Fringe News
Fringe News
SummerWorks Performance Festival returns for its 26th year August 4-14, 2016, with expanded programming and new venues, as the Festival continues to provide a platform for new and adventurous performance works, offering their most diverse and boundary blurring line-up to date.
This year SummerWorks features 69 unique pieces under the banners of Special Presentations (curator Michael Rubenfeld), Theatre (curators Tara Began and Guillermo Verdecchia), Dance (curator Jenn Goodwin), Music (curators Adam Bradley and Andrew Pulsifer), Live Art (curator Cathy Gordon), Youth Partnerships, and SummerWorks Lab Workshop Presentations. The 2016 program travels landscapes and languages, genres and locations - from ensemble pieces to one-on-one experiences and from main stages to secret, immersive locations.
Highlights this year include Special Presentations Mr. Shi and His Lover, the North American premiere of an opera performed in Mandarin, and Tomorrow’s Child, an audio-only theatre experience coming to SummerWorks following a sold-out run in Calgary. There are many well-loved creators and SummerWorks alumni bringing projects to the Festival including d’bi.young’s Bleeders (third in the Orisha Trilogy); Broken Lines, a new dance piece from award winning choreographer Nova Bhattacharya; Erika Batdorf’s Burnish, which initially premiered in the Venice Biennale; Daughter, from collaborators Adam Lazarus, Ann-Marie Kerr, Jiv Parasram and Melissa D’Agosinto; the overnight, immersive performance Empire Of Night, created by Kari Pederson, Charles Ketchabaw, Matt Smith and Adam Paolozza; High Blood a participatory theatre experience from DATU and HATAW, fusing music, dance, multimedia, and ritual; Maylee Todd and La-Nai Gabriel’s Inamorata, a live re-arranging of Todd’s most recent album; and This Is How We Got Here, a heartbreaking piece from director Eli Ham and writer Keith Barker.
The Festival, this year as always, will introduce audiences to exciting emerging creators as well, with new work including Duets for Beginners, a reflection on the simple desire to connect, created by Clayton Lee; Osia, a story about a Ghanian family struggling for a better future by Jijo Quayson; Plucked, a revelatory take on fertility by Rachel Ganz and directed by Carly Chamberlain; and Two Indians, a darkly comedic look and the landscape of being Indigenous, written by Falen Johnson and directed by Jessica Carmichael.
“This year’s programming reflects the values that I have long admired about the SummerWorks Performance Festival,” said incoming Artistic and Managing Director Laura Nanni. “The 2016 Festival continues to encompass a diverse representation of cultures and performance practices, it makes space for bold artistic experiments and collaboration, and enables professional development as well as meaningful engagement between artists and audiences.
“As our world, our country, and how we define performance continues to evolve, SummerWorks continues to evolve with it and lead the charge in new approaches to how we present and experience performance. SummerWorks artists also continue to question, provoke, and imagine new possibilities. I couldn’t be more excited to immerse myself in my first Festival as Artistic and Managing Director, and to form deeper connections with Toronto audiences and the artistic community to learn how we as a festival can best serve their needs.”
In 2016, SummerWorks returns to the Factory Theatre which again serves as the Festival Hub and which will host the Central Box Office, The Conversations, and three performance venues, as well as ongoing installations and pop-up performances. The Opening Night Party and Closing Night Awards Ceremony and Celebration will also be held here.
Other returning main venues include The Theatre Centre and the Scotiabank Studio Theatre in the Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement. Pia Bouman will also play host to the SummerWorks Back Patio– a hidden backyard patio, open in the evening to coincide with music, theatre, and live art programming. New venues in 2016 include the Artscape Sandbox, The Drake Hotel and Drake Underground.
SummerWorks again welcomes productions from young creators including their ongoing partnership with the AMY Project who present Quiet Revolution this year, two productions from the Sears Ontario Drama Festival Toronto regional finals, Amanah and Nize It, and the Sears Ontario Drama Festival provincial winner for best original play, Selkie.
Also returning is the SummerWorks Leadership Intensive Program (S.L.I.P.) which this year will involve events open to the public for the first time and The Conversations, which engages creators of different disciplines in public discussions around aspects of performance practice and interdisciplinary collaboration.
New for 2016, there are two SummerWorks Lab Workshop Presentations; works being given residency time in one of the mainstage theatres over the 2nd week of the Festival to experiment and develop a new work. These works in progress will receive one public showing each, opening SummerWorks audiences to the creative process, and enabling creators to test their new ideas in front of curious and adventurous audience members. These showings will be PWYC.
The complete SummerWorks 2016 programming list can be downloaded HERE or requested from RedEye Media directly.
Single Tickets range from PWYC-$15. Three, seven, and 10-Show Passes are also available. Tickets and passes are available online starting June 21st; and over the phone (416-320-5779) or in person at the Central Box Office (125 Bathurst Street) from August 2-14, 10am-7pm; or at the door one hour before showtime.
About SummerWorks Theatre Festival:
Founded in 1991, the SummerWorks Performance Festival is widely recognized as one of the most important platforms for launching new Canadian work- locally, nationally, and internationally. For 11 days every August, SummerWorks hosts over 500 artists, performing in over 60 performance projects. 2016 marks SummerWorks’ 26th year as one of the country’s most preeminent multidisciplinary hubs featuring a wide variety of artistic programming including, music, dance, theatre, live art – and everything in between.
Get social:
Website: summerworks.ca
Twitter: @SummerWorks
Facebook: SummerWorks Performance Festival
Instagram: @SummerWorks_festival
Photo: Shari Hollett and Lucy Earle. ©2016.
2016-06-21
SummerWorks: SummerWorks' 2016 programming