i am a toronto based artist-researcher working in theatre, video, ceramics, and sound. spanning art and health sciences, my practice is informed by stories about the bodymind, language dysfluency, and crip time.
PROJECTS
GLOSSARY
STUDIO
CV
i am a toronto based artist-researcher working in theatre, video, ceramics, and sound. spanning art and health sciences, my practice is informed by stories about the bodymind, language dysfluency, and crip time.
PROJECTS
GLOSSARY
STUDIO
CV
jun 2027
aphasia is a neurological condition that presents as trouble with word finding. within the medical field, aphasia is characterized as “empty speech”. similar forms of disabled communication include stuttering, deafness, non-verbal autism, as well as difficulty comprehending and organizing sounds.
broadly, i hope to familiarize the audience with aphasia in the same way they might know about stuttering, tourette’s, and deafness. and, in the words of stutterer and scholar chris constantino, i wish to invite the audience to consider disabled speech as holding “unique, positive personal and social advantages rather than just being a deficit.”
world one is named encounter – a world that confronts a bodymind with disabled speech for the first time, as both an outsider and an insider. in disability scholarship, the mind and body are unified as one, termed the bodymind. world two is named mess – a world that unmakes the bodymind by unlearning normative communication and coping strategies vested in cure. world three is named joy – a world that celebrates an ever-changing bodymind with euphoric embrace. while world four is named crip futurity – a world that reimagines a bodymind with tenderness and possibility.
HOW DO WE (SPEAK) LIKE A PALACE invites audience goers to visit four symbolic worlds. each world will be introduced and characterized by specific sound cues: the sounds of a bus, a passenger asking a question, and a pause, followed by water in the world of encounter, earth and wind in mess, an electroacoustic soundscape in joy, and a combination of all sound cues in crip futurity. all sound cues overlap with collaged language-based field recordings and visual lighting cues of blues, pinks, and purples. the set design will bring drawing and collage cut dioramas by winnie truong to stage for the first time. this will include a mountainous façade, several otherworldly sculptures, and video projections of natural and otherworldly vegetation. contemporary dance movement cues, performed by one dance-artist, will be wayward, tender, and euphoric. each world appears and reappears. first at intervals of four minutes each, then one-minute, then fifteen seconds, then three seconds, eventually climaxing into a place where all four worlds collide and exist simultaneously.
i am actively developing HOW DO WE (SPEAK) LIKE A PALACE and am seeking funding for set fabrication and travel fees for one of the project’s artists. a series of deep listening sessions with the public are planned for early 2027, and performances are planned for june 2027.
writer, director, and producer: jennifer lindsay
electroacoustic composer: graeme dyck
visual artist, set designer, and animator: winnie truong
creative technologist: dan tapper
choreographer: patricia allison
performer: stephanie harkness
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