Elaine Weryshko (she/they) is a physical theatre artist and practitioner of live performance from Mohkínstsis||Calgary, Canada. My medium is the poetic body for a Post-Britney world, a practice based out of extensive worldly training in Mask, Clown, Greek Chorus/Ensemble and Puppetry. I write, perform, produce, teach, design and kamikaze live events in alternative spaces all over Alberta. Typical projects are inspired for Greek-like choruses and large mass gatherings, casting anywhere between 6 to 35 people, searching for group catharsis on and off the stage - I celebrate the need for epic ideas and run wildly towards the exploration of our shared profane experiences with the natural world.
I am interested in creating work that in unimaginable and unreproducible. Inspired through a visceral live honesty to keep pushing the collision of genres and be paving greater roads of permission for how we make live art and how we experience it. Through this physical and visual lens, I have found my voice as protester, punk and artist; an emotional expression which apart from being anarchistic and slightly chaotic, is essentially visual and poetic. I am trying to work in a way that encourages the un-traditional, sparks surrealism and reinvigorates how we gather together
I am the co-Educational Director at the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry, creator and coordinator of The WunderBriefs series at the Animated Objects Festival and co-curator of, to the AWE (finalized 2021). In the past I have worked with or presented at: The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Alberta Gallery of Art, Mile Zero Dance, Sage Theatre, Springboard Performance, Swallow A Bicycle, Theatre Junction, the Pacitti Company (UK), The Invisible Dog (NYC), and mentored with immersive theatre giant PunchDrunk in their London production A Drowned Man. I have trained around the world at: The London International School of Performing Arts (Thomas Prattki, UK), Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre (California), The Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance (Canada) and with the SITI Company NYC Summer Viewpoints Intensive.
Post-Britney : adjective
When the facade is falling the fuck apart, mirrors are cracked, tiarra trashed, we scream at the sky, we shave our head, it all oozes everywhere and none of us can go back to the way it was. Was anything ever actually real ?
The freedom of the 'Fuck It Place'
That moment.
That's Post-Britney, Bitch!
Photo: Melanie Gauer
It is a joy to live, create and work as an artist on the Land of Treaty 7, traditionally known as “Mohkinstsis” in Blackfoot, today as Calgary. These are the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Stoney-Nakoda First Nations, the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III.