behind the scenes before the curtain rises on a stage production. The exhibition …
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Get Ready for the 2015 Devised Theatre Festival this week!
Devised Theatre Festival 2015 presents an evening of three original, one-act performances exploring conflicts in relationships between family, friends, and oneself. THE FRAGMENT COLLECTIVE: Two characters, Fear and Curiosity, lead the audience into a metaphorical exploration of the battle in an artist’s mind. AUTOSLAM CREATIONS: Dear Mandy is an autobiographical look at body image and …
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Join us for Ted Hughes’s Tales From Ovid
A selection of tales from Ted Hughes’s Tales From Ovid. The blind folly of man forces divine transformation. Come witness the spirit world as seen through the eyes of the blind prophet. This epic by former British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes features thrilling stories of literal human transformation, dramatic acts of violence, and very angry …
Meet the Playground Artistic Directors
As you may have heard, the 23rd Annual playground Festival is coming to the Joseph G. Green Theatre this week from Tuesday, February 10th to Friday February 13th, 2015. If you haven`t heard about it (are you living under a rock?!) please click HERE for more information about the shows! Great! Now that you’re all …
