about Proximity Arts

Proximity Arts is a contemporary arts company that, through research and collaboration, produces embodied work across disciplinary categories. We have presented in theatres, galleries and music venues, on street corners, in bathrooms, and on mountaintops across Canada. Playful and irreverent, Proximity Arts seeks out audiences who want to venture into a landscape of physical, intellectual and emotional inquiry.

Formed in 2003 as Proximity Lab, Proximity Arts aims to create unique experiences for audiences in accessible contexts. Our process always includes consideration of the audience, often in site-responsive contexts. Through our original performance events, conceptual research and community arts practice, Proximity Arts has become a catalyst for innovation and community connection in the Vancouver arts community. We link theatre, music, dance, visual art and media audiences through our thoroughly entertaining, but always thought-provoking events.

Proximity Arts' core creators are engaged in multiple projects outside of the company, connecting us to various realms of Vancouver's creative community and abroad. Proximity Arts is a home for creative research where aesthetic experiments are tempered by the need to connect to a diverse audience—an audience who may be attracted more by the idiosyncratic nature of a work's specific content or locale than the disciplinary home of the creators. Thus, Proximity Arts is equally at home with avant-garde artists (CARVA), neighbourhood history buffs (antic), gardeners (Vancouver Flower Clock), improvisational dancers and musicians (Mal de mer), and neighbourhood children (Happyland!).

Artistic Directors and Founding Members

• Joel DeStefano
• Vera Lubimova
• Tanya Marquardt
• Christine Stoddard
• Heidi Taylor

Board of Directors

• Ross Fleming, Treasurer
• Jenn Hogg, Secretary
• Simon Lysander Overstall, Member at large
• Gina Redman, Member at large
• Stan Shaffer, President
• Yulia Shtern, Member at large

biographica proximita

Joel DeStefano

Joel is a composer and sound designer who has produced worked for theatre, radio drama, installation and film. He has studied with some of Canada's leading composers and musicians, including Jack Behrens, Peter-Paul Koprowski, Barry Truax, Oliver Jones and Phil Nimmons. His work has been performed on CBC Radio, World Urban Forum and on many stages, clubs and galleries around the Vancouver area. He was recently nominated for a Jessie award for his work on the groundbreaking theatre piece Lounge. For more about Joel, see his website at www.joeldestefano.com

Tanya Marquardt

Tanya joined Proximity Arts as Co-Artistic Director from 2008-2010. She has since left the company for the Big Apple to pursue her MFA in Creative Writing at Hunter College. Well-known on the Vancouver scene for her unique performing and writing style, Tanya has worked creatively with many local theatre and dance companies. She has written three plays: Liminal, Nocturne and Lounge (for which she won the 2007 Sydney J. Risk Award for Outstanding Original Script). In 2007, she was the Honourable Mention for the Holy Body Tattoo's Emerging Artist Award. She also shared a Jesse Richardson Award for Best Ensemble with The Leaky Heaven Circus on King Llyr. Follow Tanya's writing journey in NYC on her blog at tanyamarquardt.wordpress.com

Christine Stoddard

Christine's practice draws on performance art, physical theatre, dance, video installation, clown and spoken word. She also works as a dramaturg and performance theorist. Christine recently completed her PhD in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester, specializing in contemporary performance. She is currently developing a work on migration and globalisation called a line apart, which was initially presented in workshop form at Twenty +3 Projects Gallery in Manchester, UK in 2008. Previous works with Proximity Arts include eating a mountain of candy in performance/installation CARVA (HIVE 2006) and performing the role of Norma in The Cry Pitch Carrolls (2005). Other projects include: caretaker for Juliana Barabas in seamline (LIVE Biennial 2003, Visualeyez 2004), performer/dramaturg for The Bacchae: An Electronic Opera (PuSh Festival 2005), and solo performance the hospital of her becoming (Visualeyez 2004).

Heidi Taylor

Heidi is a Vancouver-based dramaturg, director, and performer. She has dramaturged numerous new short plays and worked with writers from across the country including: José Teodoro, Patti Flather, Mitch Miyagawa, Joan Kivanda, Hannah Moscovitch, Anita Majumdar, Jason Maghanoy, and local writers Martin Gover, Andrew Laurenson, Kendra Fanconi, Eric Rhys Miller, and Miranda Huba. Heidi has also acted as consulting dramaturg for several local theatre and dance artists. Heidi has co-created many site-specific and community-based projects, including: Final Viewing (Radix Theatre), Other Freds (The Only Animal), and The World: an Odyssey in six or more parts (Part IV) (Michael Counts, Gale Gates et al., New York). Heidi holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Contemporary Art from Simon Fraser University, where she teaches acting as a sessional instructor. She is currently Acting Executive Director and Dramaturg at Playwrights Theatre Centre (PTC).