Video Cabaret Presents
Pochsy IV: Unplugged
Written and Performed by Karen Hines
Direction and Dramaturgy by Blake Brooker
Stage Management by Andrew Dollar
Lighting Design by Blake Brooker and Andrew Dollar
Co-Direction by Michael Kennard
Clunic Consultant • John Turner
Original Songs • Karen Hines
Musical Direction • Chantal Vitalis
Costume Consultant • Justin Miller/Pearle Harbour
PIV Social Media and Web Design • Kate Pallesen
Graphic Art • Peter Moller
Pochsy IV Book Cover Design • Crystal Sikma
Photography • Gary Mulcahey
Co-produced by Keep Frozen with Grazyna Krupa
Pochsy IV: Unplugged was developed between 2021 and 2024 with the hospitality and support of One Yellow Rabbit Theatre and the High Performance Rodeo.
Pochsy is now presented by VideoCabaret at the Deanne Taylor Theatre
in Toronto in April, 2025.
For nearly 50 years, VideoCabaret has been pushing the boundaries of theatre with bold satire, innovative black box design and daring story-telling. VideoCabaret has once again created a home for boutique works by presenting a series of solo gems, including works by Alan Williams, Cliff Cardinal and Nicky Guadagni throughout this theatre season.
VIDEO CABARET producing team:
Interim Artistic Director • Layne Coleman
Incoming Artistic Director • Anand Rajaram
Business and Development Manager • Anthony Chung
Playwright and Producer • Janet Burke
Social media producer • Hannah Cohen
Webmaster and Prop Master • Merle Harley
Playwright’s Notes
(from Pochsy IV: Unplugged published by Coach House Books, with files from The Pochsy Plays)
In my twenties, I designed Pochsy as a microcosm. An avatar torn from the ragged edges of capitalism, trailing the destruction of consumer obsessions at the same time as she is excited by them. Ultimately alone, perpetually lost.
This is the fourth in the Pochsy series. It was written after a nearly two-decade break since the last. It was written on a dare. My friend and comedic colleague Bruce McCulloch said one day during the early days of lockdown, ‘Irony is dead.’ He seemed to be beseeching me to right that wrong. With Pochsy. Turns out he was messing with me. It was a cruel joke.
I, along with many others who write satire, became paralyzed in that moment, when dark comedy seemed to have lost Death as its ace comedic tool. It was only when I turned to my creation and the mercury-laced coils of her seemingly unbalanced mind that I found a way through – when I asked myself, ‘What Would Pochsy Do?’
Pochsy onstage borrows from a kind of alchemy: a tactical blend of clowning and bouffon as those distinct styles were taught to me by master teachers Richard Pochinko and Philippe Gaulier. The performance first thrived under Sandra Balcovske, who had mentored and directed me at Toronto’s Second City and then directed the first two Pochsy plays. I also called on my academic studies in Taoist philosophy and film theory and a course on Luis Buñuel. And some beginner singing lessons and ballet classes of childhood.
My collaborator John Turner (director of the third Pochsy show and credited in this program as ‘Clunic Consultant’) tells his clown students that bouffons are ‘the special forces’ of clown. Their moves must be surgical if they are to get away with their deadly subversions. But in 2021, as a basically fortunate Canadian, what could I target in Pochsy IV? How could I possibly ‘kill’ the tender people in the room who were already going through so much, or criticize what felt like an already-wrecked world? Who was I to hold a mirror up to a scarily fragmented society?
‘Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space between expression and understanding,’ writes Linda Hutcheon in Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony.
Pochsy has always been at home sliding across spectrums. Sashaying between cruelty and sweetness, victim and manipulator, blasphemy and reverence. The first Pochsy play was set in a hospital room. The second on a beautiful but toxic beach made of slag. The third in the waiting room for a deadly audit. They can be seen or read in any order. I see Pochsy IV as living, in clown-logic chronology, between the first and second plays. Or just before the first. It truly doesn’t matter. In the end, these narratives are just files holding systems of satire that allow me to expose and examine my deepest fears and obsessions.
– Karen Hines • March, 2025
Creative Team Biographies
Karen Hines - Writer and Performer
Hines’ plays and productions include Crawlspace, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten, Drama: Pilot Episode and The Pochsy Plays. An award-winning writer, performer and director, she is a two-time finalist for the Governor General's Award for Drama, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. She is a Second City alumna, and a regular collaborator with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre. Karen has also appeared in numerous television and film productions, including three seasons on the Emmy Award-winning Newsroom (CBC/PBS). She is a Western and National Magazine Award-winning writer and the director of cult horror clowns Mump & Smoot. Her plays have been recently translated into French (Crawlspace, Tous les petits animaux que j’ai dévoré), and Crawlspace and Drama are available to listen to: Crawlspace on CBC Radio One, and Drama: The Pilot Episodes on Soundcloud and anywhere you listen. Raised by scientists in Toronto, Karen now lives in Calgary.
