Stage Door News
Stage Door News
SummerWorks Performance Festival, one of Canada’s most vital launch pads for new performance work - is thrilled to unveil the full programming lineup for its 28th edition, kicking off August 9 and showcasing boundary-pushing work at multiple venues in Toronto for 11 days through to August 19, 2018. This year’s Festival will provide a platform for over 400 artists from Canada and beyond in a more focused programming structure and lineup, united around concepts of reframing and possibility.
“This year we are introducing a significant and very exciting restructuring--or reframing of the Festival itself,” said SummerWorks Artistic and Managing Director, Laura Nanni.
“One of the core mandates of SummerWorks, as it has evolved over the years, has been an investment in continuously re-imagining new possibilities for live performance—how it is created, presented and experienced – and in serving our artists with the creative and practical resources they need to fully realize their artistic visions. With feedback from our local and national community, we have re-oriented our programming structure to better reflect Canada’s ever-changing performance ecology and to better serve those key artistic goals. Not only are we able to give artists more of the resources they need to take risks and fully explore the possibilities of their work, this year we will provide more meaningful opportunities for audiences to engage with the work in the Festival, as well vital opportunities for artists to pitch and network with Canadian and international presenters.”
One of the first shifts made manifest under the restructuring, was the announcement that the $700 participation fee to apply for the Festival was waived, as part of SummerWorks’ deep commitment to removing barriers to participation for artists. The streamlining of the Festival programming also enables SummerWorks to continue to provide vital performance and venue accessibility options.
Exploring new territories in contemporary theatre, dance, music, live art, interdisciplinary and hybrid forms, SummerWorks 2018 will showcase 32 performance works split equally between two programming streams - SummerWorks Presentations are fully developed works offering a snapshot of contemporary performance in 2018. The SummerWorks Lab is a place for exploration, experimentation, and process, allowing the Festival to support work at crucial stages of development and forge connections between artists and audiences. In the Lab, audiences experience works at a critical juncture, and also play an essential role in the development of the work, while the Festival supports the programmed creative teams with meaningful administrative and dramaturgical guidance. Work in the Lab stream will also be supplemented for the audience by post-show talkbacks and long table discussions.
“Mirroring our own evolution as a Festival, the concepts of ‘reframing’ and ‘possibility’ recur in this year’s programming as well, showcasing how art and performative experiences can reframe how we view the world. Audiences will be able to come together with artists that shift our perspectives on the most urgent issues of the day, that rethink the theatre-going experience, and push the possibilities of live performance through immersive technologies,” added Nanni.
2018 SummerWorks Presentations programming highlights include:
•An interactive game created and performed by xLq (duo Jordan Campbell & Maddie Bautista), 4inXchange asks four audience members to consider what they would do with $1000 cash.
•After being rejected from a job at BuzzFeed, master storyteller Graham Isador offers an inside scoop on how media shapes our tastes and views in his newest solo venture … And You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next, directed by award-winning Jiv Parasram.
•An expanded version of the Rhubarb Festival solo hit BODY SO FLUORESCENT sees performer Amanda Cordner portraying two friends trying to retrace their steps from the night before, shifting from self to alter-ego, and asking us to consider difficult questions around blackness and relational oppressions.
•Using puppetry in unexpected ways, Halifax-based Theatre du Poulet’s The Extinction of Hong Kongers re-creates the historical city of Hong Kong in miniature, while Ahmad Merees’s solo Adrenaline (performed in Arabic, with English surtitles) tells the story of a young Syrian man on the night of his first New Year’s Eve in Canada.
•In fantasylover, a dance theatre work from Rock Bottom Movement, Dora-award nominated choreographer Alyssa Martin reclaims classic Hollywood narratives from the male gaze following four characters in search of a feminist utopia.
•Festival alumna Jessica Moss returns with A Girl Lives Alone, a Hitchcock-esque comedy and murder mystery mashup about death, fear, and how well you really know your neighbours: all live foleyed in front of your eyes.
•Dayna McLeod invites audiences to sing their favourite karaoke songs for her uterus, in Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall, co-presented with and curated by FADO Performance Art.
