Small Wooden Shoe – Where does the name come from?


This requires some back story. Right after university I founded a “collective” called sabotage group with a bunch of friends who did things other than theatre: a film-maker, a few writers, a geography PhD candidate, a few musicians (many of these people over lapped these descriptors.)

“Collective” requires the quotes because really, it was a led-collaboration, but at the time, anything short of “collective” seemed like a political failure.

Under that name there were 3 shows – 1 in Vancouver: Pleasure is So Hard To Remember (a title I’d love to re-use); and 2 in Toronto: …Open Wound and Other Than War. The shows were, generously, young – but each had moments and aspects that certainly track through all my work, and I worked with truly amazing people – many of whom I still collaborate with.

Other than War – a show bringing together narratives of the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof) and Uncle Vanya in the spring of 2001 (during Quebec City, pre-Trade Towers) – was the pinnacle and the destruction of the ability to work in the supposed collective. All very ambitious, all very glad it happened – but there are things I’d do better.

I fled to Halifax (it was planned before, but still felt like fleeing) and needed a name to produce under – something that I could do without need to deal with the mux that sabotage group had become personally. I had hopes that sabotage group wasn’t completely finished, but I needed what might be a side project.
/back story

“Sabotage” comes from (in some reports) striking French workers throwing their “sabots” – clogs – in to the machinery in order to stop scab labour and force owners to settle in order to get the machines fixed. I looked “sabot” up in a French-English Dictionary and it said, “a small wooden shoe.” I thought Small Wooden Shoe was a good name for the side project.

And 10 years later, I still like it.

I’ve been thinking lately about how to talk about the political instinct/desire to disrupt and make changes that the name carries. I think about differently than I did 10 years about – but I still think about.

“Throwing a clog into the machinery of the everyday” – just not sure. Thoughts welcome.

2 thoughts on “Small Wooden Shoe – Where does the name come from?

  1. Here’s a link to Wiipedia, re Frank Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage stories and novels…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_SabotageThese have stuck with me more than Herbert’s more famous Dune stories.

    The premise is that change powered by technology can happen so fast that unforeseen consequence can cause near instant disaster. Hence the need for a clandestine but essential BSab to throw sabots or sand in the works, to slow things down.

    Sound too much like recent financial history…

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *