Creative Generator Program
The Creative Generator Program is an outgrowth of PE’s local artist-in-residence program, which has supported eight artists and one collective since 2020. Similar to those residencies, the Creative Generator program provides a range of supports, including: a financial contribution of $2,000 toward the costs associated with creating a new work, a $500 fee to hire a mentor or collaborator on the project, and the administrative and mentoring support of the Public Energy staff and office. The program is open to all professional artists or collectives working in the disciplines of dance, theatre, or multidisciplinary performance, and living in the area of Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. This includes Peterborough City and County, and the First Nations of Curve Lake and Hiawatha.
2023-2024 Creative Generator Recipients
Lindy Finlan
Lindy Finlan (she/her) is an emerging playwright. Her plays include Ruse of the Romantic (The Theatre on King, 2015); The Fool of Cavan: A Christmas Caper (4th Line Theatre, 2019); and Bedtime Stories & Other Horrifying Tales, co-written with Kim Blackwell (4th Line Theatre, 2020). Her plays produced at 4th Line Theatre were included in the anthology 4th Line Theatre: Outside of Summer published by 4th Line Theatre Press. She is currently participating in the Playwright’s Guild of Canada’s Mentorship Program as a mentee.
Lindy will be using her residency to complete a script for a full-length production entitled Take this, My Body; a play exploring themes of female agency, power dynamics, and moral ambiguity. Set in late-nineteenth-century Canada, Take This, My Body explores the state of womanhood as experienced by the “fallen women” of the bawdy house and the feminist social reformers who seek to “save” them. The play is double-cast with the actors playing the women of the bawdy house also playing the social reformers.
Jon Hedderwick
Jon Hedderwick is a professional spoken word poet, performance artist, media artist and educator of mixed Ashkenazi Jewish and Scottish heritage based in Nogojiwanong/C.K.A. Peterborough, Ontario. Jon is the Artistic Director for the Peterborough Poetry Slam Collective, one half of the spoken word performing duo WordCraft, and a co-creator of the Take-out Poetry Project. He has performed poetry across Canada, and his work has been featured at various festivals and conferences. Since 2019 he has been increasingly working in devised theatre, and created a one-person show called Bubbie’s Tapes, which was presented in-process at the Precarious3 Festival. He recently presented a new one-person show called Enkidu, based on the Epic of Gilgamesh, at the Theatre on King, which employed spoken word poetry and storytelling with live musical accompaniment.
During his residency with Public Energy, Jon will continue his work on Bubbie’s Tapes. A show that explores the history and ongoing impacts of antisemitism in Canada. Whilst drawing on personal family experiences from the Russian Revolution, through the Holocaust, and beyond, as recounted by Jon’s Bubbie Sarah in cassette tape recordings she left behind.
Eryn Lidster
Eryn Lidster is a multidisciplinary artist and administrator who has supported the production of over 40 performance works since 2016, including two original works Invisible and Rejoinder. They were awarded the Gregory R. Firth Memorial Prize twice for their film work, which has screened at Trent University, Michigan State University, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough. Lidster holds an Honors Bachelor in Cultural Studies and was a recipient of a Metcalf Performing Arts Internship Grant. They are also a founding member of Canadian Images in Conversation screening collective and often explore technical and material implications in their work.
Eryn will explore various forms of animation including rotoscoping and puppetry using Isadora projection mapping software. The work will be grounded in science fiction narratives and examine digital video’s material and performative nature, with a focus on the three-dimensional and malleable potential of projections. Eryn will also explore how projections can respond to ambient input through the Isadora software.
Sarah McNeilly
Highly attuned to processes, Sarah McNeilly is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Nogojiwanong, renamed Peterborough by European settlers. Primarily a performer, a writer, and an academic, Sarah’s artistic work seeks to blur the lines between theory and practice. She has created and co-created original theatre and movement work for numerous festivals and venues. Sarah recently performed her debut solo scrip, Titty Cakes: A Recipe for Radical Acceptance, to sold-out audiences during breast cancer awareness month.
During her residency, Sarah aims to research and develop a largely autobiographical solo theatre script called One Rogue Cell (working title). An investigation of singularities, this work explores black holes, the very first cave painter, and cancer searching for the possibility of futurity in total collapse
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Fleshy Thud
Fleshy Thud is a performance collective based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, dedicated to supporting experimental work by regional artists. They have produced over 40 site-specific dance and theatre works, and (with The Theatre on King and Public Energy) produce the Precarious Festival. Baroness (working title) sees Fleshy Thud gather an ad-hoc group of regional artists working in theatre, music, poetry, and visual art. The artists involved are: Kate Story; Ryan Kerr; Kate Alton; Brad Brackenridge; Aaron Cavon; Naomi Duvall; Matt Gilbert; Shannon McKenzie LeBlanc; Sarah McNeilly; Justin Million; Benj Rowland; Daniel Smith; Lindsay Unterlander; Nikki Weatherdon; Gary Blundell; and Victoria Ward.
Baroness (working title) is a devised performance collaboration inspired by the life of Baroness Elsa, a figure in the New York Dada scene known for her poetry, art, and unconventional life. The project dives into the parallels between Elsa’s time and today, including questioning of gender and sexuality, artistic innovation, and dangerous political movements.
