The Producing Spectrum: A Research Project

Spring-Summer 2024

The Producing Spectrum is led by Mpoe Mogale, Rachel Penny, Becky Plotnek, and Nikki Shaffeeullah. Produced by Undercurrent Creations, in association with Why Not Theatre, Generator, and The Theatre Centre.
Special thanks to Sascha Cole for her collaboration on the early development of the project. This project is possible thanks to support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It's about building life-affirming institutions.”
—Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The Producing Spectrum is a performing arts research project that values abolition. Drawing from abolitionist theory, practice, and action originating in activist spaces, notably Black Feminist and disability justice work, this exploratory research project applies an abolitionist framework to the performing arts sector by holding a proposition that sustainable, meaningful, transformative change in the sector must examine the sector’s overall relationship to systems of the state, including how the performing arts sector reproduces or resists the frameworks, functions, and cultures of the prison industrial complex and colonialism. Specifically, this project investigates the current role of the performing arts producer in the arts ecology through an abolitionist lens. The project seeks to imagine new possibilities as to how independent and institutional performing arts spaces can focus their producing practices towards those which minimize institutional harm, and maximize the potential social, cultural, and political impact of artmaking.     

Given that the little attention paid in the sector to the role and experience of the producer tends to focus on how producers can build skills and networks, this project seeks to expand the conversation toward a holistic discourse about how the current role of the producer and the craft of producing intersect with the colonial status quo of the theatre and performing arts industry in society.

Our Team

  • Mpoe Mogale

    Mpoe Mogale (they/them) reigns from Lebowakgomo, South Africa and splits their time between amiskwaciywâskahikan and moh’kínst’sis, in the colonial state of Canada. They hold a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Political Science, and a wealth of expertise in community-based research, facilitation, and arts administration.

    Mpoe’s primary art-making form is dance, with a curiosity in the place of Blackness in spaces that deny it, as explored through their ongoing project “Rediscovering our Place-Ancestors in the Prairies” (produced by Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre). Mpoe’s current artistic imaginations center the brilliant and joyous aspects that foreground the lives of Black folks.

    Mpoe has taken up positions within the arts community to facilitate the creation of better and abundant workplaces for arts workers, and does so by facilitating spaces where nourishment, imagination, and joy abound. Their work at Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre has led to the development of non-hierarchical models of leadership in arts organizations. They met Nikki Shaffeeullah through this process, and the two have been collaborating on “Stages of Transformation” a project funded by the National Arts Centre that seeks to create new patterns and possibilities for the theatre sector using a transformative justice framework.

    Headshot by Mike Tan

  • Rachel Penny

    Rachel Penny (she/her) is a creative producer working in theatre, dance and community-engaged arts. Rachel supports new work creation and centres relationships in her work. Rachel has worked with a diverse range of organizations including Harbourfront Centre, The Luminato Festival, Young People’s Theatre, Volcano Theatre, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The AMY Project, The Theatre Centre and adelheid dance projects. Currently, Rachel works as Producer at Factory Theatre and as a freelance producer for a variety of mutidisciplinary projects.

  • Becky Plotek

    Becky is a queer creative producer, and founder of Plotnek Productions. Their practice supports careful & nurtured delivery of projects, through flexible and individualised artist development, with the aim to share knowledge, demystify and make horizontal the processes that might normally gatekeep, or otherwise cause barriers, to artists’ and creators’ professional development.

    The range of artists and projects they produce is multidisciplinary and varied - from Live Art and experimental performance, to drag, to autobiographical storytelling theatre, cabaret, and even the UK's first professionally produced Jewish pantomime at JW3 Arts Centre. Current artistic collaborators include Tamm Reynolds (AKA Midgitte Bardot), Hannah Maxwell, and Nick Cassenbaum. They have previously produced for artists across the UK and Europe, including work that has been presented at Barbican Centre, BUZZCUT Festival, Fierce Festival, STHLMDANS, Summerhall (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Battersea Arts Centre & CLAY (Centre for Live Art Yorkshire).

    Their passion as a Creative Producer is to platform powerful storytelling and experimental performance that is irreverent, joyful and often resistant to the status quo. In their time as a producer in the UK, their focus has always been on queer, migrant, or otherwise minority voices and stories and work that challenges cultural norms both in form and content.

  • Nikki Shaffeeullah

    Nikki Shaffeeullah (she/her) is a theatre & film artist, facilitator, researcher, writer, producer, and equity worker. Her work has included serving as Artistic Director of The AMY Project; Editor-in-Chief of alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage; and Assistant Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre. With the National Arts Centre - English Theatre, she conceived, curated and produced Stages of Transformation, a multi-year research and creative project exploring how theatre intersects with abolition movements and transformative justice. Nikki has also taught in the performance departments of University of Toronto Scarborough and the University of Alberta, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Forum for Cultural Innovators. She produces sector-change projects through her organization Undercurrent Creations; and is a founding member of Confluence Arts Collective, a group of artists-activists who believe in transformative justice and a world without prisons.

    Nikki believes that art should disrupt the status quo, centre the margins, engage with the ancient, dream of the future, and be for everyone.