Proximity Arts (Lab)
Proximity Arts is a process-based company that, through research and collaboration, produces embodied work across disciplinary categories. Its five core members 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.
Artistic Directors & Founding Members
Joel DeStefano
Vera Lubimova
Tanya Marquardt
christine stoddard
Heidi Taylor
Board of Directors
Ross Fleming, Treasurer
Jenn Hogg, Secretary
Marnie Pardee, Member at large
Stan Shaffer, President
Yulia Shtern, Member at large
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 ground breaking theatre piece Lounge. For more info, see his website at www.joeldestefano.com. Contact Joel: joel@proximityarts.com
Vera Lubimova
Vera Lubimova designs, art directs, and creates video and installation works. She has exhibited her installation work in Vancouver (Domesticity) and Edmonton (Latitude 53’s Visualeyez). Her projects include set designing for The Day Room and producing a dance video for Running Wild (Holy Body Tattoo). A former Associate Producer for CBC Television, she is currently a line producer for Paperny Films’ Glutton for Punishment. Contact Vera: vera@proximityarts.com
Tanya Marquardt
Performer, deviser and newly appointed Co-Artistic Director of Proximity Arts, Tanya has worked creatively with many theatre and dance companies including: radix theatre, MACHiNeNOiSeY, boca del lupo, Rumble Productions, Theatre Replacement, The Leaky Heaven Circus, the only animal, Mascall Dance, sirenscrossing (UK), Anatomica, battery opera, Screaming Weenie Productions and Nakai Theatre, among others. She has written three plays, Liminal, Nocturne (an incomplete and inaccurate account of the love affair between George Sand & Frederic Chopin), which opened and closed NextFest 2003 in Edmonton Alberta, and Lounge, for which she won the 2007 Sydney J. Risk Award for Outstanding Original Script. Her short monologue Georgina was presented in the 2007 Solo Flights, Solo Collective's Emerging Artist's showcase. In 2007 she was the Honorable 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. Upcoming is Transmission – an original performance piece inspired by Euripides' Orestes, mal du mer, a new performance piece set for development in New York City and Vancouver with Susan Elliott of Anatomica, and how to disappear completely, a new show in collaboration with Itai Erdal and Rumble Theatre.
christine stoddard
christine’s practice draws on performance art, physical theatre, dance, video installation, clown, spoken word and she has also worked as a dramaturg and performance theorist. She ate a mountain of candy in performance/installation CARVA (HIVE 2006) and performed as Norma in The Cry Ptich Carrolls (2005). Other recent 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). christine will act as international liaison for Proximity Arts (Lab) while pursuing a PhD in performance art at the University of Manchester. Contact christine: christine@proximityarts.com
Heidi Taylor
Heidi Taylor is a Vancouver-based dramaturg, director, and performer. As Dramaturg at Playwrights Theatre Centre she has worked with many playwrights, including Kendra Fanconi and Eric Rhys Miller (dog eat dog), Mitch Miyagawa (Carnaval), and Jason Bryden (The Dissemblers). Currently, she is dramaturg for Caroline Liffman (choreographer) during her residency at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, and through PTC, for Leaky Heaven Circus' May production. Heidi has worked on many site-specific and community-based projects, including Final Viewing (Radix Theatre), Other Freds (assistant director, The Only Animal), Naked Oranges (Susanna Uchatius, Theatre Terrific), 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 occasionally teaches acting as a sessional instructor. Contact Heidi: heidi@proximityarts.com