facilitation, teaching, directing

from an anti-oppressive worldview

Janice Jo Lee is a professional facilitator and teacher in the fields of arts, anti-oppression and leadership. Over the years she has taught many community groups across the country on topics such as:

- poetry, spoken word and storytelling
- songwriting, singing, looping
- improvisation, clown/bouffon
- play and theatre creation
- anti-oppression, antiracism
- team building, community building

Contact Janice to discuss designing a specialized workshop for your group's needs.

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teaching values / pedagogy

Janice Jo Lee comes from a background in music, sports, theatre, English literature, student activism, community organizing, clown/bouffon, Buddhist mindfulness, and 13 years of running workshops. These are her teaching values and methods. 

  • Body as Instrument, to create 
  • Body as clay, needs to be warmed up before dug into, molded, stretched or changed 
  • Body as archive, as text, stories reside in the body 
  • Body as legacy, what has been given to you by your ancestors 
  • To shed (immobilizing) self-judgement, guilt and shame which inhibits speech, action, experimentation, trying, risk taking 
  • Try to be free by following your joy 
  • Accept and affirm yourself 
  • Offer your true nature, spirit as a gift  
  • In Community, workshop ensemble as micro-community  
  • Active listening, as a practice of seeing the other person 
  • Everything is a pondering, we don’t need answers, we want to inquire and consider

theatre, poetry, facilitation background

Janice’s one-woman musical satire Will You Be My Friend was developed and produced by Green Lights in Kitchener in 2017. The show made its Toronto debut at Theatre Passe Muraille in October 2018 to critical praise from The Toronto Star (¾), Mooney on Theatre and a 4/5 rating from Now Magazine. In Ontario her theatrical work has been produced with Green Light Arts, MT (Multicultural Theatre) Space, Theatre Passe Muraille, and fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre.  
  
Janice has spoken word training with d’bi young anitafrika, Lillian Allen, bouffon/clown training with Adam Lazarus, Nathaniel Justiniano, and Deanna Fleysher, and physical theatre training with MT Space, and Fadhel Jaibi. Janice has worked as an educator for 13 years facilitating arts, anti-oppression and leadership workshops across Canada. She has facilitated anti-oppression workshops for University of Waterloo, Laurier Student Public Interest Research, Laurier Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work, Folk Alliance International and Vancouver Poetry House. Janice has directed theatre creation programs for racialized youth with MT Space, Le Project N’we Jinan, and Randolph Kids.  
  
In Waterloo Region, Janice Jo Lee was voted Best Performance Artist five years running from 2016 to 2020 (The Community Edition Newspaper.) She was the City of Kitchener’s Artist in Residence in 2015, the founding artistic director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Poetry Slam (2011-2018), and Festival Director for Rainbow Reels Queer and Trans Film Festival (2015, 2017). Currently she is working on a new musical satire titled Apocalypse Earth and her album Ancestor Song.