Blake Brooker - Director, Dramaturgy, and Lighting Design
Blake is an award-winning director and writer and Artistic Director of One Yellow Rabbit. OYR produces adult-oriented performance theatre. Co-founded in 1982 with Michael Green, with a vision to engage and inspire the Calgary community, the company has become one of Canada’s leading creation-based ensembles, having toured to theatres on four continents. He has written and directed over 100 productions at OYR, often in collaboration with the ensemble. Productions include Kawasaki Exit, Dream Machine, Ilsa Queen of the Nazi Love Camp, and The Land The Animals. Blake’s collaborations beyond OYR’s walls include Douglas Coupland’s September 10 (Royal Shakespeare Company), and three years directing MT7 Cultural Society’s Making Treaty Seven. He is a Member of the Order of Canada.
Michael Kennard - Co-Director
For thirty-five years Michael has been a co-creator (with John Turner), performer, and producer with internationally acclaimed clown duo Mump & Smoot, Some of Michael’s directing credits include: The Christmas Carol, The Hobbit and The Wizard of Oz at The Globe Theatre in Regina. The Hollow at Berkeley St Theatre in Toronto. The Second City’s Family Circus Maximus and Insanity Fair in Toronto and co-directed Embryo’s on Ice in Chicago. Half a Sizpence, Echoes, Pandemonium, and Alice Through the Looking Glass at Bishops’ University. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and A Glass Half Fulfilled at the University of Alberta where Michael is currently an Associate Professor. Michael has received a Dora award (Toronto) a Sterling award (Edmonton), a Jessie award (Vancouver), two Canadian Comedy awards, a Boston Theatre award, and a Drama Logue award (California) for his work in performance, coaching, and directing.
John Turner - Clunic Consultant
John is best known as “Smoot” of the award winning Canadian clow duo Mump & Smoot, and until 2020, the founder and Artistic Director of The Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance (a.k.a. The Clown Farm). He now coaches, teaches, dramaturges, directs, and performs across the country. Coaching and/or Directing credits inclue Justin Miller’s Pearle Harbour, in Distant Early Warning, Christine Moynihan’s Inside Ethel: Outside, Jennifer Dallas’ Kittly-Bender and Known, Morro and Jasp (multiple shows), Karen Hines’ Citizen Pochsy and Crawlspace, Michael Kennard’s Puzzle Me Red, Sandrine Lafond’s Little Lady, and De-ba- jeh-mu-jig Theatre’s A Trickster Tales, and The Gulch.
Chantal Vitalis - Sound Design and Special Composition
Chantal Vitalis is a Calgary-based composer, lyricist, and songwriter whose primary instruments are electric guitar and pedal steel. Her compositions for films include Istotsi, Elder in the Making, The Girl Who Married a Ghost, Screaming Fish, Gens de Phoque and animations The Trade and Haiku 2: Wait. Selected theatre work includes Making Treaty 7, Modern Times Redux, Gold Rush Redux and Mesa. You can catch her playing with the following Calgary bands: The Lovebullies, Wild Rose County, and Bryson Waind & the CB.
Richard Feren - Additional Sound Design
Richard has been creating music and soundscapes for theatre, dance & film since 1992. He has won seven Dora Awards, the
1999 Pauline McGibbon Award, and was the first sound designer ever shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize, in 2012. Recent credits: Grand Ghosts (The Grand Theatre); Public Enemy, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure (Canadian Stage); The Jungle Book (Alberta Theatre Projects); Hamlet (Stratford Festival); The Cold War (VideoCabaret); Every Brilliant Thing, Perfect Wedding, Miss Caledonia (Thousand Island Playhouse); Going, Going (short film by Fiona Highet); Carmen (feature film score); The Flick (Outside the March/Crow’s Theatre). Upcoming: Controlled Damage (The Grand Theatre). .
Sandi Somers - Scenic Consultant
Over the last few decades, Sandi Somers has lit and designed stages for companies such as OYR, ATP, The Alberta Ballet and Lunchbox Theatre. Productions include lighting and projection design for Making Treaty 7, set and lighting design for The University of Lethbridge’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, lighting and set design for Karen Hines’ Pochsy IV, and lighting design for Denise Clarke’s Room 333. Outside of designing for theatre, Sandi is the lighting designer for The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and is an award-winning filmmaker.
Peter Moller - Graphic Art
Peter Moller has run Egg Press Co., a Calgary-based graphic and sound design establishment, since 1976. He is the recipient of a number of Betty Mitchell and Elizabeth Sterling Haynes awards and nominations for his theatre sound designs. For over thirty years it has been his great fortune to collaborate with many of Calgary and Canada’s widely diverse theatre companies and artists. To view and listen to examples of his work please visit eggpress.ca
Kate Pallesen - Production Associate and Digital Marketing
Kate has worked closely with Karen Hines and Pochsy IV since its workshop premiere at Play The Fool festival in 2022, fulfilling a range of roles over its evolution such as sound programming, playbill design, website design, social media management, and more. Kate has been active in Alberta live arts since graduating from the University of Lethbridge in 2017, primarily working as a stage manager with companies such as Calgary Opera, Alberta Theatre Projects, Theatre Calgary, Lunchbox Theatre, Verb Theatre, Ghost River Theatre, Old Trout Puppet Workshop, and Swallow-A-Bicycle Theatre.