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Welcome Manitoulin
Summer Program
Teacher Bios

Mump & Smoot in Flux

Karen Hines as Pochsy 
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John Turner-
Artistic Director
JOHN
TURNER is best known as the "Smoot" half
of Mump & Smoot,
along with Michael Kennard ("Mump"). This award winning Canadian clown
duo has delighted audiences throughout North America for the past 21 years. After
three sold out Fringe Festival tours in 1989, 1990, and 1992, Mump & Smoot went
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 where he continued to teach, direct, and work on Mump & Smoot shows
for the next 6 years. He currently teaches primarily at Laurentian University
in the innovative Programme d'Arts d'Expression and throughout the summer on the
farm on Manitoulin Island. 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 Michael Kennard's Puzzle Me Red,
Miriam Cusson and Mélissa Rockburn's Stuff,
Diana Kolpak's Lionheart, Emelia Symington
Fedy's Patti Fedy in Lovers Rock. For
the De-ba-jeh-mu-jig Theatre Group, John
directed the workshop and full production of The
Gulch, as well as Tomson Highway's A
Trickster Tale. John also directed Clown
& Such... at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Louis Negin's The
Boy Scouts' Manual, 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. 
Karen
Hines - Guest Instructor  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 Pochsys
Lips, Oh, baby (Pochsys 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 Alices 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 Finklemans 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 completing the third in a
series of short films about Pochsy.
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