The Company
Founded in 1994 by Helen Juvonen, Thought For Food is a Toronto-based company that began as a summer project for university and high school students. Twenty years later, the company remains dedicated to showcasing the talents of emerging artists.
Overt theatricality, an interest in performer/audience relationships, and an emphasis on spontaneous or random elements, have become the signature qualities of the company’s productions. Thought For Food has also developed an passion for projects that entertain audiences while maintaining social and political relevance.
The Cause
Originally just a play on words, in 1997 the company decided to live up to its name. Over the years the company has collected several hundred pounds of donations for Toronto area food banks.
Helen Juvonen – Artistic Director
Helen is the founder and Artistic Director of Thought For Food Productions as well as an independent actor, director and playwright. Producing anything from Shakespeare to new Canadian plays, she is interested in theatre that explores the shared space between the performers and the audience.
With Thought For Food she has produced, directed and/or appeared in over a dozen shows including her own play The Aleatory Project, where the actors use random elements to determine the course of the play live on stage. Other productions include the new works The Cousins of Corsica and a little faux pas as well as a variety of classic plays such as Love’s Labour’s Lost, Agnes of God and The Birthday Party.
As an actor, her credits include: Purgatory in Ingleton (Summerworks); Handle With Care (Toronto FringeKids!); Beauty and the Beast (Sudbury Theatre Centre); Much Ado About Nothing (Spadina House Museum/Single Thread); The Importance of Being Earnest (Casa Loma); Volpone (Ontario Renaissance Festival); and Spring Awakening (Ranevsky Repertory Theatre). Helen was also the last actress to play Mollie in the long-running Toronto Truck Theatre production of The Mousetrap.
Helen is always working on a variety of projects and is currently writing the puppet play Jurkka Jarvinen’s Troll Stories, parts of whichhave been presented at Puppetmongers’ Fresh Ideas in Puppetry and Theatre Passe Muraille’s Crapshoot.
Helen recently fulfilled a lifelong dream when she became a Jeopardy! Champion.
Tyler J. Seguin – Producer
Tyler is a graduate of the University of Toronto / Sheridan College program in Theatre and Drama Studies and is currently working as an actor, director and puppeteer. Tyler most recently apprenticed with Calgary’s Old Trout Puppet Workshop and worked on their new production From Naughty to Nice as a builder and designer. His physical theatre and puppetry training also includes work with Eugenio Barba (Odin Teatret, Denmark), Quinn Bauriedel (Pig Iron Theatre, Philadelphia) and David and Ann Powell (The Puppetmongers, Toronto) as well as a variety of performance techniques including Clown, Mask, Viewpoints, and Chekhov.
Tyler’s work with Thought For Food includes directing The Cousins of Corsica and The Aleatory Project ‘s Alberta tour as well as appearing in The Universal Wolf. Elsewhere, he has developed and directed educational entertainment for the Ontario Science Centre including Second Leap, an exploration of human travel to Mars; The Gobsmacking Gutbag, an introduction to the digestive system; and Rediscovering da Vinci, a biographical performance about Leonardo da Vinci.
Recent performance credits include Our Town (Sudbury Theatre Centre), Handle With Care (Toronto FringeKids!), Little Shop of Horrors (Theatre New Brunswick), Clouds Over T.O. (The Guild Festival Theatre), The Secret Garden and A Child’s Garden of Verses (Theatre New Brunswick), Alice in Wonderland (Sudbury Theatre Centre). He can also be seen in the PEI-based webseries Just Passing Through.