•An all-female cast reinterprets Marcus Youssef and James Long’s award-winning play Winners and Losers in a contemporary look at sisterhood, female behaviour and systemic racism.
•A manifesto for the post-cynical, YES is an irreverent romp through the turbulent history of modern dance from choreographer and performer Linnea Swan.
2018 sees notable SummerWorks alumni presenting vanguard new works in the Lab as well including provocative explorations of new applications for technology.
Internationally-acclaimed collective bluemouth inc. return to the festival with CAFÉ SARAJEVO Episode 1, a live podcast experience inspired by the 1971 TV debate between French theorist Michel Foucault and American linguist Noam Chomsky that employs immersive 360 video; Ted Witzel and Susanna Fournier present an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s chilling The Private Life of the Master Race starring Broken Social Scene songsmith Jason Collett; director Rob Kempson joins writer/performer Brian Francis for Box 4901, a sweet and awkward look back at thirteen replies to a personal ad Francis never returned; in Hot Cuts from Birdtown and Swanville, a hair stylist tried to create a subculture in a town without one; in Third World FLY LADY DI (Diana Reyes) with Maylee Todd explores isolation, loneliness, and identity through Voguing, Waacking, Hip-Hop, B-Girling, House Dance, and Filipino folk dance; Erika Batdorf presents The Red Horse is Leaving, an interactive theatrical duet exploring madness and creativity through the use of biosensors; Laura Quigley writes and performs The Waves, a solo play based on three generations of birth stories; and director and new media artist Maziar Ghaderi creates an interdisciplinary experimental encounter with Inuit throat singer Iva in UUMMAJUQ.
Newcomers to SummerWorks in 2018 include Aisha Sasha John with the aisha of is, which sees John offering herself as medicine to patriarchal, racist violence; Piece Of Mine Arts brings The Negroes Are Congregating, delving into the North American Black experience from a mental, physical, and spiritual perspective; Apuka Collective invites us to take an audio-guided journey through a Toronto neighbourhood and discover unexpected personal stories of migration and displacement in Overhear Toronto; Katie Lyle and Shelby Wright choreograph and perform in a custom designed space that can only be viewed through windows and cut outs in A Room to Perform; and Zayo, created by Esie Mensah is an original dance/theatre story about a young man trying to fulfill his destiny.
SummerWorks Exchange
Continuing its commitment to professional development, this year the Festival has formalized industry and professional development activities, introducing a vital new stream, SummerWorks Exchange.
Under this banner, the Festival will produce a series of events to facilitate artist and community growth, to strengthen the ecology of live performance in Canada, and to expand dialogue and collaboration with the international arts community. Including training and networking opportunities between artists and curators from Canada and beyond. As Laura Nanni observes, “The Exchange is the place where we come together to share and connect, confront the big questions facing our community today, and make plans for the future.”
This year the SummerWorks Exchange is offering workshops, presentations and an open space session, all focused around the theme of 'systems change': looking at how to create conditions for change, enact change and alternative models for producing, collaborating and making work. Artists will also have the opportunity to pitch new works in open studio and social settings.
The creation of the Exchange has been made possible by the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council's Open Door Program and in partnership with Ad Hoc Assembly, Artscape Launchpad, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Dancemakers, Generator and Why Not Theatre.
Pay What You Decide
For a second year, SummerWorks will offer a sliding scale ticket model allowing audiences to increase their support of Festival artists while maintaining financial accessibility. Called Pay What You Decide, single tickets can be purchased for $15, $25, or $35 (all seating is general admission and there are no limits on any price level), and some events are either free or by donation. Money saving 4-Show, 8-Show, and 12-show passes are available starting today at summerworks.ca. Pass holders will have access to an advanced ticket booking window beginning July 9. The single ticket on sale date will be announced in early July along with significant news about a move of the Festival neighbourhood’s footprint.
Get social:
Website: summerworks.ca
Twitter: @SummerWorks
Facebook: SummerWorks Performance Festival
Instagram: @SummerWorks_festival
2018-06-19
Toronto: SummerWorks Performance Festival announces 2018 programming