Breaking Theatre to Rebuild It: A Conversation with Dasha Plett
Dasha Plett, a sound designer, composer, and co-founder of We Quit Theatre, is reshaping the boundaries of theatrical performance. Her work exists in tension between reverence and rebellion, embracing the unpredictable nature of live performance while critiquing the structures that shape traditional theatre. In a conversation with the Siminovitch Theatre Foundation’s Community Manager Sam Woods, Dasha shared insights into her artistic values, her creative process, and the urgent need to rethink the ways we make and experience theatre.
Quitting Theatre to Save It
Founded by Dasha and fellow Winnipeg-based artist Gislina Patterson, We Quit Theatre was born out of frustration with conventional theatre-making methods. The company’s name is a provocation—one that encapsulates a deep love for the art form and a desire to break it apart to find something new. “We love theatre, and we want to break it and quit it and rediscover it,” Dasha says. Their work challenges the dominant, text-centric approach to theatre, favouring performance styles that borrow from dance, heavy metal concerts, late-night talk shows, academic lectures, and even wrestling.
Their debut piece, 805-4821, exemplified this ethos. The performance used an overhead projector, not for shadow puppetry, but as a digital-analog hybrid that projected fragmented text and video. The audience experienced the piece in near silence, absorbing words revealed one line at a time. It was an experiment in perception and presence, a deliberate attempt to disrupt the expected rhythms of theatrical storytelling.
Reimagining Performance and Audience Experience
For We Quit Theatre, the traditional theatre experience is often overly polished, rigid, and detached from the spontaneity that makes live performance thrilling. “I love when things go wrong,” Dasha admits. “It’s so ironic that we do this ephemeral, live thing, but we want it to be like a movie—perfect, controlled.” Instead, their work embraces chance and error as essential elements of performance.
This subversive philosophy extends to their approach to storytelling. Their production i am your spaniel; or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson takes aim at Canada’s institutional fixation on Shakespeare. It questions why Shakespearean performance remains central in the cultural landscape, often without interrogation. The show blends history, political critique, and personal storytelling, underscoring We Quit Theatre’s commitment to mixing the intellectual with the intimate.
The Winnipeg Factor: Breaking the Career Ladder
Based in Winnipeg, Dasha acknowledges that working outside major theatre hubs like Toronto/Montéal/Vancouver presents unique challenges—but also unexpected freedoms. “There’s no ladder to climb here,” she explains. “You can be working at the region’s biggest institutions while still quite young, which means you also see through the illusion of careerism much sooner.” Rather than fixating on climbing institutional hierarchies, Dasha and Gislina have forged a different path, one that sidesteps traditional validation in favour of artistic independence.
Mentorship and Growth: Learning from Debashis Sinha
As part of her journey as a sound designer, Dasha Plett is being mentored by renowned artist Debashis Sinha (2024 Siminovitch Prize finalist), who selected her to receive an Emerging Artist Grant in 2024. This mentorship is already proving invaluable, as Deb has been actively connecting Dasha with key figures in the Canadian theatre scene. Through these new relationships and opportunities, she not only reinforces her skills in sound design but also is helped to navigate the broader artistic landscape with greater confidence and support.
What’s Next: Pushing Boundaries Further
On the horizon for We Quit Theatre is GLORY!—a dance-theatre hybrid premiering in Winnipeg this fall. The show explores the legacies of 1970s feminism and contemporary transphobia, drawing unexpected connections across decades. Dasha herself will step into the role of feminist icon Gloria Steinem in what she describes as an outrageous performance. Meanwhile, she continues her work as a composer and sound designer, collaborating with choreographer Alexandra Elliott on a new project set to debut this year.
Dasha Plett’s work resists categorization. It is at once political and deeply personal, rigorous yet chaotic, rejecting tradition while acknowledging its influence. As Dasha and We Quit Theatre continue to push the boundaries of performance, they remind us that theatre is most alive when it is unstable, unafraid, and unwilling to settle for the expected.
Interested in Dasha and We Quit Theatre’s work? Watch their short stratfest@home-commissioned film Men Explain Things to Us… And We Like It! here.
