Precarious Artist Bios

PRECARIOUS2 BIOS

Nathan Adler is the author of Wrist, an Indigenous monster story written from the monster’s perspective (Kegedonce Press). He is an artist who works in many different mediums, including audio & video, drawing & painting, as well as glass. He is Anishinaabe and Jewish, a member of Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation, and resides in Mono, Ontario.


Susan Braedley, Carleton University, speaks from her background as a social worker, singer-songwriter and researcher who has learned about frailing artistry.


Sally Chivers is Director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society, where she conducts arts-based research into disability and aging. She has written books about aging and disability in cinema and literature as well as on the wide range of stories that are told in and about long-term care places. She is also currently associate director of Imagine Aging, an international research project that seeks practices for age equity.


Jenn Cole (mixed-ancestry Algonquin) researches performance practices and histories that illuminate Indigenous presence, cosmologies, and stories from the Land in her home territory of the Kiji Sibi watershed and along the Odenabe River, where she currently lives, in Michi Saagig territory. She is interested in tracing Indigenous Land/river-based artistic work through relationship, performance, oral history and careful study. Her teaching, and artistic work and  aims to bring people into more aware, joyful and responsible relationship to place as they learn together on Anishinaabe lands. She also programs and supports Indigenous performance and performance-related knowledge sharing in her two communities.

Jenn Cole is Assistant Professor of Gender and Feminist Studies at Trent University, Creative Director of Aging Activisms Research Collective, editor for Canadian Theatre Review Views & Reviews, and co-editor of Gatherings, a handmade chapbook for theatre and performance scholars to share creative work.


Joe Davies’ short fiction has appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies, mostly in Canada, but also in England, Ireland, Wales, India, Australia, and the US.


Naomi Duvall is a local actor, puppeteer, playwright and burlesque performer. Always on the hunt to diversify her skill set, she is proud to have originated, directed and performed her work “Puss-essed” at The Theatre on King this past February 2019 after trying out a cabaret version of it at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre the previous year. Excited to be co-developing “Tips For The Late Shift” with Anne White of Ring’o’Rosie Theatre for the Precarious2 ArtsWORK Festival, Naomi is looking forward to sharing research findings and dancing her butt off.


garbageface is a doom rap / industrial soul artist born in Poland and raised in Peterborough / Nogojiwanong. Clocking more than 300 performances around North America since the founding of his project in 2009, garbageface brings a ritualistic, visceral approach to live incarnations of his electronic / beat-based music. some of yr friends are already this fucked is his first endurance performance, and is musically inspired by the epic rap songs of early hip-hop, as well as conceptually inspired by the mythological Ship Of Theseus. The composition is part of a growing body of work that continues to explore conventional structures while branching out into further experimentation.


Matthew Hayes has made over a dozen short films and a feature-length documentary, which have screened throughout Canada, the US, Europe, and some other places too, like Indonesia, Brazil, and Iran. In 2019, he received his PhD in Canadian Studies from Trent University.


Ann Jaeger is a multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects literary, theatre, textile and visual arts. In addition to recent solo painting exhibitions at Evans Contemporary, the Arts and Culture Centre of Warkworth and Coeur Nouveau, she collaborates often with The Theatre on King as a set designer. As a culture critic, she examines and rants about the regional art scene and gentrification on her blog, Trout in Plaid.


Ryan Kerr is the owner/artistic director of a small black box theatre The Theatre on King (TTOK). In the seven years since TTOK opened, Ryan has overseen over 400 productions and events. He founded the annual Playwright’s Festival, bringing over a half a dozen brand new scripts to production and presentation; an annual dance festival, “small dance for a small space,” which has seen over twenty new pieces of choreography created and presented; and co-founded Peterborough Dance Works. In 2008 he founded Fleshy Thud, a performance production company bringing a number of independent artists together over several projects, including multidisciplinary festivals A Certain Place: the Bernie Martin Festival and Precarious: Peterborough ArtsWORK Festival. 


Shelley King is passionate about facilitating intergenerational puppetry projects. She firmly believes that magic happens when multiple generations have the opportunity to create, learn & play together. As the founder of Artful Connections, she uses her background in social services, puppetry and expressive arts to guide caregivers of elderly seniors to use the arts as a tool for communication, storytelling, enhancing creativity and creating joy in their work with others. www.artfulconnections.ca.


Janna Klostermann, Carleton University, combines her research on the tensions and limits of long-term care with her background in comedy and storytelling.


A professional actor for four decades, Dianne Latchford has appeared on stages from the Shaw Festival to Winnipeg’s Rainbow Stage, and locally at New Stages, TTOK, 4th Line and more. Screen credits include Murdoch Mysteries, Queer As Folk and the iconic SCTV.  Dianne is also a musician, singer/songwriter and visual artist with paintings in private collections in Canada, the US and the UK. Visit her website at diannelatchford.com.


