Do you know what Jillian invented?

Yes, Jillian Keiley did all of that! Plus a lot more…

To name a few other Jillian highlights: her company Artistic Fraud celebrates its Sweet 16th this November, plus Tempting Providence  anyone?

She’s an amazing woman and we are very proud to have her as part of The New Groundswell Festival Masterclass Series as well as the Polyamorous Play Development Panel.

*While her new daughter Josie was napping Jillian had the chance to answer a few questions for us:

#1 essential tool for a director?

Respect for everyone else’s job.

 What did you do today?

Breastfed.  Worked on a budget and a touring schedule.

My greatest ambition is…

It used to be to choreograph a mass piece at the Olympics. That didn’t really happen for me so, now I’m not sure. I’ve always had a plan to open a full care facility for ailing performing artists. I think I will still do that.

In a nutshell, my philosophy is…

Feed the audiences imaginations by giving them just enough imagery and music to build the rest on.

Just because Halloween is still in the air, do you believe in ghosts?

Yes I do.

What sparked Kaleidography?

 When I was in university I was attempting a project on commedia dell’arte. I was having a terrible time and I had a great professor, Anatol Schlosser who told me that my problem was that I was trying to get a cast who didn’t really know each other to execute synchronicity that in real commedia, was done in families- the actors knew each other inside out.  I’d been in large choirs all my life, and thought, well I know one place that you can get the group to have great synchronicity even if they don’t know each other at all. So I wrote a score for the actors, with all the gags timed out perfectly with the actors performing a choreography of sorts – with the freedom of an actor and the precision of a musician.   When it worked, there was another application for what I’d tried, and then after that there was another and another- that’s how it kind of developed.  I’m still a bit awkward about using the word Kaleidography. It was coined because we kept having to reference it in grant applications and constantly explaining what it was, was taking too much space.  A board member suggested Kaleidography like the way a Kaleidoscope snaps an image into place when all the pieces come together.  And we were using a lot of graphs and grids then. However, a lot of people think it’s Keiley-ography which is embarrassing that people think I might have named it after myself.  I’ve just recently started calling it a version of Choral theatre so I don’t feel like such an arse.