Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Toronto, ON – This June, Luminato Festival celebrates its first decade of creating adventurous art in adventurous places. From June 10 to 26, with an extended 17-day Festival, Luminato will #TurnOnTheHearn with its first-ever residency, temporarily transforming Toronto’s iconic, decommissioned power plant, The Hearn Generating Station, into the world’s largest multi-arts centre under one roof with a 1,200 seat theatre, a music and dance stage, a site-specific performance space, an art gallery, restaurants, bars and more.
Artistic Director Jorn Weisbrodt (curating his fifth and final Festival) and CEO Anthony Sargent (making a splash with his first) today announced three projects marking exclusive North American engagements at the 10th Anniversary Luminato Festival: The National Theatre of Scotland’s 5-star epic trilogy, The James Plays; Situation Rooms, a multi-player video experience from Germany’s Rimini Protokoll; and the return of Poland’s electrifying music festival Unsound Toronto. This diverse trio of internationally-acclaimed projects (the first of many to be unveiled), are each uniquely positioned to animate The Hearn by showcasing the scale, size and depth of the Festival’s ambition for the space.
“In the 20th century, the Hearn Generating Station produced electricity and in the 21st century, it will produce art,” said Weisbrodt. “The potent energy of the Hearn will enhance the energy of each artist and performance. With Unsound Toronto, we will once again submerge the Hearn in sound and light with some of the most trailblazing musical artists of our time. Rimini Protokoll’s Situation Rooms has been called the future of theatre – I promise it will be one of the most complex (but at the same time, easy to follow) games you will ever play. And with The James Plays by the National Theatre of Scotland, binge-watch (live!) the most successful and gripping trilogy of English language entertainment since George Lucas’ original Star Wars. This June, we’re building the largest multi-arts generator in the world, and it is starting to fill up with some heat.”
JUNE 10 TO 11 | #UnsoundTO
“A two-day, genre-spanning, beautifully curated exploration of experimental sound” - BlogTO
Last year’s wildly popular Unsound Toronto thrilled concert-goers, topped ‘best-of’ lists and “set the bar for future music fests in Toronto” (BlogTO). Poland’s groundbreaking music festival is coming back to present a pioneering program even wider in scope, turning the Hearn into a sonic playground with two electrifying nights of music and technology. Drawing on more than a decade's experience in connecting sound and architecture in unique spaces, Unsound Toronto creates a journey including ambient soundscapes, noise, drone metal, pounding techno and the most contemporary fractured club music. Details and artists for Unsound’s exclusive 2016 North American festival dates, curated by Mat Schulz and Malgorzata Plysa, will be announced in the coming months.
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Presented on multiple stages in the Hearn. Two nights only, June 10 to 11, from 9 p.m. till late. Tickets $25 per night.
JUNE 10 TO 19 | #SituationRooms
"I have seen the future of theatre and its name is ‘Situation Rooms’.” – The Australian
Germany’s Rimini Protokoll use theatre and technology to create unusual perspectives on our reality. Led by writer/directors Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, and Daniel Wetzel, the group work around the world and are currently touring eight different performance pieces. Their piece Best Before, was presented by Luminato in 2010 at the Berkeley Street Theatre. Situation Rooms, their most searingly contemporary project, has been presented around the world and makes its North American premiere at Luminato.
Situation Rooms is an award-winning multi-player video installation inspired by real photos of the American government upon learning that their mission to kill Osama Bin Laden had been successful. Equipped with an iPad mini and headphones, an audience of 20 follows a range of real-life characters: an Israeli soldier, a Swiss weapon manufacturer, a Pakistani lawyer or a Mexican drug cartel administrator, with the help of a screen used to augment reality. Slipping into the perspectives of the protagonists, the audience becomes vividly entangled in a film set that recreates the globalized world of pistols and rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and drones, and rules and refugees – a part of the re-enactment of a complicatedly elaborate, multi-perspective “shooting” in an immersive environment with more than 4,000 props.
