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Denise Kenney, B.A., B. Ed., M.F.A.
Assistant Professor, Performance/Theatre
Office: Arts 145
Research Interests: I continue to work as a writer, director, producer, and actor/creator for theatre, multi-disciplinary performance, and digital media. Areas of interest include: Physical Theatre, multimedia performance, applied theatre, site-specific work, interventionist performance, experimental film, documentary film, eco-art. |
Teaching
My teaching, like my research, focuses the development of different ways of seeing and on the creative translation and integration of disparate inspirational sources to produce hybrid work. My pedagogical approach to teaching is greatly influenced by my own training with Jacques Lecoq. The work is predicated on the understanding that every aspect of our physical and emotional world can be represented in the human body. Freeing one’s impulses and working with a sense of “play” is the foundation for all work. I like to work with students to practice art, not as a commodity, but as a
regenerative process. I believe my job is not only to prepare students for a theatre
world that already exists, but also to inspire students to contribute to the theatre world
of the future. I aspire to remain curious, to look forward as well
as back, and to challenge the boundaries of my
discipline.
Artist Statement
As a theatre artist I have worked with traditional theatre, performance art, multi-disciplinary
performance, and applied theatre. Similarly, as a filmmaker, I have worked in experimental, narrative, and documentary film. Despite the differences between these various forms and media, the process I employ as an artist remains the same for all my work. Everything starts as a documentary of sorts and creation becomes an act of translation from one source to another in an effort to produce work that is simultaneously familiar and mysterious.
My current creative research examines indoor and outdoor public spaces as performance venues for live art and leads to the creation of documentary video films. Returning to my performance practice after working in Film and Television, I began integrating media into my stage work in the form of multi-media performance. Examples of this work can be seen in the Seed Trilogy, a series of works created in collaboration with Neil Cadger under the auspices of our new company Inner Fish Performance Co. While I continue to find this work valuable, simply bringing technology to the stage does not address certain questions I have regarding the relationship between the performer and the spectator; I question the role of the dedicated performance site in sanctioning cultural products and I am interested in examining how the form of dissemination in live art determines the nature of the audience and the audience’s experience. Integral to this research is the creation of hybrid documentaries that depict live performance practice and product while existing as creative entities to be valued beyond their archival function.
RESEARCH PROJECTS:
THE SOUNDCAN PROJECT: The Art of Public Noise
The Soundcan Project was (and continues to be) an experiment using indoor and outdoor public spaces as performance venues for live art. The intention is to interrupt habit and challenge traditional and sanctioned cultural exchanges. In May and June of 2011, six public interventions in Europe were created, performed and recorded for a documentary film depicting public intervention practices and their goals and outcomes. These included performances in Utrecht, Gent, Bielefeld and Berlin.
The project was developed as a collaboration between Denise Kenney, Michael V. Smith and Neil Cadger. UBCO Interdisciplinary Graduate student Tanja Woloshen, UBCO Interdisciplinary Performance Undergraduate students Kevin Jesuino and Tyler Hansen, and Regina Performance Artist Michele Sereda were also co-collaborators and performers for the European tour.
Soundcan technology combines a portable amplifier and a battery with an audio speaker inserted into an aluminum can. The soundcan is connected to an amplifier by 5 metres of speaker cable; the amp and battery are attached to the performer. Depending on the nature of the project, there are three sound sources used: a headset microphone, a cordless microphone receiver and an mp3 player. This mobile sound technology has a number of striking acoustic qualities. When the can is swung in a circular fashion, for example, it creates the well-known Doppler Effect which can be oddly disorienting, particularly if there are numerous soundcans. As soundcans can be linked to any sound device, the available sounds for composition are vast.
We first invited to perform Instant Artifacts at the opening reception at the Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands. We also performed a number of street interventions in Utrecht itself, the most successful happening in the courtyard of the Dom Cathedral in the centre of Utrecht where we amplified Stabat Mater and circulated through the highly resonant space to bring attention to its history.
We then traveled to Gent, Belgium, where we worked with Craig Weston from The Primitives and Koekoek a new street theatre company Weston created within the infrastructure of De Vieze Gasten, a social-cultural centre in Ghent Belgium. Weston is internationally renowned for his street theatre work and Koekoek produces monthly public interventions unannounced and outside the framework of scheduled performance venues and festivals. We created and performed a number of interventions throughout the city of Gent, including Sheep/Wolf, The Beach, and Café Terrace.
Siegmar Schroeder of Theaterlabor also invited us to create and present a soundcan intervention with his theatre company in Bielefeld, Germany. Besides indoor performances, Theaterlabor is also renowned for outdoor spectacles and work that engages the community outside of the traditional performance venue. The company develops shows for museum, industrial buildings and landscapes. We performed Moo, and The Beach on the street and we created site-specific installations in their large theatre complex as part of Theatre Labor’s Junge Triebe festival.
In Berlin we performed in the Krezberg’s Gorlitzer park where we were filmed by documentarian Volker Meyer-Dabisch who is doing a documentary about this old eastern block railway terminus turned park. This intervention was sponsored by R.E.H. (Spatial Extension Container) of the association Selbstuniversitat e.V. in Berlin.
