Karen Hines:
| Condensed Biography |  |
| Curriculum Vitae | |
KAREN HINES is an award-winning performer, writer and director. Her independent theatre company, Pochsy Productions, presents Hines’ highly theatrical, absurdist, satirical, neo-cabarets and comedies, including Pochsy’s Lips, Oh, baby (Pochsy’s 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 Alice’s 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. Hello ... Hello was also the 2007 recipient of the Alberta Writers Guild Award for Drama. Karen was a Tarragon playwright-in-residence (1995-96).
Karen directed and was dramaturge for Alberta Theatre Projects' premiere of Linda Griffiths' Age of Arousal. She has also 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 Something, Caged, Ferno, Something Else and Flux; from the Fringe Festivals to CanStage, from Yale Rep to the La Jolla Playhouse. She has taught clowning and bouffon across Canada, and has given seminars at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and at the Yale School of Drama.
Karen was a series regular on Ken Finkleman’s Emmy Award-winning television series The Newsroom (CBC), she co-starred in his mini-series Foreign Objects (Rhombus), in his teleplay Escape from the Newsroom (CBC), in his NBC pilot (Untitled Ken Finkleman Project with Stephen Colbert) 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 Mainstage, Angels in America (Canadian Stage) Swollen Tongues (Necessary Angel), The Drowsy Chaperone (Mirvish Productions), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Killer Films). She performed as Douglas Coupland's Goth sidekick in his September 10 (Royal Shakespeare Company) and as Robin Williams' political sidekick in Barry Levinson's Man of the Year.
Karen wrote two short films directed by Sandi Somers: I’ll Believe and Everything’s Falling, which was finalist for Alberta’s Centennial Award in 2006 (both by Road Pictures/Pochsy Productions for Bravo!FACT). More recently, Karen directed her first short, My Name is Pochsy: An Industrial Film, which is currently screening at festivals across the continent and overseas, and which has been the recipient of seven international prizes including the Strasbourg International Film Festival award for best experimental short, the Kodak Canada prize for best Canadian Short (Edmonton International Film Festival) the Dawson Lodestar Award for Best Film, and the Boston Underground Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award for best short.
Karen has been invited to teach, read and/or speak at Universities of Toronto, Lethbridge, Calgary, Victoria, Queens University and York University, where her plays have been studied since their publication under the auspices of Coach House Books. She has read from her works at literary festivals and events including This is Not A Reading Series (Toronto), The Scream in High Park (Toronto), Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, Word on the Street (Toronto), and has had her works published and/or exerpted in Geist, Brick Literary Journal, Ottawa Citizen Literary Page, Taking the Stage, Heaven and Hell on Earth (Actors Theatre of Louisville) and others.
Current and Upcoming:
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Recently, Karen was a participant in the Women In the Directors Chair Workshop at Banff where she commenced work on a feature film script Crazy like a Girl, now in development under the AFA's Screen Writer's Grant program. She was awarded the 2008 WIDC Banff Fellowship as part of the Banff World Television Festival. She is currenty story consulting on two television shows, for CTV and Showcase, and writing a book, Red Light, a literary anthology of imaginary pitches for impossible television shows. Karen is in production on her Canada Council/Bravo!FACT short film, a companion piece to My Name is Pochsy, entitled Horribly Beautiful World, to be completed this spring. She will perform and speak at the Bader Theatre, University of Toronto this February, as part of the Literature For Our Times series.
Greg Morrison
Greg began working in theatre as musical director for the Second City Touring Company. Credits include: composer (with Karen Hines) and musical director for Hines’ Pochsy’s Lips, Oh, Baby, and Hines’ musical play Hello... Hello, and composer and musical director for Mump and Smoot’s “Something Else” and “Flux”. Greg was composer/book writer/producer of his musical The Age of Dorian, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novella, and was composer (with Lisa Lambert) and musical director for The Drowsy Chaperone (from the Fringe to Broadway). He has been musical director for The Muckrakers (CBC Radio), and musical director for the Alumnae Cafe. His work has received three Dora Mavor Moore nominations, a Sterling Award, a Canadian Comedy Award and a Tony.
John Turner
John is best known as co-creator with Michael Kennard of Mump & Smoot. He attended three universities but was never inspired to finish. In his twenties he had jobs as a roughneck, orderly, construction worker, frying pan salesman and bartender. He was introduced to clown, mask and movement by Richard Pochinko, Ian Wallace, and Fiona Griffiths. He also studied bouffon with Philippe Gaulier, physical comedy with John Towsen and improv at Second City.
With Mump & Smoot he has co-written and performed in Something, Caged, Ferno, Tense, Something Else and Flux. Other directing credits include Susanna Hamnett's Lacrimosa and Linda Brokenshire's The Lecture and The Hero. John also works as a clown coach and teaches clown in Toronto at The SPACE, the Workman Theatre Project, and the Indigenous Theatre School, and in the innovative Programme d'Arts d'expression at Laurentian University in Sudbury.
Darren O’Donnell
Darren O'Donnell is a writer, director, actor, designer and artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His credits include pppeeeaaaccceee, White Mice, Boxhead, Radio Rooster Says That's Bad, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Over, Poopy-Pants Meets a Maker, and Mercy! He was the 2000 recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award for directing, a Dora Award for his co-design of the White Mice set, a Gabriel Award for Like a Fox, and was nominated for a Chalmers Award for Boxhead. He will publish his first novel, Your Secrets Sleep With Me, in spring 2004 with Coach House Books.
Sandra Balcovske
Sandra graduated from the University of Lethbridge with BA in Philosophy, then spent two years in the University of Alberta Drama Department. She moved to Toronto and joined The Second City, where she directed eight Mainstage shows. Sandra has been nominated for two Dora Mavor Moore Awards for her direction at The Second City.
Sandra has also worked as a director and collaborating writer on a number of original productions, including Linda Griffith's The Game of Inches, Spiral Woman and the Dirty Theatre and Karen Hines’ Pochsy’s Lips and Oh, Baby, Bob Bainborough's Plastered in Paris and Lorraine Behnan's Penguins, Penance and Purgatory.
Sandra was a writer/performer on CBC Radio for three seasons in the weekly spot, The Neighbours, and wrote on 26 episodes of Go Girl for S&S Productions and WTN, and two episodes of Supertown Challenge for S&S Productions and the Comedy Channel. Recently, Sandra has worked as Creative Consultant for the movie Expecting and the television pilot The Joe Blow Show.