The SummerWorks Festival is now in full swing, with over 67 shows to experience, plus parties, discussions, art exhibits and more. “Shows” has an especially broad meaning within this curated festival; the programming includes one on one encounters with artists in an apartment (Inside), a blindfolded sci-fi audio experience (Tomorrow's Child), and a roving piano-tuner/storyteller (Lessons in Temperament). “Experience” is probably a more accurate label for how patrons interact with many SummerWorks shows.
We've gone through the program and made some picks based partly on an artist's past successes and partly on intuition. Here are our preview picks for the festival's five categories of Theatre, Music, Dance, live Art, and Special Presentations.
Heath v. Salazar (Image: ​Chel Hirons)
Theatre: SeXt, and This Is The August
SummerWorks started out as a theatre festival and has gradually diversified, especially over the past five years. But plays for the stage remain the largest aspect of the festival, and much of its renown comes from producing new work by artists that would go on to win major awards, like Governor-General winning playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Nicolas Billon. This year's plays include new work by artists with long associations with the festival, like d'bi.young anitafrika (Bleeders), Adam Lazarus (Daughter), and relative newcomer Andrea Scott (Don't Talk To Me Like I'm Your Wife), whose Better Angels: A Parable was last year's biggest critical hit.
But it's the next generation of artists that we're most intrigued by this year. SummerWorks has youth partnerships with the AMY Project and the Sears Ontario Drama Festival, but there are young creators in the Theatre Series proper, too. We saw SeXt at the Toronto Fringe Festival (it's been reworked for SummerWorks), and were impressed by the Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Park teens who collectively created a fun and snappy sketch show about sex ed in the era of Snapchat and gender fluidity. Speaking of, This Is The August covers similar topics. A YouTube star falls for a multimedia artist played by Heath V. Salazar; they won a 2016 Dora Mavor Moore Award for the collectively created Chasse-Galerie, and also appeared recently in the Fringe Festival hit Dance Animal: Toronto.
Music: Maylee Todd and La-Nai Gabriel's Inamorata
Music has been a popular separate component of SummerWorks since 2008, starting out as a showcase for local bands, and gradually evolving into a series of collaborations with artists, designers, and choreographers, where each show is a unique one night only performance. There are return artists in this program too, including Maylee Todd, who this year has re-arranged her upcoming third album for an orchestral performance by an all female band entitled Inamorata, and d'bi young anitafrika, who'll perform jubilant protest music with her band THE 333.
NO FUN TEASER 1 from Sebastien Provencher on Vimeo.
Dance: NO FUN
Every year at Summerworks, we end up being surprised by dance troupes from Montreal, who bring us shows that blur the lines between dance and theatre, for maximum visceral impact. This year, the early front-runner for a show that may shock and awe is NO FUN, by choreographer Helen Simard, who was inspired by the physicality of rock and roller Iggy Pop. It's already impressed audiences at the Montreal Fringe and Pop Montreal festivals, and features a four-piece live band as well as three dancers.
Empire of Night (Image: Bryan Olson)
Live art: Empire of Night
The oddest concept for a show in this category this year may seem weirdly familiar; it's a sleepover party, albeit a sleepover with an eight-hour “soothing” performance by musicians, dancers, and “sleepover technicians”. Audience members who attend Empire of Night are encouraged to bring their own blankets and no-one will fault you if you sleep through some (or all) of the show.
Chase Scenes #1-58 Teaser from Ming Hon on Vimeo.
Special presentations: Chase Scenes #1-#58
This category contains international and especially ambitious projects, selected by the festival's outgoing Artistic Director Michael Rubenfeld. Ghosts and Mr. Shi and His Lover originated in Ireland and China, respectively; audio adventure Tomorrow's Child comes from Calgary's Ghost River Theatre. But the cinephile in us is most excited by the description of Chase Scenes #1-#58, wherein dancer Ming Hon interacts with filmed sequences to create a series of pursuits inspired by cinema.
Steve Fisher is a Toronto-based arts journalist and reviewer who writes regularly for Torontoist, and has contributed to The A.V. Club and CBC Music. Follow him on Twitter: @gracingthestage.
