Originally a visual artist, David Secunda told his stories through the fibre arts. His woven sculptures demanded to be given life. He became a performance artist. In 1978, at the International Sculpture Symposium, in a war canoe wearing his giant sisal masks, David Secunda and the other performers paddled towards the audience outside Toronto’s Harbourfront Theatre. This moment at the Sculpture Symposium inspired David Secunda to continue experimenting with woven, crocheted, or knotted masks and giant puppets. He blurred the line between mask theatre and puppetry by creating giant flexible masks that performers animated from the inside. Collaborating with actors and dancers, he formed Theatre of Giants and toured original, visual-theatre pieces. Through Theatre of Giants, he met his partner in life, Linda Arkelian, who designed the covers for Balancing Act and Fluid.

During his twenty-three years as a teacher, he directed musicals, Shakespeare, and mask theatre. More recently, David has been collaborating with Joylyn Secunda, his daughter, on their one-person touring comedy, The Moaning Yoni, and on their web series, Isolation Nation. In the mould of the Renaissance craft workshops, the entire family have worked together on many projects.

Balancing Act and his second novel, Fluid, both borrow from the author’s theatre experience. He’s now writing his third novel, Liquid Bliss, based on his previous play, that explores Mary Shelley’s radical relationships with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron and her creation of the Frankenstein novel.