The entire process of rehearsal and execution of the public interventions was recorded for a documentary film. The film will portray the spirit and aesthetics of this endeavor as well as its theoretical underpinnings. It is a hybrid work that depicts live performance practice and product while existing as a creative entity to be valued beyond an archival function.
THE SEED TRILOGY
The House at the End of the Road is a performance project that began two years ago. The thematic material - which could be encapsulated in the question ‘How did we get here?’ - has remained constant over the course of three different presentations but the stylistic approach has evolved.
One: The first Ground Rules was presented at the 2008 Independent Media Arts Alliance Conference. Using five pounds of wheat seeds, props, and projections, the performance was composed as an irreverent, mock history of humankind beginning in the primordial seas and ending with a celebration of our marriage to the ‘machine’. The style of the piece was somewhere between theatre and performance art. Broad storytelling techniques were used including a wry, satirical voice emanating from the bouffon world.
Two: The next incarnation (Inner Fish) explored the same vast breadth of material as Ground Rules. An aesthetic distance was established by the introduction of musician performers and ‘musical chairs’ wired with cello strings between the front legs. The strings were amplified and played with violin bows to accompany projected imagery and performed scenes. The narrative core located in questions of human origins and evolution was strengthened with the addition of small bone animals made from skeletal remains found in a dumping ground in the mountains near Kelowna. These small ‘animals’ resembled evolutionary failures, creatures long extinct but somehow familiar. The performance centered on our relationship with animals and was inspired by the book Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.
Three: We then worked with Blake Brooker (One Yellow Rabbit). While much of our work to this date had been devoted to the creation of imagery, this provided us with the opportunity to work specifically on a written script. We further developed the work in collaboration with Denise Clarke (also of One Yellow Rabbit). The resulting performance, The House at the end of the Road was pitched at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Kitchener in June, 2010 and was given try-out performances at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre Cultural Lab space later the same month. We filtered our research through the story of a couple and the history in their blood. We began to build a history composed from personal documents, original writing and found texts. A simple story of a couple and their house emerged. This story has now been developed in collaboration with Richard Wolfe from Vancouver’s Pi Theatre. The proscenium stage has been dismantled and the audience is free to move about the space in response to the installations that are assembled, performed and transformed.
ECO ART INCUBATOR (in development)
The goal of this project is to create a regionally unique art-making structure in the Okanagan. It is intended to provide a platform for the creation of artistic works informed by research into relevant aesthetics, experiential ways of knowing, real-world ecological science, and conservation policy. The project is meant to develop community-based strategies for emerging artists through a series of eco art projects within a regional park system and other preserved or threatened land. Our long-term goal is to set up a permanent eco art culture in this valley that will continually bring artistic ways of knowing into the discussion around development and conservation in the Okanagan valley, a region under much environmental pressure. The creation of this structure is meant to re-configure artistic practice out of our identification of our region’s unique resources and its geographical location.
Other ongoing projects:
Chainsaw Ballet (Live performance and experimental film)
The Purse Project (Installation and experimental film)
Other Eyes (Performance Art - multi-media)
Performance Training
In addition to my BA in Drama, B Ed. in Drama, and my M.F.A. in Film Directing, I studied at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris from 1992-1994. I have done workshops with theatre, dance and film artists from all over the world including Nigel Charnock, Robert Benedetti, and Philippe Gaulier. I recently participated in Banff’s 2011 Interrarium, a program designed to invite Canadian and international artists to investigate and showcase new work in contemporary performance, resulting in creative growth, critical perspectives and new creations that blur the line between disciplines.
UBC Okanagan Courses Taught:
IGS 520
Interdisciplinary Graduate Workshop: An interdisciplinary studio course designed to give graduate students an opportunity to work collaboratively with other graduate students to create hybrid work drawing on the group’s collective strengths. Body-based research will be employed to facilitate this process.
Visa 371
Documentary Production: Digital documentary production theory and practice from the point of view of producer/writer/director. Course culminates in the creation of a short form documentary.
THTR 101
Improvisation and the Body in Performance: A physical approach to improvisation as it relates to live performance and the creation of theatre.
THTR 103
Acting for Stage and Screen: An introduction to acting techniques pertaining to the style of psychological realism for stage and screen.
THTR 201
Actor/Creator Resources: Research and exploration of diverse sources in the creation of new performance work. Sources will include natural and man-made materials, paintings, objects, music and poetry.
THTR 280/480
Devised Public Performance: An intensive course in performance creation leading to the production of an original theatre piece.
THTR 301 Performance Styles: Training in physical performance styles such as Commedia dell’Arte, Tragedy, Bouffon and Clown. Students will study both traditional and contemporary examples of these styles.
THTR 401
This course introduces the use of digital media as an element of performance complementing other traditions of live art explored in Thtr 301. The student will be challenged to integrate communications technology into live performance and explore the performer/spectator interface.
Film 100
Basic aesthetic, economic, sociological, and technological aspects of film.
Film 220
Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960: Analysis of the aesthetics, economics, history, and technological characteristics of the classical Hollywood period.
Last reviewed 
9/14/2011 9:41:36 AM
