Hybrid by Design

Broken/Sometimes Repaired is a micro-concert inspired by Hanya Yanagihara’s monumental novel “A Little Life”. Residency artist Stewart Legere offers a sparkling tribute to queer resilience, love, and a celebration of the tremendous ripple effect great works of art can have on the little lives of those who encounter them.

salt:dispersed is the filmed performance of Selina Thompson’s award-winning work salt. In salt., Selina Thompson is a passenger on board a commercial container ship taking the route upon which her ancestors were deported from Ghana to Jamaica and then on to Britain. Thompson’s forebears were among several million black men, women and children sold as slaves whose work made Western prosperity possible and served as the foundation of contemporary European economic success. On her own journey, Thompson is confronted with normalised, systemic and casual racism and observes patriarchal power structures within the crew, suggesting that the colonial past is not as distant as she believed it was before embarking.

Starting @ 8 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for night one (in-person)
reserve tickets for night one (online)

The B-Side Series: Process Sharing with Chisato Minamimura
Tattoo X Women is a new sensorial digital performance project which celebrates multinational perspectives, personal histories & authentic accounts of tattoo cultures, exploring the complex relationships between women and the visual mark-making artform of tattoos. Inspired by the Wellcome Collection’s Medicine Man exhibition, Tattoo X Women incorporates kinetic projection, animation, vibrotactile technology and a unique blend of Chisato’s movement style to explore tattoos and their meanings in new ways. This sharing will be an opportunity to show some of the outcomes and findings from an initial artistic development phase, welcoming feedback and questions. This sharing will include an introductory artist talk, a short film excerpt of the performance process so far, and a chance for audience questions.

Starting @ 1 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for afternoon two (in-person)
reserve tickets for afternoon two (online)

Broken/Sometimes Repaired is a micro-concert inspired by Hanya Yanagihara’s monumental novel “A Little Life”. Residency artist Stewart Legere offers a sparkling tribute to queer resilience, love, and a celebration of the tremendous ripple effect great works of art can have on the little lives of those who encounter them.

The wide and curvy cartography of the goddess country, written and performed by afrakaren, offers five short pieces of storytelling with visuals by Jabari Elliot created live in front of an audience. “Carl Jung thought myths were the dreams of a culture; a way to understand the ideas that drive our behaviour,” explains Residency artist Ian Kamau. “These stories of Trinidadian and Greek/Roman female mythological characters were created as a companion to the story of my grandmother and aunts in Loss, the live arts, trans-media project I’ve been developing with The Theatre Centre.”

The B-Side Series: Building Empathy in Online Spaces
It may have been the filmmaker Satyajit Ray who said filmmaking technology will get better, but no matter how great the innovation, its only real worth is measured in its ability to convey a story compellingly & move an audience. This conversation will not focus on the tech, but on the engagement that this new technology supports, exploring how to best increase accessibility, connection, and empathy. With Anand Rajaram, Beth Kates, Sngmoo Lee, Laura Levin, and Debi Wong.

Starting @ 7:30 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for night two (in-person)
reserve tickets for night two (online)

On Minors, Movement, and the Gathering of Data will feature a screening of Nehal El-Hadi and Coco Guzmán’s short film The Observer Effect, followed by a conversation with Yusra Khogali and Siobhan O’Flynn about the Toronto Police Service’s use of surveillance technology, the ethics of surveilling public space, and how expanding the use of these technologies might impact racialized and otherwise marginalized groups.

Grin by Mele Broomes is a masquerade of dance sculptures where body and costume are accompanied by a pulsating sound score subverting hyper-sexualized notions of African and Caribbean dance. Conversation around community building, refusals, friendship and support grounds the development of this dynamic dance production, which both holds and is held by a cohort of friends at its core. With a significant focus on black love and other experiences of interiority, this show is essential in considering how we can build empathy and reconstitute networks of solidarity.

Starting @ 7:30 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for night three (in-person)
reserve tickets for night three (online)

asses.masses is a video game performance created by Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim that follows the epic journey of unemployed asses as they navigate the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant. Each night, brave spectators take turns stepping forward from the herd to become the players of a custom-made video game. Cheeky and political, asses.masses puts the control(ler) in its audience’s hands and asks them to explore the space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us. Starting @ 6:30 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for asses.masses on night four (in-person only)
reserve tickets for asses.masses on night six (in-person only)

Terror from Inside the 3rd Dimension! created and directed by HRH Anand Rajaram is an online show using multiple conferencing platforms, integrating augmented reality & virtual reality. Wander across online platforms interacting with live performers who are digital avatars in a time-limited adventure story/escape room video game. The story has been evolving as we develop the structure & is being finalized presently. Using Zoom, Mozilla Hubs, Kumospace, and Gathertown in a seamless way, the audience will move through the various modes of those platforms, with a threading dynamic narrative that is site-specific to each digital space, connected by a larger narrative that unites all the spaces. Due to the nature of this show, tickets are extremely limited. Starting @ 7:30 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for 3rd Dimension! on night four (online only)
reserve tickets for 3rd Dimension! on night six (online only)

Imaginary Campfires are two short, recorded storytelling performances. They’re partly inspired by Latin American storytelling and Japanese Rakugo, where a single speaker brings all characters and events to life. They also experiment with video art and illustration. The Shining Lake (performed by Monica Garrido) is the life of an immigrant woman translated into a fairy tale. The Likewise Madam Mirror (performed by Polly Phokeev) is a short, horror-tinged story about people’s relationship to their own thoughts. The Shining Lake will be screened in person as a 360° immersive experience — capacity for each screening is limited. The Likewise Madam Mirror will be available to watch digitally for the duration of the festival.

The Observer Effect is an immersive installation by Nehal El-Hadi and Coco Guzmán. The observer effect occurs when the act of observation itself disturbs what is being studied. As we move through the city, it’s inevitable that our movements are tracked and recorded on several different cameras. There are cameras everywhere now, designed to observe, monitor, capture, and survey life in public space, ostensibly for the purposes of crime deterrence and investigation. The cost is not only our privacy but our freedom to simply exist. And what of the information that is collected? Our likenesses, movements, moods, and emotions are transformed into data, and the long-term implications and applications of this are unknown.

book an afternoon screening between 12-5pm (in-person only)
book an evening screening between 5-9pm (in-person only)

100% Analog is a discussion about 12 Letters from Your Lover, Lost at Sea, a theatre-by-mail experience written by Hannah Kaya and Thomas McKechnie. Audience members received 12 letters and postcards written by a mysterious hitchhiker named Z. It’s a story of ghosts, Nazis, love, and the Torrington Gopher Museum. We invite people who experienced the play, or those curious about it, to join together in a long table conversation about the work, doing theatre during COVID, and challenging definitions of what constitutes a play. Starting @ 1 p.m. EST

The B-Side Series: On Devising, Rehearsing and Performing: Creating an ethic of care & disruption
In this presentation Liselle Terret will be asking: How can we disrupt the mainstream-conventional-rehearsal / devising process through a feminist, Crip and queer framework in order to create accessible and inclusive performance approaches that ultimately seduce and implicate audiences in active re-considerations of their own lives? How can theatre-making processes be deployed to enable, include, champion and celebrate the creativity of neuro-diverse and learning-disabled artists? Starting @ 3:30 p.m. EST

reserve tickets for afternoon seven (in-person)
reserve tickets for afternoon seven (online)