Mump & Smoot

Famed Toronto clown duo Mump & Smoot will return to The Cultch next month with Something. Last delighting Vancouver audiences in 1994, Mump & Smoot are back with a rare revival of the show that started it all. In Something, we find the intrepid duo prancing through the etiquette of a fine café, the sorrow and despair of a wake, and the pandemonium of the doctor’s office.

Mump & Smoot are the comic creations of Michael Kennard and John Turner. Their distinctive style of clowning finds its roots deep within their work with Canadian clown master Richard Pochinko, with whom they worked extensively for the last two years of his life.


Also referred to as clowns of horror, Mump & Smoot inhabit a parallel universe called Ummo, worship a god named Ummo, and speak their own brand of gibberish, Ummonian. Enter a giddy, scary world of pure imagination, as the duo turns conventional clowning on its head in this darkly humourous work that ranges from zany to macabre. Warning: not for children!
 
Apart from numerous short sketches, their primary repertoire includes seven full-length shows: Something (1989), Caged (1990), Ferno (1992), Tense (1997), Something Else (1998), Flux (2002), and Cracked (2010). Their critical acclaim and popularity was developed through consistent sell-outs at Fringe Festivals across Canada. They’ve had successful runs at many major regional theatres including the La Jolla Playhouse, the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Center Stage in Baltimore, the Dallas Theater Center, Alberta Theatre Project in Calgary, and at the Canadian Stage Berkeley Street in Toronto. 



Mump & Smoot have also appeared Off-Broadway at the Astor Place Theater in New York, and at the Palestinian National Theatre and the Acco Theatre Festival in Israel.

Mump & Smoot

This dynamic duo won two Dora Mavor Moore awards in June 2003, were nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award for Comedic Play (Mump & Smoot in Flux), and are past recipients of a Canadian Comedy Award for Outstanding Performance in a Comedic Play. They also won the Outstanding Small Visiting Company Award at the Boston Theater Awards and appeared in the Genie Award-winning film, The Fairy Who Didn’t Want To Be A Fairy Anymore, as well as their own Canadian Film Centre short The Princess Who Wouldn’t Smile.

The Cultch presents Mump & Smooth in Something
Dates: May 22 to 26 and 28 to June 2; all shows 8 pm
Venue: Historic Theatre at The Cultch, 1895 Venables Street at Victoria, Vancouver
Tickets: From $17; available online or via phoning 604.251.1363
Q&A post-show with the artists on May 23 and 28

All photos by Ian Jackson.

2 Comments

  • Comment by Ricky Choi — April 26, 2013 @ 9:42 am

    Congratulations on your 1000th post!

  • Comment by arianec — April 26, 2013 @ 9:53 am

    Thanks, Ricky! We’re on a roll now 🙂

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