Stage Door News
Stage Door News
From a reinvention of European classics like Antigone, Hamlet, Othello, and Life is a Dream, to innovative ritualistic and physical theatre - artists from Colombia, Bolivia, New York, New Zealand, Venezuela, Argentina and Switzerland challenge how we frame our understanding of each other and our histories.
For two weeks, the RUTAS panamericanas International Performing Arts Festival takes over Daniels Spectrum, featuring over a dozen Canadian, Indigenous, and Latin American groups, with performances, master classes, cabarets, concerts, film, art exhibits and a multi-day conference on the intersections of performance and human rights.
2016 will be the third edition of Aluna Theatre’s RUTAS Festival, founded by Aluna Theatre’s Artistic Director Beatriz Pizano. The Festival presents the work of artists from the Diaspora living in Canada, exposes Canadian audiences to some of the most innovative theatre companies on the continent, and creates cultural bridges between the South and the North.
RUTAS panamericanas 2016 also marks the third year Aluna Theatre is partnering with Native Earth Performing Arts to bring dynamic arts programming to Regent Park. Ticket packages (4 tickets for just $70) and single tickets are now available at rutas.ca.
RUTAS is programmed and produced by Beatriz Pizano, Artistic Director; Trevor Schwellnus, Artistic Producer; and Sue Balint, Producer, all for Aluna Theatre.
Select additional curation by Native Earth Performing Arts.
October 5–16, 2016
Aki Studio and Ada Slaight Hall, Artscape Daniels Spectrum
565 Dundas St. East
#ALUNARUTAS
RUTAS panamerianas 2016 – Programming
International Artists
Antigonas Tribunal de Mujeres / Antigonas Women’s Tribunal
Tramaluna Theatre, Colombia - Direction, Dramaturgy and Design by Carlos Satizábal
Winner of the Art and Memory Fellowship from the city of Bogota
Nine women arrive at an imaginary tribunal and become modern Antigones requesting justice for the murder of their loved ones. Performers and activists, including one of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominees, Luz Marina Bernal, bring this poetical and lyrical rendition of the Greek tragedy to address the horrors of political and social violence, transforming pain into power and rebelliousness, and making women key actors in the Peace Process in Colombia.
“A poetical and lyrical re-telling of the Greek tragedy… this play is a testament to fortitude.” – Time Out
Hamlet de los Andes / The Hamlet of the Andes
Teatro de los Andes, Bolivia - Directed by Diego Aramburo, eight-time winner of the National Theatre Prize of Bolivia.
Winner of the World Theatre Award in Argentina & the Premio Gallo in La Habana
- Opening night post-show talk with Stratford Festival Artistic Director Antonio Cimolino
A Bolivian Hamlet tries to reconcile the modern world with his ancient traditions.
In this adaptation by one of the most important Ensembles in Bolivia, three actors and a musician play 15 characters in a physical and politically-charged production that exposes the plight of the thousands of Bolivians who leave their rural homes for the city in hope of a better life. Deeply affecting, Hamlet de los Andes combines Bolivian music and visually-stunning theatre with Shakespeare’s themes of personal betrayal and state corruption to create a darkly comic and original new work.
“A physical production that showcases Teatro de los Andes’ talent for creating memorable tableaus.” – Civilian Theatre
If Silence Knew
Teatro delle Radici, Argentina/Switzerland - Created, Performed and Directed by Cristina Castrillo
Winner of the Swiss Theatre Prize
When language fails, we are left with our bodies to create meaning in silence.
In this stunning visual poem without words, the body speaks through the silence about the voices that live within it: the lost words, the words we do not have the courage to utter and those which, if expressed, would lose the emotion that accompanies them. A tour-de force performance by Cristina Castrillo, the founder of the exiled 1970s Argentinian company ‘Libre Teatro Libre’, and Teatro delle Radici, based in Lugano, Switzerland.
“Castrillo has successfully given us a speech on life without words.”
- Region (Switzerland)
SolOTHELLO
Te Rēhia Theatre Company, New Zealand – Performed by Regan Taylor, Directed by Craig Geenty
- Special Guest company curated by Native Earth Performing Arts
A bold and humorous Maori twist on the classic tragedy in which Te Reo, original prose, and contemporary English come together. Using traditional Maori masks (Te Mata Kokako o Rehia), this solo interpretation of Othello puts the spotlight on the characters Iago, Rodrigo, Othello and Desdemona, and places them into the context of a war between tribes in pre-colonial New Zealand.
“... an interpretation that reveals Othello's complexity not only as a text but also as a cultural artefact wrought with a troubled performance history, indistinguishable from issues of race or ‘other'.” - Lori Leigh, Theatre Review, New Zealand
Undefined Fraction
Loco7, Colombia/New York - Conceived and adapted by Federico Restrepo & Denise Greber, Directed, choreographed and designed by Federico Restrepo
Loco7 returns to RUTAS with a puppet theatre dance piece inspired by Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Life’s a Dream that traces the patterns of inequality and reflects on the principles of justice, guilt, punishment, and the conflict between free will and fate. Is the “real world” actually some sort of illusion, a dream from which we will some day awake?
“… Bold, imaginative theater that dares each of us to confront the conundrum of life.” – Front Row Centre (New York)
National Artists
ImShift
Choreographed / co-created by Victoria Mata
A Victoria Mata production in association with Aluna Theatre, Toronto
Victoria Mata: Finalist for the Toronto Foundation Emerging Artist Award, 2016
‘La frontera’ breathes through this collage of contemporary dance, poignant visuals and original percussive sounds. This piece highlights the constant experience of bridging the South and the North, of living in the in between of two cultures and two languages through stories of our re-created terrain where complexities of identity, resistance, healing and survival exist within each other. A tribute to the many who have died attempting to cross ‘la frontera.’
Broken Tailbone
Commissioned, developed and produced by Nightswimming, Canada/Chile
Written and Performed by Carmen Aguirre
Chosen as one of The Toronto Star’s Top Tickets of 2015
Aguirre: Winner of CBC Canada Reads 2012 for ‘Something Fierce”
Carmen Aguirre leads a public Latin American dance lesson, woven together with hilarious and moving stories of her own experiences in the hidden world of dancehalls in Canada. DJ Don Pedro Chamale creates an irresistible musical environment to get even the most reluctant dancer up on their feet! Daring, sexy and above all – fun, each dance lesson flows into Carmen’s stories of intimacy, politics, culture and the forgotten origins of each dance. Gather together to listen, move and be moved. No dance experience necessary!
diaspora Dub
b current, Toronto - Script and production vision by ahdri zhina mandiela
Installation curation by Michael Chambers
Featuring performance, and works, by seminal Black Canadian Artists
In 1991, b current launched with the world’s first mounting of this dub theatre script by Ahdri Zhina Mandiela. As part of its 25th anniversary, photographer Michael Chamber joins in this re-imagining performance/ installation that combines the rhythms and dramatic choral repetitions of dub poetry with choreographed movement. Part exploration and part celebration, the show wonderfully evokes black women’s power and insights.
Building on a new tradition to support our belief that “our Panamericanism includes Canada”, Aluna is thrilled to present b current as our RUTAS 2016 local guest company.
Photo: Scene from Hamlet de los Andes.
2016-08-09
Toronto: Aluna Theatre with Native Earth announces third edition of RUTAS panamericanas