“It’s theatre with the audience as actors; journalism with the consumer interacting directly with the story; a video game where the screen bleeds into real and constructed worlds” – The Guardian
Presented by Rimini Protokoll in English or French in a contained performance space at the Hearn, five times daily from June 10 to 19. Tickets $20.
JUNE 16 TO 26 | #JamesPlays
“The finest history plays ever penned” – Daily Telegraph
The James Plays is an epic theatrical trilogy from The National Theatre of Scotland that brings to life three generations of Stewart Kings who ruled Scotland in the turbulent fifteenth century. Following sold-out runs at the National Theatre in London and the Edinburgh International Festival, and touring internationally in 2016, this 5-star modern classic makes its only North American stop at the Luminato Festival in a brand new 1,200-seat theatre at the iconic Hearn Generating Station.
A modern cycle of history plays written by award-winning playwright Rona Munro and directed by the National Theatre of Scotland’s Laurie Sansom, this vividly-imagined theatre cycle presents a compelling narrative on Scottish culture and nationhood – and a country tussling with its past and future - by connecting the men who ruled from 1406 to 1488 to the political climate of today.
Hailed as “a towering achievement” that’s “better than Shakespeare,” by the Daily Telegraph, each play, featuring an ensemble cast of Great Britain’s finest performers, is presented as a standalone piece; James I - The Key Will Keep the Lock, James II - Day of the Innocents and James III - The True Mirror.
Presented in The Hearn Theatre. See each play individually, in any order, or see all three over 11 hours (with meal breaks) on one of our four trilogy days. See all three shows from $110; individual shows from $39. A co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, National Theatre of Great Britain and Edinburgh International Festival.
“Our 10th Luminato Festival, Jorn Weisbrodt’s brilliant finale, brings together many of the core threads from our first nine years, presented in our first-ever resident home, giving our audiences a completely new sense of the exciting joined-up totality of our Festival. We will be giving Toronto the first North American access to sensational work from around the world, while also connecting with thrilling local and Canadian creativity,” said CEO Anthony Sargent. “I and Jorn hope that this first programming announcement and the many more to come will excite the sense of inquisitive curiosity within all of us, setting Toronto on fire from June 10 to 26. We can’t to turn on the Hearn with you.”
Working with the thinkers and cultural enthusiasts at Toronto-based architecture firm PARTISANS, and leading international theatre and acoustics consultancy Charcoalblue, Luminato will create temporary performance spaces inside the Hearn Generating Station for the entire ticketed program of the Festival this June. Design details and layout will be shared at a later date. To learn more: http://bit.ly/TurnOnTheHearn
Tickets for Unsound Toronto, Situation Rooms and The James Plays are now on sale. For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.luminatofestival.com. Additional programming details will be announced on a monthly basis.
LINKS
•Full show details, schedules, and hi-res images: http://www.luminatofestival.com
•#TurnOnTheHearn: https://luminatofestival.com/blogs/jorn-blog/2015/turnonthehearn/
•To subscribe to receive future Luminato Festival media alerts, press releases and invitations, please email Ashley Ballantyne at aballantyne@luminato.com or 416.368.3100 x 242.
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TICKETS
Tickets for the 2016 Luminato Festival are now on sale and can be purchased 24/7 at luminatofestival.com or by calling the Luminato Festival Box Office at 416-368-4849 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday. Ticket savings are available for youth (18 and under)/students, arts workers and groups (6+). For full ticketing details, dates, times and prices, please visit luminatofestival.com.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter: @Luminato; #Luminato10 #TurnOnTheHearn
Facebook: www.facebook.com/LuminatoFestival
Instagram: @LuminatoFestival
Photo: Cover of The James Plays. ©2015 Nick Hearn Books.
2016-01-27
Toronto: Internationally acclaimed projects to be part of Luminato's 10th anniversary