As a theatre director, EB has a long history of leading performance projects that amplify teenage voices. Notably, she directed five ensembles of teenagers across Canada in Concord Floral, and most recently directed the world premier of Is my microphone on? by Jordan Tannahill, featuring casts of youth ages 12-17 in Canada and Germany. She has also directed work for young audiences such as This Will Be Excellent by Jordi Mand.
EB holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from Mount Allison University; a B.Ed. from Memorial University of Newfoundland; and a practiced-based MA International Performance Research, jointly from the University of Warwick and the University of Amsterdam.
EB was a finalist for the 2022, Toronto Arts Foundation, Arts for Youth Award.
Press: Toronto Star / National Observer
P R O J E C T S
NTS CREATIVE LABS
In 2021 EB developed and taught a new course for the National Theatre School, in creative facilitation and work with young people. After an intensive two month course, NTS students are now leading their own virtual theatre labs, with groups of 5-8 teenagers from across Ontario and Canada (in association with the NTS Drama Fest), with ongoing mentorship from EB.
OFFERS AND ANSWERS
During the first months of the global pandemic in 2020, EB initiated and co-led artistic labs for collaboration between professional artists and teenagers in Germany and Canada. These creative explorations were made first in association with Is my microphone on? and later under the performance umbrella Generous Friend. Artist-collaborators included Erum Khan, Veda Hille and Sherri Hay. Later these labs contributed to Offers & Answers, A Field Guide to Creative Collaboration in Digital Spaces, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
HERE IS HOW YOU LISTEN
Here is how you listen was a teenage laboratory and playground for collaborative learning over time. It was an experiment in encounters with art in our city.
Over two school years, the collective saw and spoke about work in Toronto together, alongside the development of their own projects across disciplines.
Here is how you listen was a project, facilitated by EB and Cara Spooner, that built on artistic learning and experience over time. Participants developed tools and skills to create new works across disciplines, following their individual interests, starting from a performance framework. They established and grew a shared vocabulary that allowed them both to be reciprocal outside-eyes and critical support for each other’s artistic experiments, while responding to professional work with which they engaged.
The purpose of the project was to make and develop a continuous creative learning relationships and mentorship with teenagers from across the Greater Toronto Area, through a project which served as a supported performance laboratory for young artists and a grounds for artistic critique.
While Here is how you listen was funded by the Ontario Arts Council, the project relied on support from cultural institutions for tickets to shows and events and access to meeting/ presentation space. We were fortunate to make partnerships with The Theatre Centre, Nightswimming Theatre, FADO, Tarragon Theatre, The Progress Festival, Workman Arts, The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Power Plant, DanceMakers, Gallery 44 and World Stage at Harbourfront Centre.
^This example of participant work, a documentary by Melisa Sofi, charts the creation processes of ten young artists in the Here is how you listen collective. The film follows their journies of making art, making mistakes, getting it right, dreaming, innovating and learning to work together, all while trying to finish grade 12.
The Here is how you listen collective was:
Joshua Augusto, Theo Gallaro, Jahnelle Jones-Willams, Jovana Miladinović, Jessica Munk, Meesung Park, Mick Robertson, Sonia Scarlat, Melisa Sofi, Liam Sullivan, with Erin Brubacher, Cara Spooner and other associated artists.
GENERATIONAL TRANSLATIONS
EB has worked with youth to create innovative and alternate iterations of works, originally made and performed by professionals, through the lense of an older generation. An example of this was We Will WeeTube, an experiment with Theatre Replacement’s WeeTube.
In conversation with artists Maiko Bae Yamamoto and James Long, EB worked with Toronto teenagers to create a generational translation of WeeTube, for audiences at the SummerWorks Festival.
TARRAGON THEATRE
For three years, EB directed The Spring Training Project, The Young Playwrights Unit and Rehearsal Hall - a culminating weekend of performance in process - at Tarragon Theatre where she was Director of Education from 2011/2012 - 2013/2014.
Erin led teams of artist mentor-teachers including: Sean Dixon, Andrea Donaldson, Ravi Jain, Andrew Kushnir, Kayla Lorette, Tawiah M’carthy, Leora Morris, Peter Pasyk, Ngozi Paul, Erin Shields, Cara Spooner and others.