Jennifer Ilse – Co-Artistic Director:
Jennifer Ilse grew up in northern Wisconsin and began performing at age three. She has spent her life in theater and dance, and has also been deeply involved in music and competitive sports. Her professional dance studies began in Duluth, Minnesota, and then continued at the University of Oregon in Eugene and at the Eugene Ballet, where she studied under Susan Zadoff of Ballet Russe. She performed four seasons with the Dance Theatre of Oregon, an energetic modern dance company creating original works under the direction of Marc Siegel and Pamela Lehan-Siegel, whose choreography draws from their history with David Parsons, Ballet West, and Ballet Trockadero. She has also performed in "Triskelion" by Mason Williams, a comedy originally created by Williams for the Smothers Brothers, "Tienanmen" by Pat Catterson, and works by Bill Gordon and Eloy Barragan.

Jennifer has taught ballet, tap, and modern dance classes to adults and children, as well as dance/theater workshops, for the past fifteen years. In addition to her work with Off-Leash Area, she has worked with local choreographers Gerry Girouard, Ray Terrill, and John Munger, and David Deblieck's Wicked Sister Dance Company.

Jennifer is a founding member of Off-Leash Area, taking different roles in directing, performing, choreographing, and designing.

Paul Herwig - Co-Artistic Director:
For over two decades Paul Herwig has worked as an actor, director, writer, and designer for companies in France, Canada, and the US. He trained at the world famous Jacques Lecoq International School of Movement and Theatre in Paris, graduating in 1983. Since then, he has performed at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and the Avignon Festival in France. He performed for a year with the Theatre des Jacquous, performing in French and touring throughout rural western France. During the 80's Paul was an early member of Theatre Grottesco, one of the nation's longest running experimental theatre ensembles, with whom he toured internationally to Budapest and Toronto, and through twenty-five states on over fifteen coast-to-coast tours performing in venues from San Francisco's Theatre Artaud to Philadelphia's Painted Bride and our own Southern Theatre, all over a seven year period. Paul was also Grottesco's Booking Manager, booking and managing several national tours and representing the company at regional and national booking conferences. Paul performed as a free-lance actor in Canada for six years performing on several cross-Canada tours with a variety of commercial, summer, and regional theatres, and worked as a Movement Coach for the Young People's Theatre in Toronto and the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.

Paul has also taught over two hundred physical theatre workshops for universities and professional companies and participated in five artist-in-residency programs with secondary schools in Ann Arbor and Toronto.

In visual art Paul has designed interactive installation-sets for Off-Leash Area, has sculpted dozens of theatrical masks, and as a self-taught painter he has mounted several small exhibitions of his work in Detroit, Toronto, and Minneapolis. He has been a member of artists' collectives in Toronto and St. Paul, mounting a solo exhibition titled "Garden of Desire" at Toronto's Gallery 306, and another solo exhibition of art objects and installation art at the AZ Gallery in St Paul. Outside of Off-Leash Area, in 2004 he designed sets and props for Marcus Young and Shen Pei's Sun and Moon, performed at the Southern Theater.