The year is 1969 — Apollo 11 is about to land on the moon leading to Neil Armstrong’s one giant leap for mankind. The Vietnam war rages on, the Black Panther movement is on the rise, Trudeau (Sr.) is in office, and in Toronto , Rochdale College, an experiment in co-op housing and alternative education, is on the brink of collapse. Playing at this year’s SummerWorks Festival, written by David Yee and directed by Nina Aquino, the graduating class of York University’s Theatre Department is prepared to take you on a journey of Rochdale‘s wild side. Continue reading Rochdale (GovCon) 2019 SummerWorks Review→
Closer by Vice Versa Company playing at Toronto Media Arts Centre (32 Lisgar St.) as part of the 2019 SummerWorks Festival, redefines traditional understandings of “upstage” and “downstage” by using a Parkdale alley spanning a city block as the performance space. It was somewhat daunting to sign a liability waiver and be led into a dark alley in advance of this performance, but the show was not at all scary. Continue reading Closer (Vice Versa) 2019 SummerWorks Review→
The Breath Between, part of Summerworks 2019, is the result of this year’s AMY Project (Artists Mentoring Youth) Summer Performance Program, the Spring Theatre Creation Program and the Design Mentorship Program. The Theatre Creation program is offered to young women and non-binary youth between 14 and 22 years of age. The Summer Performance Program is offered to youth who have completed the spring program.
burn, burned, produced by Rodley Diverlus and Syrus Marcus Ware, is now playing at SummerWorks. Part performance art and dance, the show features a band of revolutionaries regrouping after “decades of race wars” in a fictional future.
Diverlus notes that his choreography primarily strived to explore – but not definitively answer – areas of his own curiosity. As such, I tried not to find a clear story in the movement, but to pay attention to the feelings it evoked.
CHILD-ISH, a work-in-progress play by Sunny Drake and The CHILD-ISH Collective is playing at the 2019 SummerWorks Festival. If you’re missing school over the summer, or the child-like wonder of your youth, this one’s for you. It’s fun, silly, earnest and heartfelt, and gives voice to the unbridled curiosity and wisdom of children.