Eryn Lidster has been involved in the technical production of over 30 theatrical projects since 2015, including works in the Electric City Culture Council’s Artsweek; Public Energy’s Alternating Currents and Emergency programs; the Toronto Fringe Festival; and Peterborough’s Precarious ArtsWORK Festival where she debuted her first original work, Invisible, in 2017. As a theatre creator, she focuses on originating work from a technical perspective within a collaborative process.


Shannon McKenzie is a theatre worker, performer, compassionate care worker, and avid mug collector. A Jill of all trades yet master of none, an adorer of alliteration, whimsically weird, and fantastic at folding fitted sheets! Building off her previous Precarious mentorship, Shannon continues to develop skills in theatre tech and production with established artists Ryan Kerr and Kate Story. Shannon makes her first appearance as a panelist, speaking on “I’m still here: Precarity, Aging, and Life with Art” and can also be seen performing on stage in Eryn Lidster’s “Rejoinder”.


Jeffrey Macklin is a Peterborough, Ontario based artist, working primarily with relief printing (letterpress) and mixed media. He often employs words as visual triggers, as well as present-day/historical pop-culture icons and figures in both his print work and his mixed media pieces. Jeffrey is a freelance designer and teaches in the Graphic Design and Visual Communication program at Fleming College.

Photo: Esther Vincent

Justin Million is a poet from Peterborough, Ontario, where he has curated over 70 events through his Show and Tell Poetry Series and is a co-founder and current poetry editor at bird, buried press. Million has been published in countless literary magazines, journals, chapbooks, and online platforms, and his first trade book “EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems” is forthcoming this spring with Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.


Leigh Nash is the publisher of Invisible Publishing. She currently serves as past chair for eBOUND Canada and secretary for the Association of Canadian Publishers. She is the author of several chapbooks and the poetry collection Goodbye, Ukulele.

Leigh Nash photographed in Wellington during a portrait session at Midtown brewery.

Laurel Paluck is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages professional artists and community members towards creating visually-charged performance works situated in unusual places. She is the artistic producer of Atelier Ludmila, an arts production house whose works include annual Solstice Celebrations; Wearable-art showcases; Curriculum-based classroom art projects; and art sessions bringing elders together with young learners. Laurel has been trained as an Artist-Educator through the Royal Conservatory and has been awarded several grants through the Ontario Arts Council, The City of Peterborough, Trent University, and Artsweek Peterborough to conduct her works. For more visit: atelierludmila.com


Kelsey Powell came of age in Southern Ontario during the Harris years and his family felt the wind through the crack in door on more than a few occasions. Throughout the precarity, art has been a salvation, nearly as important as food, shelter and water. Kelsey has worked under the wheel, ‘til he got his facts learned. And baby, he’s got his facts learned real good right now.


Elisha May Rubacha lives and writes in Peterborough, ON. She was a finalist for Peterborough’s Outstanding Emerging Artist Award (2018), and shortlisted for the PRISM International Creative Non-fiction Contest (2016). Her recent chapbook “too much nothing” was published by Apt. 9 Press. She is the editor and designer of bird, buried press, a board member of the Electric City Culture Council, and the Knowledge Transfer Specialist at Nourish, a local community food initiative.


Kate Story is a writer and theatre artist with a passion for independent arts in Peterborough. She is a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Artist Award in theatre; her fiction has been shortlisted for the Sunburst and CBC Literary awards, and published in World Fantasy and Aurora Award-winning collections. Kate is artistic director of biennial Precarious Festival; co-founder of Peterborough DanceWorks; and a key artist at The Theatre on King, local hub for new and risk-taking performance. She serves on the boards of EC3, Theatre Trent, and TTOK.


Lindsay Unterlander is a dynamic emerging theatre artist. Her career began in stage management in Peterborough’s community theatre scene. Gradually she began taking roles on the other side of the curtain, and has shifted into the paraprofessional world of Peterborough’s independent artists, starring in Genet’s “The Maids,” McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny,” and Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano,” among others. Lindsay has collaborated on and/or appeared in many original works. She is a mainstay member of Peterborough’s vital sketch comedy troupe LLAADS as a writer and performer, creating and performing monthly shows.


Victoria Ward is a visual artist and writer with over 45 exhibitions in Canada and the UK. Victoria publishes regularly on digital sites about culture and tourism and has experience with SEO and content marketing.  She was a playwright/performer for ten years in Toronto before moving to a log cabin north of Peterborough in 2000 and likes to think of herself as an honourary member of the Pdot art scene. 


Hilary Wear is a theatre artist who: writes and performs text and/or movement-based pieces for stage and site-specific Clown turns for festivals and Communities; collaborates in co-creations and devising for performance; and works for others as an actor. Hilary volunteers in Community and facilitates inter-generational cooperative games groups that are focused on fun. Most recently, Hilary has begun to work as a Therapeutic Clown: co-creating joyful connections with institutionalized peoples, in health care settings.


Anne White is a performance-maker based in Peterborough. She is co-founder of Ring O’ Rosie, a collective that makes devised, site-specific and interdisciplinary performance. Anne is Public Energy’s Artist in Residence for 2019-2020.