Presenting: Michael Nimbley

Abstract

The following is the working script from Montreal-based artist Michael Nimbley’s presentation about his professional career. The script was co-created with his creative ally Catherine Bourgeois, the founder and artistic director of Montreal-based theatre group, Joe Jack & John. Joe Jack & John is a theatre company that produces original, bilingual, multidisciplinary shows combining video, dance, and the spoken word. Their artistic approach is deeply humanistic and inclusive; their creations represent a social microcosm by integrating professional actors with an intellectual disability or from diverse cultural backgrounds. During the time of VIBE, Nimbley was an artist-in-residence with the company. In establishing artistic residencies, Joe Jack & John are fulfilling their mission in a new way by inviting an artist living with a disability to initiate and direct a creation of their own. These residencies demonstrate a unique political stance. By handing power to an artist with an intellectual disability, they are furthering their research on marginalized aesthetics and voices. Their goal is to develop interdependent creative models and practices, promoting the emergence of underrepresented voices that have not been part of the dominant artistic trends. In doing so, they are disrupting aesthetic hierarchies and continuing to dismantle biases against artists who evolve outside the artistic establishment.