Jen Jack is a scenographer based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.
An exploration of real and imagined histories of Cinema L’Amour, the last adult theatre in Canada, I developed this toy theatre show and then installed it as an animated vitrine exhibition of Jewish Montreal.
Amour Toujours
Creator, Performer & Exhibition Designer
Presented at the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival, To Pieces is a new work produced by Who Me? Theatre, exploring the relationship of two former lovers who reconnect in their hometown bar late one night.
To Pieces
Set, Prop and Lighting Designer
A toy theatre and cranky show exploring the solitary rovings of Swiss-German writer Robert Walser, I assisted my professor Mark Sussman of Great Small Works over the course of two years to develop this project which was ultimately presented at the 2024 Festival International de Casteliers in Montreal.
Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser
Scenography Assistant & Puppet Construction
Grief is a devised theatre project that was led by professor Jessica Carmichael. Developed over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year, Grief drew on poetry, personal experiences, and visual storytelling to tell a story about this complex emotion.
This project was my first time participating in a devised theatre piece. I contributed to this project as a creator and a designer.
Grief
Set and Prop Designer
This puppet design concept was conceived as part of the Post-Pandemic Puppet Project, led by Ronnie Burkett at Concordia University.
This piece retells Washington Irving’s 1819 short story “Rip Van Winkle,” placing it in the aesthetic world of the Hudson River School painters of upstate New York, where the story is set. The design features several tabletop puppets, glove puppets, and a cranky shadow box embedded in a picture frame.
Rip van Winkle Revisited
Puppet Design
I developed this mapping project as the culmination of the 2022 Urban Scenography Field school led by Dr. Shauna Janssen at Concordia. Working within Jane Rendell’s critical spatial practice of “site-writing”, we produced scenographic projects inspired by Square Viger in Montreal, a historic public park which was on the cusp of major renovations, and displacing a community of homeless individuals living in the park.
Working with site-writing and and inspired by Larissa Fassler’s work of psychogeograpic mappings, I produced my own subjective map of the park. Layered with historic fire insurance maps and future renovation plans, I depicted these histories and futures on sheets of vellum. I finally presented them in a stack to be disassembled by the viewer as they peeled back layers of history.
Tuesday, 8:18pm; îlot B (An Urban Scenographic Mapping of Square Viger)
Scenographic Research
Tuesday at 6:20pm was presented virtually during a pandemic-era Short Works Festival. With social distancing in place, I developed props and lighting for this new work written by Patrick Dale.
The play follows the growing tension between three roommates in lockdown, when one of them suggests they begin scrapbooking to ease their relationships.
I facilitated several guided drawing exercises on Zoom with the cast to produce visuals present in the prop scrapbooks.
Tuesday at 6:20pm
Prop and Lighting Design
This puppet show tells the story of Edgar Allan Poe and explores the relationship between the creator and his creations, the condition of his spiraling mentality at the end of his life, and his deep feeling of guilt and grief. This production was zero-waste and featured shadow work and life-size puppets.
My contributions to this project included prop, puppet and lighting design, as well as performer.
Evermore, Edgar
Co-Designer and Performer
Metamorphis Violin Prop
This violin was produced for a Prop Realization course taught by Cathia Pagotto during the Covid-19 lockdown. It is the violin of Gregor Samsa’s sister, Grete in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Similar to Gregor’s transformation into a beetle, Grete’s violin transforms as she experiences her own coming-of-age. The violin sheds it deformities, revealing shimmering mother-of-pearl inlays underneath a wooden veneer.
Prop Design & Realization