WHY “DITCHWITCH”??The name DitchWitch Brigade was inspired by a equipment company that produces vibratory plows, piercing tools, pipe bursters, stump grinders and the like that are used in the City of Toronto public parks and streets. We took this name because we like to dig a little deeper into our material and push it to new limits. We believe in the magic of live theatre as a unique form of cultural communication and entertainment while playing with multimedia applications on theatrical terms.Besides, as our resident musician/performer Art Babayants quips, it has great rhyming potential: “DitchWitch is a kitsch bitch company”.Our Story
The DitchWitch Brigade was formed in June 2008 by alumni, current senior students, faculty of UC Drama Program, and the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, as well as other independent artists to play with an aspect of Parkdale’s local history through the development of a performance project called Miss Toronto Gets A Life_in Parkdale (What would later become 'MISS TORONTO ACTS BACK'). We started with an old painted outdoor mural on the wall of the Rhino Bar & Grill on Queen Street West. As a result of our interest we became artists-in-residence at the Rhino. We have been developing ideas around that painted image into a 90-minute show which plays with diverse formats of storytelling – expanding the notion of live theatre into mediated show formats like silent movie, slide-show, and video stalking. We expanded our interest beyond live performance because our perception of beauty, gender, and self is increasingly constructed and deconstructed by our interactions with technologically mediated forms of communication which created a history of storytelling in itself; disturbingly crossing, more and more, the line between the public and the private. Everyone can become a YouTube star in the privacy of their own, or somebody else’s dressing room.
Our members include: Art Babayants, Alex Baczynskyj, Katie Binnersley, Antje Budde, , Aidan Dahlin-Nolan, Tara Gerami, Doug Hamilton, Myrto Koumarianos, Kearsten Lyons, Alexi Marchel, Mariana Medellin-Meinke, Kelsey Speakman, Jacquey Taucar, Eve Wylden, with friends (Helen Yung, Jivesh Parasram, Cui Yi, Kat Letwin)
BIO(s)
Eve Wylden(performer)After studying in England, Eve graduated from the University of Toronto's UCDP acting program and has since embarked on many theatrical adventures. Eve is currently playing Anna, the maid, in the red light district's production of FIREraisers. As a core member of the red light district, Eve has also been seen as Tamora in titus andronicus!, menina/beggar/aunt/slut/lady-in-waiting in IVONA princess of burgundia, Célimène in THE MISANTHROPE, Doctor inwoyzeck, Carter in the WITCH of Edmonton, and Biebitz in …la ronde… This summer, Eve performed in Love, Virtually at the Toronto Fringe Festival which was selected as Best of Fringe 2011. Other credits include: save us!!! (Hamletown) (Surprise Performance/Harbourfront HATCH), Conscientia (New Ideas Festival), Brecht: 50 years After (UCDP/Piccolo Teatro di Milano), A Servant of Two Masters (Nuit Blanche 2006), Doctor Barnardo’s Children (4th Line Theatre), and The Mousetrap(Toronto Truck). Notable facts: Eve is a holistic nutritionist and ardent pit bull advocate. www.evewylden.com Art Babayants
(Performer)
The DitchWitch Brigade was formed in June 2008 by alumni, current senior students, faculty of UC Drama Program, and the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, as well as other independent artists to play with an aspect of Parkdale’s local history through the development of a performance project called Miss Toronto Gets A Life_in Parkdale (What would later become 'MISS TORONTO ACTS BACK'). We started with an old painted outdoor mural on the wall of the Rhino Bar & Grill on Queen Street West. As a result of our interest we became artists-in-residence at the Rhino. We have been developing ideas around that painted image into a 90-minute show which plays with diverse formats of storytelling – expanding the notion of live theatre into mediated show formats like silent movie, slide-show, and video stalking. We expanded our interest beyond live performance because our perception of beauty, gender, and self is increasingly constructed and deconstructed by our interactions with technologically mediated forms of communication which created a history of storytelling in itself; disturbingly crossing, more and more, the line between the public and the private. Everyone can become a YouTube star in the privacy of their own, or somebody else’s dressing room.
