Calling Youth with a Story!
Collaboratively create a performance with Forum Theatre expert Simon Malbogat of Mixed Company Theatre!
Arts Orillia is looking for five youth who are interested in creating and performing in a play! This is an opportunity to invent a theatrical production about youth issues. What would you like people to know about you and your experience within this community?
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Interested participants must be between the ages of 15 and 23.
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The rehearsal period is from 4 pm to 8 pm and runs from May 6th - 10th and May 13th - 16th at the Orillia Opera House. You will perform May 17th at 7:30 pm. A $300 stipend is available for each participating Youth.
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Please note that previous experience in theatre is NOT a requirement. We welcome and encourage individuals of all artistic and creative backgrounds to apply!
Artistic Director
Simon Malbogat
Simon Malbogat has been a key player in Canada’s popular theatre scene for over 25 years. He has studied with the greatest contemporary theatre practitioners (Augusto Boal, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Yoshi Oida) and blended Forum Theatre with his Masks of Manipulation for an innovative theatre and teaching approach.
As MCT’s Artistic Director, Simon has worked extensively in engaging communities including street-involved youth, children, seniors, educators, parents, mental health professionals and artists through Forum Theatre and the interactive arts approach. His vision has been to create positive social change through community-engaged theatre across a wide range of social themes including mental wellbeing, education, HIV awareness, intergenerational relationships, diversity and inclusion, as well as relationships. Simon’s recent successful community-engaged productions have been Out of the Illusion (2015), Day on the Shore (2015), Shelf Life (2016), The Golden (C)age (2017), Breaking the Cycle (2018) and In Your Head (2019).
During the pandemic Simon developed a methodology to create forum theatre presentations virtually for communities and schools such as Culture Clash and Consent Matters. Simon directed the virtual FT plays The Code Blue for the University of Saskatchewan and healthcare organizations dealing with harassment. He directed Two-Sided Mirror exploring the theme of depression and I Carry With Me looking at the theme of race and privilege in 2023.
Simon has provided workshop creation, direction and facilitation for young people ages 14 to 18, resulting in over 40 theatre forum plays. Other youth group projects have involved the Community Initiative Project, Dovercourt Boys and Girls Club, the East End Community Health Centre, the Sears Drama Festival for Youth, the Social Planning Council of Peel and the Toronto West End Community. International workshops for youth have taken him to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ukraine on three separate occasions.
Simon has directed and acted in over 50 new Canadian works, many of which many are now seen as important benchmarks in the development of Canadian theatre. He has played key roles in numerous plays by the Chalmer’s award winner Rex Deverell; David Fennario’s On The Job, Nothing to Lose, Banana Boots which won the Montreal Gazette’s Best New Play and Joe Beef which won the Pauline Julienne Award.
Teaching credits include The University of Toronto, York University, Humber College, Queen’s and Brock University. In 1997 Simon created The Ripple Effect: 8th International Festival of the Theatre of the Oppressed which presented 450 artists from over 22 countries. He also produced The Open Stage Toronto Theatre Festival, The Canadian Popular Theatre Alliance Festival and From the Ground Up: The National Festival of Canadian Theatre.