Sick and Twisted

Mandate

Sick + Twisted is a theatre company dedicated to creating work exploring the experience of living with a disability.

Mission

Artists with disabilities enjoy many advantages in the development and pursuit of our craft:

Living with a disability means living in a world that is dangerous, therefore artists with disabilities are accustomed to taking big risks. The danger we live with makes us daring artists.

Living with a disability means applying mindfulness to all that we do, therefore artists with disabilities are accustomed to applying focused effort to the tasks at hand. The need for mindfulness gives us the kind of focused presence that leads to artistic rigour.

Living with a disability means having to figure out our own ways of completing daily tasks, therefore artists with disabilities approach problem-solving with greater mental agility. Creative innovation is one of disabilities side effects.

Sick + Twisted embraces these advantages, creating work that is risky, rigorous and innovative: an accurate reflection of the experience of living with disability.

Vision

Artists with disabilities are grossly underrepresented in the creation and presentation of theatre in Canada. Yet all performance is rooted in the body and much exploration of the human condition is rooted in the recognition of the fragility of this flesh. Artists with disabilities are perforce engaged in an exploration of the body which is both specific and universal. We have an understanding of the truths of the human condition that can only be arrived at by confronting the challenges presented to us by our exceptional bodies. But these truths are universal. We have what the rest of the world needs.

Values

Sick + Twisted recognizes that the ability to perceive and represent truth in performance is not dependent on bodily perfection. Artistic excellence is achievable by artists of all abilities.

Production available for touring

Sargent & Victor & Me

A solo show written and performed by Debbie Patterson

Gillian is being brought down by an incurable, progressive, debilitating illness. Her brother Bob is coping with muggings, home invasions and police brutality in his core area home. When Gillian ventures into Bob’s neighbour-hood, she encounters the people who live, either by choice or necessity, in the toughest part of town. In the crucible of an inner city foodbank violence, poverty, and disability, are transformed into love, generosity, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.

Created through a mash up of verbatim, found and written text Sargent & Victor & Me asks how we live within unstoppable processes of destruction. It explores the body’s bearing on the spirit and the land’s bearing upon the people who inhabit it.

How it Ends

How it Ends is an exploration of end of life choices, developed from verbatim, found and written text, using movement, imagery and light to speak the unspeakable.  Presented in an immersive, interactive way, audience are challenged to engage in considering how they will die, and ultimately to question how they live.

“an exquisitely, achingly beautiful piece.”

Joff Schmidt, CBC Radio

“Playful, energetic and engaging, Patterson flies through the first act’s thematic collage of monologues before the second act takes a darker narrative turn.”

Matthew TenBruggencate,

Spectator Tribune