BIRTH
     I was born in Winnipeg in 1977, the youngest of three, and an Aries, so of course (astrological gibberish). Living in St. Boniface, of course I went to French Immersion until the end of first grade, when we moved to the bustling metropolis of Red Deer, Alberta. Even while quite young, I exhibited tendencies toward becoming an artist, i.e. not being particularly good at anything else. Keep in mind, this is the Canadian prairies, where "anything else" consists of: hockey. Unfortunately, I did have a good natural grasp of math, which haunts me to this day and gets me laughed out of clubs with names like "L'Artiste Serieux". I have concealed it for too long, yes, I am an artist who is not only shamelessly straight and lacking any sort of fashion sense, but I understand calculus, or at least did when I believed it might ever be useful. The comment by my picture in the yearbook one year in about 4th grade was "Who were his parents, IBM and Macintosh?" Oh so drole. La, how jolly. Let me spare you the tedious minutiae: I got older and eventually even grew into those huge ears; survived the ordeal known as high school; and embarrassing pictures of my life before college survive despite my best efforts at extermination.

COLLEGE
     I started at Red Deer College in Elementary Education in a Math and Computers focus, which quickly helped me figure out I didn't want to be stuck teaching Math and Computers for the rest of my life. The next summer, along with two friends, Luke and Kris, I produced 5 episodes of a (really awful) sketch comedy series for Shaw Cable. As I say, the series was terrible, but we learned a lot, and Luke is now a professional TV cameraman. I decided to switch to a Drama focus, but I hadn't had what I considered enough experience from just my own high school drama courses to live with calling myself a teacher, so I left the Education department to join the Theatre Studies program as a performer. In my 2 years there I had the pleasure and honour of being the only one in my class to have roles in all the shows, including a few pretty juicy ones, notably Charles Condomine in Blithe Spirit, Koch/Tassigny in The Rich Man, and Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.

BANFF
     Next came a sad little job at RadioShack which was very happily cut short by the beginning of a terrific 6-month stint at The Banff Centre for the Arts, which gave me access to their library of Canadian plays and general artsy-fartsy litterachoor which I might never have seen otherwise. Also, of course, I was there for the Summer Festival of the Arts and got to see lots of world-class theatre and live music. While living in staff accommodation there, I heard from a technician buddy that there was an opening for a Drama Teacher and Director in...well, what is sometimes known as the Armpit of Canada.

PRINCE ALBERT
     So off I went to Prince Albert. It was an amazing chance to combine teaching and drama, and while I was here there were opportunities to direct for local groups and mount my own shows. Small town theatre tends to develop a bit of a self-appointed elite and a lot of infighting. I figure you could call the storms of raging egos tempests in a teapot - if you could squeeze them into a smaller teapot. As it was, it seemed petty and frivolous to me with my utilitarian mind, since it only made it that much harder for everyone to put on good shows. That said, when things really came to the crunch, the small-town spirit won through, and companies that had last-minute problems were always able to find help somewhere. Everyone understood the old "show must go on" bit and were willing to help each other out in a pinch. Anyway, I think I managed to stay out of the quarreling as much as possible, and directed for several different companies in town as well as start my own little touring branch of the main company I worked for, producing/designing/directing shows for school tours to make a little money on the side and bringing affordable theatre to kids that I figured otherwise didn't get to see many quality live performances. The bulk of my resume is still from the almost 4 years I spent there, and it was great to make my living solely from working in the biz, but then there was the issue of not really being able to save anything or pay off my student loan, however utopian it was to make my living that way, so I moved on to the Big Chopstick.

JAPAN
     Moved to Himeji, Japan, to fulfill the modern obligation to teach my own brand of butchered english to Asian children. Communicating with children who don't speak your language and don't particularly care to is kind of like a whole new branch of theatre, and I quickly learned that any expectations I had of smiling obedient little Japanese kids was something like the expectation that when you finally turned 13 your world would suddenly change as you looked at things as a teenager. Don't be fooled by what you see of Japanese adults, as far as I can tell, parents there figure their kids are going to be crushed by the system eventually anyway, so most of them are allowed to run pretty wild while they're young. There's something to be said for letting kids be kids, but around junior high, they suddenly seem to get whiplash as the gears of the system bring their days of fun and freedom to a sudden stop. After that, many kids just stop participating beyond robotic repetition. If you have a talent for giving deeply suppressed kids the courage to feel free to express themselves, this just may be your niche.
     I picked up a bit of Japanese, passed the Level 3 test about a year after arriving, and was lucky enough to get business trips from my company that allowed me to travel much of the country. The October before I left, I took a little time off to travel a good chunk of the rest, so now I've seen most of the country from Fukuoka to Sapporo, including Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Mie, Ise, Nara, Kyoto, Wakayama, Osaka, Kobe, Kinosaki, Okayama, Matsuyama, Hiroshima, and Kumamoto. Eventually I'll create a photo gallery to show some of the better photos I took in my travels, as well as an online journal of my time abroad. It will include my usual series of rambling and pointless stories. Look forward to seeing it here - but not yet.

AUSTRALIA
     In January I moved to Melbourne with Caroline. Our landlord, Judy, and her family have been terrific by acting as references and sources of information and general advice. We've still had a nightmare finding jobs, so it's been difficult to get out much and see Oz...we're working on that, check here for updates.

PLANS
     I'd like to keep breathing.