Stage Door News

Toronto: Outside the March announces a capital project and its 2025 season

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Announcing OUTFIT THE MARCH, a capital project with the ability to turn virtually any space in the city into a fully-functional, comfortable, temporary theatre venue. Outside the March is acquiring an inventory of mobile production and accessibility equipment perfectly suited to our nomadic nature as one of Canada’s leaders in site-specific and immersive theatre. At the same time, select early bird tickets go on sale today for the world premiere of Rosamund Small’s PERFORMANCE REVIEW, the first in a series of innovative, site-engaged productions that will be transformed by Outfit the March.

Supported by a major gift from The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation, our new slate of portable eco-friendly equipment will be secured incrementally over several seasons, fueling site-engaged programming across Toronto for years to come. The initiative will also include a subsidised low-/no-cost rental program for independent organizations and artists in our community, supported by a Strategic Innovation grant from The Canada Council for the Arts and managed in partnership with The Canadian Green Alliance.

The project's capital campaign has been launched by $500,000 from The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation—the largest single gift in Outside the March's history. The gift anchors $800,000 raised to date of a $1.5 million first phase of fundraising and acquisitions. The project is already set to benefit the company’s 2025 Season by providing the production equipment for two form-busting world premieres in found venues straddling either end of the city on Dundas West and Dundas East:

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

by Rosamund Small

A blistering, riotous solo performance about workplace power dynamics, inspired by true events and performed by Small herself as she serves coffee to an intimate audience at Dundas West’s Morning Parade Coffee Bar.

and

RAINBOW ON MARS

by Devon Healey

A multidisciplinary reclamation of blindness by one of the country’s leading voices in Blind Studies, co-produced with The National Ballet of Canada and Peripheral Theatre, and performed at Artists' Play Dance & Circus at Dundas and Carlaw.

“As we’ve grown, it’s become more and more challenging to mount our immersive productions in non-equipped, found spaces,” says OtM Artistic Director Mitchell Cushman. “Rental costs have soared and our industry has been rocked by a series of seismic shifts. Many non-venued theatre companies reach a similar inflection point in their trajectory and opt to create their very own theatre space. But as a nomadic, site-engaged company, a static venue simply wouldn’t serve our needs. Enter ‘Outfit the March.’ The project is already allowing us to better deliver on our immersive mission as we support two electric playwrights this season telling vital stories.”

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

February 27 - March 23, 2025 Morning Parade Coffee Bar 256 Crawford St.

On a young woman’s first day at her first job, a man tips her $15. The next day, he tips her $100. Then $150. She’s not THAT good at making cappuccinos.

So begins the first of seven stories about seven worst days at seven jobs by award-winning playwright Rosamund Small. Performance Review is a shockingly-funny and just plain shocking examination of power dynamics and sexual violence in the workplace in the style of Netflix’s Fleabag and Sarah Polley’s Run Toward the Danger, “and,” says Small, “stay with me here… also with inspiration from The Communist Manifesto.”

Performance Review is told intimately and immediately by Small herself as she serves coffee to a 30-person audience in real time at Dundas West’s Morning Parade Coffee Bar. Inspired by true events, it marks her return to writing a new play after seven years working in television and as an educator—and will feature her first-ever turn as a live performer.

Why would she do that to herself? “There’s no intermediary,” says Small. “It’s honest. When I go to the theatre I want to feel like the artist is really there with me. Like we give a shit about each other. And I want to have a good time. You’ll have a good time!”

You will. The project is directed by OtM Artistic Director Mitchell Cushman. It features production design by Anahita Dehbonehie and sound design and composition by Heidi Chan, both long-time OtM collaborators whose work on last year’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney was celebrated as “Best Designed Production of the Year” by the Toronto Theatre Critics Awards. The piece is production managed by OtM Director of Production Tori Morrison, who has led production on all of OtM’s recent work.

The world premiere of Performance Review begins February 27, 2025. Tickets for previews and select opening week performances are on sale now for this extremely limited-capacity engagement; general tickets are on sale January 21, 2025. Credits, ticketing and additional information below.

RAINBOW ON MARS

August 2025

Artists' Play Dance & Circus 388 Carlaw Ave.

Rainbow on Mars is a multidisciplinary reclamation of blindness by playwright, performer and Assistant Professor of Disability Studies Devon Healey, one of the country’s leading voices on the necessary creativity of blindness in the performing arts. This co-production with The National Ballet of Canada and Peripheral Theatre will have its world premiere in a transformed circus and aerial gym allowing for a fully three-dimensional immersive production design.

Inspired by Healey's journey into blindness as a young adult, RoM follows a young woman as she ascends from a Plato’s Cave--like space of ocularcentric half-slugs to a disorienting new horizon of possibility. With the help of some unlikely allies, she must shed her desire to return to the Cave and develop her own relationship with blindness.

The project features a hybrid cast of blind, visually impaired and sighted theatre performers as well as The National Ballet’s company of apprentice dancers. RoM is choreographed by Robert Binet, one of Canada’s premiere ballet choreographers; Binet is Fall for Dance North’s Artistic Director, and formerly a choreographic Associate of The National Ballet of Canada and the first ever Choreographic Apprentice for The Royal Ballet in London. The project is co-directed by OtM’s Mitchell Cushman and award-winning visually impaired stage combat director Nate Bitton, with dramaturgy by accomplished writer and actor Vanessa Smythe.

Rainbow on Mars simultaneously marks the premiere of Immersive Descriptive Audio (IDA). Created by Healey, this new accessible stagecraft practice is designed for blind and sighted audience members alike, embedding a deepened audio description experience and sound design within the narrative itself. From Healey:

“IDA engages the stories of the eyes and shows how a blind perspective is an integral part of the human sensorium and of perception. It breaks with conventions of narrating only what is there to be seen and weaves together the internal thoughts and felt movements of the performers; their breath; the imaginary of the lighting, set, costume and sound designers; as well as me, the blind artist. IDA is not merely a description of a performance; it is a performance!”

The creation of IDA began with the development of RoM, supported through OtM’s TD Forward March New Work Development Program and The Metcalf Foundation, including a work-in-progress presentation at 2021’s SummerWorks Festival. After additional development workshops with OtM and The National Ballet, in 2024 Healey and choreographer Binet took their exploration of IDA to The Royal Ballet in London, UK, applying their practice to the premiere of Binet’s Dark with Excessive Bright.

Tickets for Rainbow on Mars, along with full cast and crediting, will be available this Spring.

More about our OUTFIT THE MARCH capital project:

For Outside the March, “all the world’s a stage” isn’t poetic license—it’s our M.O. Over the past 15 years OtM has ushered in a site-specific revolution in Toronto theatre, creating dozens of award-winning and critically-acclaimed, place-based productions. Now we’re embarking on our most ambitious project to date—envisioning what a “portable home” looks like for our proudly nomadic organization. In true Outside the March style, we’re going to bring that home with us wherever we go. Outfit the March will allow us to turn any space in the city (a storefront, a warehouse, a park, etc.) into a high-quality temporary theatre.

Outfit the March will ensure audiences an accessible and comfortable experience at productions; will green our operations and cut down on waste; will increase production capacity for independent artists and organizations in our community; and will guarantee artists access to the latest technology and tools to innovate, iterate and fabricate immersive magic anywhere.

We’re by no means the only arts organization rocked by sector-wide shifts in the last few years. Following its launch this year, the project’s next phase will see us broaden its impact to the independent performing arts community at large. “If access to the arts is to continue as a Canadian value, every underpass, every backyard, and every office tower must hold the possibility of attracting audiences to excellent innovative theatre," says OtM Associate Artistic Director Sébastien Heins.

With this in mind, OtM will launch a program to share our mobile theatre toolkit at low-/no-cost with accompanying technical personnel to independent artists and organizations across the city. This toolkit will be managed in collaboration with The Canadian Green Alliance and with the support of a major grant from The Canada Council’s Strategic Innovation Fund.

Outfit the March was architected with the involvement of noted arts champion Robert Sirman as Strategic Advisor. “I became an early donor and champion of the idea because I’m convinced of its oversized potential to benefit not only OtM’s productions but the sector at large,” says Sirman. “Some opportunities are genuinely too good to ignore.”

The project’s equipment has already benefited the company and its community of artists: its first phase of acquisitions was piloted on 2024’s R.A.V.E., which saw OtM completely transform an abandoned cubicle farm at the former Downsview Airport into a neon underground dance party (the project was recently singled out by Broadway World as a top site-specific pick of 2024).

Equipment will include:

● Hundreds of foldable, modular “prime comfort” chairs, ensuring that site-specific theatre no longer needs to be synonymous with back pain.

● A fully-equipped mobile workshop.

● Lightweight custom trapezoidal riser system.

● Top-of-the-line suite of portable, green lighting equipment with next-generation wireless technology and low-to-no-impact installation.

● Array of wired and wireless speakers, subs, microphones and console allowing for efficient, reliable and total sonic control in both large and intimate spaces.

● High-lumen production projectors.

● Green e-generators and solar panels capable of running an entire production off-grid.

● Accessibility equipment—from threshold transitions and adjustable wheelchair ramps to descriptive audio devices and wearable haptic technology.

● Box office equipment, wardrobe, storage, transportation and more.

The project has been catalyzed by OtM’s 2023-2028 Strategic Plan; in 2023 we launched a feasibility study with Toronto’s NetGain to successfully establish the project’s need and viability, with support from Canadian Heritage’s Canada Cultural Spaces Fund and The Metcalf Foundation. The study partnered with The Toronto Arts Council to solicit input from performing arts organizations across the GTA about the use of found performance venues, engaging 39 organizations and finding there is significant unmet need for portable equipment in our sector.

Visit outsidethemarch.ca.