User talk:Wellington Bay/Deanne Taylor

Deanne Elizabeth Taylor (November 24, 1946 – December 15, 2020) was an avant garde artist, director, producer, actor, playwright, filmmaker and performance artist in Toronto, best known for co-founding the satirical Queen Street West cabaret group, the Hummer Sisters in the 1970s and 1980s, and for co-founding VideoCabaret. In 1982, she briefly changed her name to A. Hummer to enable the Hummer Sisters to run collectively for mayor of Toronto (though with only Taylor's assumed name on the ballot) against incumbent Art Eggleton under the slogan "ART vs Art"; coming in second place in the 1982 mayoral election, with 12,000 votes.

During the campaign, which cost a total of $3,000 and featured nightly political cabarets at the Cameron House, the Hummer Sisters told the media that being mayor was “no job for politicians” and held a penny-a-plate fundraiser to cover their costs, and counter a $150-a-plate fundraiser held by Eggleton.

Taylor was born in Berkeley, California to Violet Mae and Malcolm Gordon Taylor, who were living in California while Malcolm Taylor was a doctoral student at University of California, Berkeley.

She grew up across Canada, as her father moved frequently during his academic career. While in Toronto, at the age of 9, she took dance lessons from a neighbour who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - a connection that led her to be cast as the title character in the CBC Television series Maggie Muggins - the second of three girls to play the part during the run of the series.

In 1960, she moved to Calgary when her father was appointed principal of what became the University of Calgary. After graduating from high school she studied at the University of British Columbia for a year before moving to Europe for a gap year which became seven years of travels that included a stints living in Morocco and India as well as London during the swinging sixties, becoming part of "Swinging London"'s counterculture and studying at the London School of Film Technique. She founded London's first repertory film house )a cinema showing art films as well as old and classic movies), at the Electric Cinema. She also had small part in Jean-Luc Godard's documentary British Sounds (See You at Mao), which was about what things are like for women under capitalism, in which she walked up and down a staircase in the nude.

Taylor died on December 15, 2020, of cancer, at the age of 74.

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Category:1946 birthsCategory:2020 deathsCategory:American emigrants to CanadaCategory:Canadian theatre directorsCategory:Canadian theatre managers and producersCategory:People from Berkeley, CaliforniaCategory:Canadian artistic directorsCategory:Actresses from TorontoCategory:Canadian performance artistsCategory:Canadian satiristsCategory:Cabaret singersCategory:Canadian women comediansCategory:Canadian comedy musiciansCategory:20th-century Canadian comediansCategory:20th-century Canadian women singersCategory:Canadian musical theatre actresses