About

Ruth Ruth Stackhouse

Founding member (1989)
A leader in the Mad/Disabilty Arts Community Ruth has produced many plays and events with The Friendly Spike Theatre Band.
She was an actor, director, playwright and administrator who holds an Honors BA (Ryerson University 2010), and MA (York University, 2013).A recipient of the prestigeous City of Toronto Access Award (2011) and the distiguished Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012)

Marlene Charney – Founding Board Member

After joining Friendly Spike Theatre in the mid 1990s to help develop and star in I Will Not Fall, a play about wife assault and family violence based on the story of Francine Nicholas, Marlene asked the FSTB to help her tell her story. As the daughter of a World War Two Holocaust survivor, Marlene holds a legacy that must never be forgotten. Working with the company, she ensured that it would be remembered by writing and performing a one-woman play called Father and Daughter. A successful effort, Marlene would tour Father and Daughter internationally. In 2003, Marlene co-wrote and starred in the FSTB production The Girls of Grandview, a play about institutional abuse. She later went on to help develop A Common Cause, based on a psychiatric review board hearing. Always ready to help and support others in their creative journey, Marlene continued to work on many of the company’s productions throughout the years. Some of her experiences with the company would go on to be shared in the theatre review, Not the Same Old Story: Alter-narratives of The Friendly Spike Theatre Band (2015). Marlene is on the reading committee of the Newmarket International Festival of One Act Plays. In addition to being their artistic director, she also directs plays for the festival.

Honey Novick – Board Member

Honey Novick is a singer/songwriter/voice teacher/poet. She is the daughter of a teamster, the last milkman in the City of Toronto to deliver milk with a horse and wagon. Her NDP member of Provincial Parliament nominated her for Poet Laureate for the Province of Ontario – poetry, the power to sing what it means to feel and build community. In the early 1990s, Honey was introduced to Ruth and the work of the Friendly Spike. I appeared in several performances with the Band, but it wasn’t until 2000, when I was working, teaching, a quadriplegic singer, Raquelle, and she got a part in a play, that I realized the powerful impact this form of theatre presented. After that realization, I became a dedicated member of the Band and a devoted friend to Ruth Stackhouse.

Cindy Andrew – Board Member

Cindy Andrew is an international photojournalist and humanitarian photographer whose work has illuminated stories of resilience and justice across cultures and continents. Since 1989, she has been a member of The Friendly Spike Theatre Band, contributing to its mission of creating inclusive, socially conscious performances that amplify marginalized voices. With decades of documentary experience capturing the lives and struggles of the homeless, the disadvantaged, and people with disabilities, Cindy brings a unique blend of artistic vision and deep social engagement to the board. Her photography not only documents but advocates – giving visibility to communities often overlooked and championing the power of art as a tool for social change. Cindy’s longstanding commitment to equity, community empowerment, and the transformative power of theatre ensures that the company’s artistic and social justice values remain at the forefront.

Penny Riegle – Board Member

Penny Riegle has been involved with The Friendly Spike Theatre Band since attending method acting classes conducted by Ruth in 1991. She has been an actor in several of The Friendly Spike Theatre Band productions, ie: Common Cause 3, as well as working on costuming for some of the productions. Some things she likes doing are sewing and catching up on projects she started in the past. Doing a little cat-sitting too.

Sarah Wells – Chair

Sarah is a holistic nutritionist by trade and creative entrepreneur by passion. She attributes her creativity to her upbringing as the fourth generation on a working farm. In 2020, Sarah was introduced to Ruth Stackhouse by Honey Novick, who at the time was her creative writing mentor and has been working with Friendly Spike ever since. She was then appointed to be the administrator of Friendly Spike and to carry out the daily routines of the company in June 2023.

Richard Paul – Vice Chair

Richard Paul is a coder, artist, engineer, designer and illustrator. He joined The Friendly Spike Theatre Band in 1999 when he met ruth at a Houselink Community Homes general meeting and the rest is history. About this time, he finished his diploma from Humber’s Industrial Design program and from there went on to help in administration, performance, prop and set design, and much of the promotional material that the theatre required. He took a break to take art/animation courses and completed a diploma in Systems Analysis at Sheridan College. Currently he is working on some publishing projects and acting as an IT consultant in addition to web mastering for the Friendly Spike.

Elaine Stewart – Board Member

In 1994 Elaine was given her first psychiatric drug. Of all that went wrong she was also blessed to meet a loving woman who shared a depth of understanding far beyond what could be found in medicine. She developed an intense community that is still a great resource for many. This woman was Ruth Stackhouse. I was brought into this community over time. It is one of my great privileges to have become a member of the board, said Elaine. Elaine has spent many of her early creative years focusing and honing her technical skills as a garment designer in Ontario. She went back to school to study visual arts after she was severely disabled. She has studied painting, photography and collage at Toronto School of Art and painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). As elaine’s creative practice evolves, her dedication to exploring and shifting the ability/disability paradigm remains ever constant.

Henrik Kartna – Board Member

Henrik has been with The Friendly Spike Theatre Band for over 16 years, contributing to many productions. He is currently the playwright for our new project, “The 7th Floor”. Henrik sits on the board of directors of several committees for Habitat Services. Advocating for psychiatric patient’s housing services. He has been with Habitat Services for 8 years’ now. Henriks social activism was inspired from the late Ruth Stakchouse, his mentor and colleague.

Helen Posno – Member

Helen Posno is an actor, director, media and textile artist, painter, photographer, playwright, poet and producer.
I was a performer for Ruth Stackhouse’s TIED TOGETHER when she took the play and several performers to the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2008.

Recent Publication:
WATER FROM THE WELL copyright Helen Posno 2020 – a collection of poetry published by Secret Handshake Gallery, Toronto 2020.
Recent Productions:
HONEST INSANITY copyright Helen Posno 2019 at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, September, Toronto 2019
JESTER’S HAT copyright Helen Posno 2018 through the Seeds of Hope foundation at 6 St Joseph Street , September, Toronto 2018
CHALLENGING THE SEA copyright Helen Posno 2016 at the Theatre Centre, January, Toronto 2018 – Funded by the Ontario Arts Council.
THE CLOSET PUB copyright Helen Posno 2015 at the May Robinson Auditorium for Ruth Stackhouse and the Mad Pride’s Mad Culture Night, July Toronto 2015.

The FriendlySpike Theatre Band

Since 1989 Friendly Spike has staged community productions by and about the survivor/mad/disability communities. Participation by members of the community portrayed is central to our mandate of inclusion. Toronto, Canada

Listen to Ruth (Ruth) Stackhouse, founding director of the Friendly Spike talk about where her journey in life has taken her:

Maddening self-harm – Crazy Making

In this episode, I speak with Sarah Redikopp about self-harm and self-mutilation. Sarah is a mad and lived experience activist-academic and PhD candidate in the Graduate Program of Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Sarah’s research uses critical and feminist theory and methods to critique psychiatric knowledges about self-harm. Drawing on insights from mad studies, queer and feminist affect theory, critical and feminist disability studies, and critical race theory, Sarah’s scholarship engages directly with lived experience accounts to co-create relational, intersectional, and contextualized engagements with self-harm and to inform social justice outcomes in “mental health” research. At the heart of Sarah’s work is a commitment to witnessing across difference and intervening into the pathologization of distress to inform social change. Sarah’s work has been published in scholarly, community, and grassroots publishing venues, including Sociology of Health and Illness (2022, 2023) and The Canadian Journal of Disability Studies (2021), Canada Watch (2021), and more. Sarah lives and works as a white settler in Tkaronto/Toronto, on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples.