SummerWorks: back for more
For the second year in a row, PLANK Magazine is at SummerWorks, the nation’s largest juried theatre festival. As with last year, we’ll be bringing you reviews and news from Toronto, our second home (which, for a weedy Vancouverite is thankfully muggy-free at the moment).
This year’s Festival also marks Artistic Producer Michael Rubenfeld’s second year at the helm. Building on last year’s innovations – which included a music series and performance gallery – Rubenfeld has further expanded the remit of the Festival to embrace other art forms. This movement out from theatre is best signified by how the Festival now defines itself: Toronto’s Indie Theatre and Arts Festival.
In his introduction to this year’s program, Rubenfeld explains why the Festival has diversified. Their desire is to feature programming that connects with different communities and is also, crucially, relevant. In trying to define how one achieves relevance, Rubenfeld writes the following:
“We believe that relevance happens by staying connected to how our communities are engaging. What matters to the people in our city? Our country? Our world? How do we connect and stay connected? It is for this reason that the festival has become multi-disciplinary, as there is always so much to learn from each other. What can we learn from the music scene? What can we learn from visual and performance artists? What can we learn from the actual people who live in our neighbourhoods and what can we learn from each other?”
Anyone who has suffered my ramblings on this subject knows that one of my biggest fears for theatre in Canada is that we end up as something akin to kabuki – a rarefied art-form, perceived as steeped in tradition and only accessible for those properly trained in the mysteries. To not just survive but also prosper, theatre needs to be vibrant, messy and alive. Most of all it has to be relevant. Just as it was jammed up against the bear-pits in Shakespeare’s day, theatre in our time and place has to happen where people live and where they find their entertainment, whether high-brow or knockabout. People engage with music in a sophisticated way that is woven into the fabric of their lives. What can the performing arts do to arrive at a similar situation?
This idea of making different forms of connection is perhaps best demonstrated by one of this year’s Festival innovations: SummerWalks, three distinct walking tours of the neighbourhood that plays host to the Festival (not to mention three of the city’s most important venues: Factory Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille & The Theatre Centre). SummerWalks promises that participants will see a familiar landscape from new perspectives. The tours include Love Letters to Queen West, with Dana Puddicombe as your guide, A Length of Chain which will feature Bruce Beaton and his daughter Molly and Lola Lita with Byron Abalos taking you on a personal tour. These walks sound very cool. And I’m not a little envious as I wanted to do a walking tour of Vancouver years ago but never got off my lily-white arse.
Also new this year is SLIP: SummerWorks Leadership Intensive Program. Designed to coincide with the Festival, SLIP is a two-week program that allows twelve emerging artists to take part in a series of discussions with some of the most sought after artists in the country. SLIP participants receive an Industry Pass, enabling them to see all the productions at the festival.
Like Plank and Michael, the Performance Gallery returns for its second year. Hosted by the very cool Gladstone Hotel, the Gallery takes place in a series of hotel rooms and the surrounding areas. It will feature a variety of theatre installations with performances lasting 5-8 minutes. Some of the highlights include Sperm Bank: Two Jews in Search of a Sperm Donor, which features interviews with potential sperm donors and the audience voting on their favourite; VideoVoce which is opera accompanied by abstract video; and NOISE COMPLAINTS/The Dance Party which involves a room full of people learning dance moves to music only heard through the choreographer’s headphones.
Also back for a return engagement is the Music Series at The Theatre Centre. Last year I heard some great bands (who have managed to make their way onto my MP3 Player). Some highlights this year include: Matthew Barber, Miracle Fortress, Think About Life, Karkwa, Bob Wiseman, Great Bloomers, Claire Jenkins, Germans and The D’Urbervilles.
Despite all this innovation, theatre still remains at the heart of the Festival. There are 42 separate productions – most only about an hour long – taking place in 9 venues. Although SummerWorks is a juried Festival, the programming represents – once again – an eclectic range of work with a strong focus on experimentation. Some highlights include The Nick Drake Project by Matthew Heiti, inspired by the music of the late singer/songwriter. Apricots by Misha Shulman, an absurdist story of a Palestinian family forced to cut down their apricot trees to make way for an Israeli sewage system. Montparnasse by Erin Shields and Maev Beaty, an erotic submersion into the world of artist models in Paris in the 1920s. The Ecstasy of Mother Theresa brought to you by the folks who produced last year’s Pastor Phelps Project. Irish composer Jennifer Walshe brings us XXX Live Nude Girls, an opera for Barbie dolls, while three of Toronto’s top theatre producers (Brendan Gall, Geoffrey Pounsett and Christopher Stanton) give us Red Machine, the first of a series of short plays created by their newly formed theatre company The Room.
I’m particularly looking forward to The Epic of Gilgamesh by Erin Shields and the same people who brought us last year’s If We Were Birds which was one of my top theatre experiences of 2008. Another highlight should be Impromptu Splendor by The National Theatre of the World, which features the very funny and very smart team of Matt Baram, Naomi Snieckus and Ron Pederson improv'ing a new one-act play in the style of a famous playwright: in other words, a different play every night. d’bi.young, an amazing performer who appeared last year as part of Magnetic North with blood.claat, is featured with a new work benu Directed by Natasha Mytnowych.
And once again, PLANK will be in the mix!