SummerWorks Performance Festival returns for its 24th year August 7 -17th. This year’s bring some exciting changes, a crop of new works, and much more waiting to be discovered.
SummerWorks is excited to announce its new Hub at The Theatre Centre, where they will host Live Art programming throughout the festival. The Hub replaces last year’s Performance Bar. SummerWorks will also return to venues such as Theatre Passe Muraille, the Lower Ossington Theatre, and the Scotiabank Studio Theatre.
This year’s festival will feature a smaller group of works in the Mainstage Series to ensure increased support for artists. In total, the 2014 festival includes 33 works in the Mainstage Series, 6 in the Music Series, 11 in the Live Art Series, 4 in the National Series, 3 new Musical Works in Concert and 3 works that are In Production. Certainly many artists and performances to take in over this 11-day festival!
To entice you and get you to start planning your SummerWorks experience, I give you some highlights of this year’s festival programming.
NATIONAL SERIES
Against Gravity
Created by: Mind of a Snail
Mind of a Snail’s Against Gravity is a mindbending shadow puppetry journey through a world full of surprises; interactive & visually delicious, like a lucid dream. Expect live music, an overhead projector and several near death experiences.
Écoute Pour Voir
Production company: Danse Carpe Diem/Emmanuel Jouthe
Écoute Pour Voir consists of a variety of solos, scattered throughout the space and performed
simultaneously. Equipped with headphones attached to an iPod, dancers and viewers share
choreography face-to-face over the course of the music.
MAINSTAGE SERIES
Bitter Medicine
Created by: Clem and Olivier Martini & The Theatre Lab
Based on the award-winning graphic memoir of the same name, Bitter Medicine explores living with schizophrenia.
El Jinete (The Rider) – A Mariachi Opera
Created by: Mercedes Bátiz-Benét
El Jinete (the Rider) is the world’s first fully-staged Mariachi opera, featuring Mariachi Los Dorados. It’s a tale of love, vengeance, and the supernatural.
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| El Jinete (The Rider) |
Kafka’s Ape
Created by: Franz Kafka & Guy Sprung
Captured on the Gold Coast and imprisoned in a cage, Redpeter’s only escape route is to become a walking, talking, spitting, hard-drinking member of the Peace Industry. Based on Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy.”
Maracatu You!
Created by: Suzanne Roberts Smith with Aline Morales and her Afro Brazilian Percussion ensemble of Maracatu Baque de Bamba
From the streets to the stage and back again.
Paradise Red
Created by: Bruce Gibbons Fell
The 1973 Chilean coup d’état has brought melodramatic conflicts upon the members of General
Riofrío’s family, including his death and other secrets. Presented as a telenovela.
Unintentionally Depressing Children’s Tales
Created by: Erin Fleck
If you’re looking for a fairy-tale, fable, or thinly-veiled metaphor to make you feel better about how life works sometimes… this isn’t it. The audience will be immersed into a world of whimsical tragedy and foreboding comedy, for a theatrical bedtime story like no other.
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| Unintentionally Depressing Children’s Tales |
MUSICAL WORKS IN CONCERT
Animal Pharmacy: A Medicine Show
Created by: Greg Janssen
Animal Pharmacy: A Medicine Show is a musical comedy satire of the pharmaceutical industry in the style of an old-time medicine show.
LIVE ART SERIES
I Will Tell You Exactly What I Think of You
Created by: Zeesy Powers
I Will Tell You Exactly What I Think of You is an emotional endurance test. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the artist, and have no reflection on who you are as a person. For entertainment purposes only.
To Live in the Age of Melting the Idea of the North 2.0
Created by: Evalyn Parry, Elysha Poirier, Laakkaluk Bathory Williams
What does “North” mean to you, Toronto? And what does Iqaluit have to say about “South?”
IN DEVELOPMENT
romanceship
Created by: Cliff Cardinal
When Dave, the drug and sex addicted fraudster & Madly, the bulimic and klepto chef break up (and get back together) Madly dubiously announces she’s pregnant. Dave careens into Rochelle, the transgender crack addict, and the two begin the most enveloping love affair since cocaine met baking soda. This will be the first reading of this new work-in-progress by Cliff Cardinal.
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| d’bi young – romanceship |
The Music Series lineup to be announced at a later date; this is a series certainly worth checking out.
This short list gives you a glimpse at the diverse lineup at SummerWorks this year. With so much to choose from, there isn’t a day you cannot find something to partake in.
I invite you to come back to this site as I’ll have more SummerWorks Top Picks, and Spotlights closer to the festival. In the meantime, for full festival lineup, ticketing info and venue info, visit summerworks.ca.
*All images courtesy of SummerWorks.