Our members include: Art Babayants, Alex Baczynskyj, Katie Binnersley, Antje Budde, , Aidan Dahlin-Nolan, Tara Gerami, Doug Hamilton, Myrto Koumarianos, Kearsten Lyons, Alexi Marchel, Mariana Medellin-Meinke, Kelsey Speakman, Jacquey Taucar, Eve Wylden, with friends (Helen Yung, Jivesh Parasram, Cui Yi, Kat Letwin)
BIO(s)
Eve Wylden
(performer)
After studying in England, Eve graduated from the University of Toronto's UCDP acting program and has since embarked on many theatrical adventures. Eve is currently playing Anna, the maid, in the red light district's production of FIREraisers. As a core member of the red light district, Eve has also been seen as Tamora in titus andronicus!, menina/beggar/aunt/slut/lady-in-waiting in IVONA princess of burgundia, Célimène in THE MISANTHROPE, Doctor inwoyzeck, Carter in the WITCH of Edmonton, and Biebitz in …la ronde… This summer, Eve performed in Love, Virtually at the Toronto Fringe Festival which was selected as Best of Fringe 2011. Other credits include: save us!!! (Hamletown) (Surprise Performance/Harbourfront HATCH), Conscientia (New Ideas Festival), Brecht: 50 years After (UCDP/Piccolo Teatro di Milano), A Servant of Two Masters (Nuit Blanche 2006), Doctor Barnardo’s Children (4th Line Theatre), and The Mousetrap(Toronto Truck). Notable facts: Eve is a holistic nutritionist and ardent pit bull advocate. www.evewylden.com
Art Babayants is an actor, theatre director and teacher. His recent credits include musicals (Share and Share Alike, 2007; Seussical, 2009), contemporary Canadian drama (Couldn’t We Be, 2008; The Fall of The Western Dan, 2009), anddevised theatre performances (as part of the Ditchwitch Brigade: Miss Toronto Gets A Life in Parkdale, 2010). Art is now pursuing his PhD degree at the University of Toronto. His research interests lie on the intersection of theatre, education and applied linguistics.
Douglas Hamilton
(Media Whisperer, Techie)
He has achieved a degree as drama specialist with the University of Toronto UC Drama, and has a diploma in Film Production from Humber college. He was selected as a participant in Atom Egoyan’s Transgressions: Interdisciplinary Practise; and studied various workshops on: puppetry with Puppet Mongers; directing with Soulpepper; mask building with Teodoro Dragonieri; and motion tracking/Eye Con Software with Robert Wechsler.
Selected Credits: Assistant Director: I <3 Future (Johanna Schall, UCDP/Piccolo Teatro, Milan), The Robbers (Johanna Schall, UCDP), Chekhov Vaudvilles (Zed Pitkin, Hart House Theatre), A Servant of Two Masters (Mark Christmann, Nuit Blanche); Assistant Technical Director: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Dido & Aenaes‚ Resurrection, Orfeo & Eurydice (Marshal Pynkoski, Opera Atelier); Audio/Visual: SLASH tv dot medication (Antje Budde, Nuit Blanche); Menschliche Sicherheit als Ziel: Europa und Kanada vor kulturellen Herausforderungen (Canadian Embassy, Berlin).
Antje Budde (Director) 
Antje is a director, theatre researcher and teacher. After graduating from an agricultural technical college and working at a state puppet theatre company, Antje studied theatre studies, cultural communication and modern Chinese Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin and took courses at Ernst-Busch Theatre Academy in Berlin/Germany. For three years, she studied and did research at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing/P.R. China. Her artistic education includes her professional work with theatre companies like The State Puppet Theatre Neubrandenburg, the Pantomime Ensemble of the Deutsche Theater in Berlin and the National Experimental Theatre in Beijing. Antje’s aesthetic concept of theatre is deeply influenced by politically engaged, feminist and queer, non-naturalistic, cross-cultural traditions of performance which transgress diverse techniques, media and genre expectations. Theatre is understood as a laboratory of ideas and practices that is concerned with the question “what if?” and the potential for social change. Antje has a great interest in undermining traditions and conventions of self-evident theatre. She directed performance projects in three countries in the respective original languages. (Germany, China, Canada) Warning: she doesn’t “do” plays.
Recent projects
(Media Whisperer, Techie)
Selected Credits: Assistant Director: I <3 Future (Johanna Schall, UCDP/Piccolo Teatro, Milan), The Robbers (Johanna Schall, UCDP), Chekhov Vaudvilles (Zed Pitkin, Hart House Theatre), A Servant of Two Masters (Mark Christmann, Nuit Blanche); Assistant Technical Director: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Dido & Aenaes‚ Resurrection, Orfeo & Eurydice (Marshal Pynkoski, Opera Atelier); Audio/Visual: SLASH tv dot medication (Antje Budde, Nuit Blanche); Menschliche Sicherheit als Ziel: Europa und Kanada vor kulturellen Herausforderungen (Canadian Embassy, Berlin).
