Wave, sleep and follow a Mandarin drama
At 2016 SummerWorks, a much-anticipated sleepover and cooking with family
Though it began in1991as a home for Toronto artists rejected by the Fringe Festival’s lottery, the SummerWorks Performance Festival has since developed into the edgier, darker, younger sibling in the Toronto summer theatre festival family.
The 2016 festival, the 26th annual edition, offers 69 pieces of dance, theatre, music and performance art hand-picked by a trustworthy team of Toronto curators. Some of these will undoubtedly become the next big hits in the regular fall-to-spring arts season.
Here are 10 we’re banking on: Empire of Night Think: Dance party meets slumber party The most anticipated event in the festival is also the only nocturnal one. Audiences are invited to arrive at the Drake Underground at 11 p.m.
With them, they’ll bring pillows, blankets and pyjamas as artists Kari Pederson, Charles Ketchabaw, Matt Smith and Adam Paolozza create a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere to lull them to sleep, or get them up and moving.
Aug. 11, Drake Underground, 1150 Queen St. W. Duets for Beginners Think: Cooking class meets extended family reunion Artist Clayton Lee invites his real-life family members to perform alongside him. The piece is an in intergenerational exploration of Chinese culture. He cooks dumplings with his grandmother and activates a large collection of windup toys with his mother. And it’s free to watch.
Aug. 4-14 (various times), Factory Theatre lobby, 125 Bathurst St. Waving is Funny Think: An inside joke meets glorified greeting The humble wave is due for a closer look. Dancers Luke Garwood, Molly Johnson and Tina Fushell started Waving Is Funny as a joke, but eventually it grew into an exploration of how a wave (from the gesture, to the ocean, to the baseball stadium tradition and beyond) translates complex emotions and forms the world.
Aug. 11 & 14, Factory Theatre Studio, 125 Bathurst St. No Context Think: A drunken phone message meets archival research Amelia Ehrhardt, Dancemakers curator and last year’s SummerWorks dance series curator, is on the edge of experimental dance and, in this work, looks back at the archives of 15 Dance Lab (a seminal experimental dance studio in the 1970s).
The result is an improvised performance by Ehrhardt, alongside her best friend Catherine Ribeiro, who reads a document Ehrhardt wrote, while drunk, over a year and a half.
Aug. 13-14, the Theatre Centre Mainspace, 1115 Queen St. W. Tomorrow’s Child Think: An isolation chamber meets a book club Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo is one of Canada’s most prestigious performance festivals and this show was the big hit of this year’s lineup.
Ghost River Theatre presents an audio-only theatrical adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi story of the same name to an audience that’s blindfolded and sitting on swivel chairs.
Aug. 11-14, Artscape Sandbox, 301Adelaide St. W. D’BI. & THE 333 Live Concert Think: Protest concert meets dance hall party d’bi.young anitafrika is known in Toronto for her theatre productions that heavily involve African music, dance and mythology, which you can see at SummerWorks in the show Bleeders. Another treat in this year’s festival is a musical concert performed by d’bi.young and her band, THE 333, which combine her messages of social progress with the crazy energy of dance hall and hip-hop music.
Aug. 9, Pia Bouman School, 6 Noble St. SExT Think: Sex ed meets drama 101 The young performers from Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Park in SExT (Sex Education in Theatre) already wowed Toronto Fringe audiences. Now, their personal exploration of the new Ontario sex-education curriculum, and the ensuing protests, is back with songs, poetry, sketches and dance for anyone who missed it the first time around.
Aug. 7-12, Factory Theatre Studio Lessons in Temperament Think: Piano lesson meets family therapy In this autobiographical show, recent Dora Award winner James Smith (for his composition of the indie musical The Chasse-Galerie) tries to tune a different piano every night as he tells the story of his three older brothers and their mental illnesses, making surprising connections between the two. Director Mitchell Cushman, the go-to guy for site-specific performances, is sure to keep a tight balance between the theoretical and the emotional.
Aug. 4-14, secret location Mr. Shi and His Lover Think: Tabloid scandal meets con- temporary Chinese opera In an exciting partnership between SummerWorks and artists in Macau, the 2016 festival presents its first ever production done entirely in Mandarin (with English surtitles).
Mr. Shi and His Lover by Macau playwright Wong Teng Chi, directed by Johnny Tam, with music by Toronto’s Njo Kong Kie, is about the true story of a Chinese opera star who falls in love with a French diplomat who thought he was a woman.
Aug. 5-13, Theatre Centre Mainspace Naked Ladies Think: Feminist/queer art history meets one naked female body Thea Fitz-James has been touring her one-woman show to Fringe festivals around the world and now it makes its Toronto debut.
If you can guess, Naked Ladies is Fitz-James’s answer to the question “Why do women get naked onstage?” and yeah, it goes where you think it will. But it also promises to go in lots of directions you don’t think it will.
Aug. 4-12, Drake Underground