The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program is a two-year program designed to support artists in developing new work. The program facilitates a highly collaborative artistic process that embraces experimentation and learning with a wide variety of collaborators.

Residency Showings are an opportunity for our Residency artists to share their work during development and to embrace the dialogue that emerges as part of the creative process.

Friday, September 9 at 7:00pm
The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St. West
RSVP by email

Join us for an open rehearsal of On (E)very (C)orner a (T)errorist by Suvendrini Lena

On ECT is about schizophrenia – a word which literally means fragmentation of the mind. Schizophrenia is a chronic illness characterized by psychosis.

In this work-in-progress we attempt to explore, understand, and ultimately reveal how the fragmentation and loss of identity that occurs in schizophrenia relates to the more transient episodes of ‘madness’ and fragmentation we all experience. Schizophrenics ‘hear voices’. Schizophrenics fear loss of control over their own thoughts and bodies. Clinically we call this ‘paranoia’ but is it really such a strange idea? How does anyone actually separate internal and external voices? How do we know which voice/voices are truly our own? What makes what we say, think, or even feel, truly our own? Is any self unfragmented?

Suvendrini is a Neurologist working at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health and the Center for Headache at WCH. Her first play, the Enchanted Loom is in development at Cahoots Theatre where she is a member of the 2014/2015 Playwright Hothouse. In residency at the Theatre Center she is co-teaching ‘Staging Medicine’ a theatre course for post graduate medical residents, with Colleen Murphy. She is also developing new work on the emergence and experience of ‘schizophrenia’ using archival material from the Queen Street ‘Asylum’ dating back to 1850.

Please stay tuned for more Residency Showings as the dates become announced

Heidi Strauss / adelheid
Heidi is a Toronto-based choreographer and performer and Artistic Director of adelheid. In Residency, Heidi (and collaborating artists) are developing what it’s like, a work about brotherhood and boundaries. what it’s like looks at what happens when we are sensitive to where we are, and who is with us.
www.adelheid.ca

Dan Watson & Christina Serra
Dan and Christina are parents seeking a way for their disabled son to share his voice. Tony is a non-verbal adult with lots to say. Liz is his firecracker partner full of conviction. Through a series of staged conversations and theatrical re-enactments, these two couples draw from their personal lives to explore and debate questions of representation, the nature of companionship and how people of different abilities can connect with each other on equal terms.
Twitter: @ahuritheatre

Jess Dobkin
Jess Dobkin is an internationally-renowned performance artist. In Residency, Jess is developing The Magic Hour — a solo performance art work that uses magic as a medium to explore sexual violence, trauma and transformation. Using themes and devices of magic and ritual, from conventional entertainment to anarchic enchantments, the work challenges the boundaries of what is deemed public and private, hidden and revealed, to make visible what is not seen. She is collaborating on the project with Stephen Lawson and other artists.
Email: Jess Dobkin, Twitter: @jessdobkin, Facebook: jessdobkin

Ian Kamau
Ian is a Toronto-based hip hop and spoken word artist. In Residency Ian will plunge into an exploration of mental illness, told through the story of his grandmother Nora Elutha Rogers. Ian confronts his own struggle with depression as a catalyst to learning more about his family’s struggle with mental illness.  Ian Kamau is a recipient of Ontario Arts Council’s Playwright Residency grant.
Twitter: @iankamau

Suvendrini Lena
Suvendrini is a Neurologist working at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health and the Center for Headache at WCH. Her first play, the Enchanted Loom is in development at Cahoots Theatre where she is a member of the 2014/2015 Playwright Hothouse. In residency at the Theatre Center she is co-teaching ‘Staging Medicine’ a theatre course for post graduate medical residents, with Colleen Murphy. She is also developing new work on the emergence and experience of ‘schizophrenia’ using archival material from the Queen Street ‘Asylum’ dating back to 1850.

Hannah Moscovitch, Maev Beaty, Tova Smith & Ann-Marie Kerr
Secret Lives of Mothers is a theatrical investigation of the gothic side of modern maternity, inspired by interviews with 75 mothers and born out of the long-term friendship of the three performers. A new play offering counter-narratives of pregnancy and child-bearing: the hidden stories, the ones only shared in hushed tones.
Twitter: @moscotweets; @sheepnowool; @tovascotia; @AnnMarieKerr

Residency is generously supported by: