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Playful. Elusive. Unpredictable. Harbourfront Centre announces World Stage 2015 Season – #artlive
TORONTO, ON (Oct. 21, 2014) – Today, Tina Rasmussen, artistic director of Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage, revealed the lineup for the 2015 season, which runs January 24 – June 6, 2015. As Canada’s most diverse season of international performance, Rasmussen brings a bold curatorial vision to Toronto’s performing arts landscape, assembling and presenting performance leaders from England, France, Switzerland, Australia, Belgium, United States and Canada.
The earth, small as it is, contains many worlds. The interpersonal, the ecological, the political, the personal and the cultural – to name only a few. This season, World Stage invites audiences to see and experience the dimensionality of these worlds through the lens of live performance.
“World Stage has always been a place where varying perspectives touch, overlap and collide. I like to think that it provides an opportunity for self reflection, and a space to explore the many worlds we inhabit,” shares Rasmussen. “The mirror is often used as the metaphor to describe one’s relation to art, but I think it’s more complicated than that. While planning the 2015 lineup, we started thinking about other tools for self-reflection. Surfaces that don’t just reveal the self, but also let you see through to the other.”
Tickets for World Stage go on sale Oct. 25, 2014 via Harbourfront Centre’s Box Office. Prospective patrons can call 416-973-4000, visit 235 Queens Quay West and/or go online for all ticket inquiries. New to the ticketing structure this season, World Stage offers patrons weekday and weekend price points. Other notable ticket offerings include the World Stage Season Pass, which provides savings of up to 50% (available until Jan. 23), Flex Passes (available in sets of 4 or 8 tickets), the CultureBreak programme for full-time students and those 25 years and under, as well as additional discounts for seniors and arts industry professionals.
For full company and performance information, including photos, videos and details surrounding World Stage Extras, please visit harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage and connect with the season on Facebook and Twitter using @WorldStageTO #artlive.
Please visit harbourfrontcentre.com/gettinghere for information about getting here during the Queens Quay revitalization.
MEDIA CONTACT Chrissi Forte Office: 416-973-4342 | Cell: 416-523-0018 [email protected] 1
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World Stage 2015 Season Lineup:
The #artlive Ball Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage with House of Nuance & House of Monroe January 24, Harbourfront Centre Theatre For the launch of World Stage 2015, #artlive returns with an unprecedented party collaboration between two of Toronto’s most august families: House of Nuance and House of Monroe. Dress as your most authentic self and join the World Stage team and 2015 artists in celebration of the new #artlive season. Vogue, Bizarre, Face, Hairography, this year’s ball embraces every category.
All Our Happy Days Are Stupid Sheila Heti / Suburban Beast February 11–14, Harbourfront Centre Theatre Don’t become the thing you hated. Sheila Heti’s eclectic play was called ‘unstageable’ by the Toronto theatre company that first commissioned it nearly decade ago, until multidisciplinary instigator and Suburban Beast director Jordan Tannahill assembled a company of artists bold enough to reveal the play’s playful seriousness. All Our Happy Days Are Stupid tells the story of two families on permanent vacation, searching for contentment and authenticity outside the confines of their flat-fronted black-and-white existence. Produced with Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage.
The Cardinals Stan’s Cafe February 12–15, Studio Theatre A Canadian premiere. A puppet show without puppets. Influential pioneers of UK theatre, Birmingham’s Stan’s Cafe return to World Stage with The Cardinals. Odd and hilarious, The Cardinals is an apparently simple meditation on the labour that goes into belief and the possibility of interfaith cooperation. In near silence, a trio of red-robed evangelizing cardinals perform their abbreviated version of the Bible, ably assisted by their young, Muslim female stage-manager. In this work, Stan’s Cafe director James Yarker presents a pageant of images struggling to determine their meaning.
The Object Lesson Geoff Sobelle February 18–22, Harbourfront Centre Theatre A Canadian premiere. A magic act of storytelling by one of the U.S’s most unusually gifted performers. Unpacking the material components of memory, illusionist and performer Geoff Sobelle produces an impossible profusion of artifacts. Combining charmingly simple delivery and meticulous stagecraft, The Object Lesson is a meditation on the things we keep and the things we throw away. What are you holding on to?
MEDIA CONTACT Chrissi Forte Office: 416-973-4342 | Cell: 416-523-0018 [email protected] 2
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vox:lumen Zata Omm Dance Projects March 4–7, Harbourfront Centre Theatre A world premiere. How can performance be sustainable? What is ecological dance? Lighting itself with energy created by the dancers and audience, vox:lumen explores a future in which the necessity of illumination structures every human interaction. In this work, choreographer William Yong proposes a future in which human labour produces energy, and the pleasure of movement works to integrate technology into the social sphere. The audience is invited to help contribute to the show’s energy needs in the week leading up to the performances at Zata Omm’s Energy Fair located outside the theatre. Produced with Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage in association with York University and Aesthetec Studio.
Disabled Theater Jérôme Bel & Theater HORA March 25–28, Fleck Dance Theatre A Canadian premiere. A disconcertingly honest re-staging of French choreographer Jérôme Bel’s first meeting with the members of Zurich’s Theater HORA - a company that promotes and presents the work of people with intellectual disabilities. Bel’s questions and the performer’s presence reveal the dynamics of exclusion and the limits of political correctness. Disabled Theater is a profound re-imagination of the stage and its possibilities – one that ultimately expands the humanity that we hold on to.
Me So You So Me Out Innerspace Dance Theatre April 15–18, Harbourfront Centre Theatre A Toronto premiere. An exploration of how to express love in a global language. Freely mixing martial arts, mime, kathak and ballet, Vancouver’s David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen have developed a virtuosic movement language that’s both totally recognizable and unlike anything you’ve seen. Me So You So Me is a story in dance where manga-influenced slapstick transcends the limitations of the girl-boy duet. Shifting characters, inner animals and super heroes, Me So You So Me’s infectious and exuberant theatricality is a deep and surprising pleasure.
This Is a Costume Drama The Dietrich Group April 29–May 2, Fleck Dance Theatre A world premiere. Cabaret, lecture, fashion show and feast. This Is a Costume Drama binds together a dizzying array of historical, pop, scientific and religious iconography, characters and situations to reveal how we transform, how we put on masks and how we celebrate – all as it turns the theatre into a landscape built for graphic spectacle. Blurring the edges of performance disciplines, The Dietrich Group presents a sexy, quirkily adult game of adornment, where the transformation of the exterior exposes a flash of inner life. Produced with Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage.
MEDIA CONTACT Chrissi Forte Office: 416-973-4342 | Cell: 416-523-0018 [email protected] 3
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Gudirr Gudirr Marrugeku May 6–9, Fleck Dance Theatre A North American premiere. In Broome, Western Australia, Asian, Australian-Indigenous and Western settler cultures collide, creating a remarkable intercultural expression – and Marrugeku is at the forefront of this emergence. “Gudirr Gudirr” is the guwayi bird’s warning that the tide is turning; if you miss the call, you drown. Threading the physicality of contemporary dance through her vision of the rapid change affecting her land, its people and her own Asian-Indigenous identity, Marrugeku’s Dalisa Pigram shares the memories and experiences of indigenous culture through this visually spectacular performance.
STRAIGHT WHITE MEN Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company June 3–6, Fleck Dance Theatre A Canadian premiere. What can a privileged straight white man do to fight against the perpetuation of an unjust system? Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company returns to World Stage for the third time, with a response to their critically acclaimed production of UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW. Young Jean Lee’s relentless experimentalism takes a paradoxical turn with STRAIGHT WHITE MEN. A linear narrative, a realistic set and characters that were once the default voice of Western society, STRAIGHT WHITE MEN is an experiment in non-experiment. Hilarious and provocative, it’s a genre shifting re-deployment of straight-theatrical convention.
ABOUT WORLD STAGE Since 1986, World Stage has evolved into Canada’s most diverse season-length international contemporary performance series. Every year, Harbourfront Centre brings innovative and groundbreaking performance leaders from both the international and local arts community to World Stage. Committed to bold curation and audience accessibility, World Stage programming continues to foster opportunities for cultural development and the artistic exchange of ideas. Following last year’s Dora Mavor Moore Award-winning season, World Stage 2015 features nine groundbreaking international contemporary performance works, welcoming artists and productions from England, France, Switzerland, Australia, Belgium, United States and Canada.
ABOUT HARBOURFRONT CENTRE Harbourfront Centre is a Canadian charity operating the 10 prime acres of Toronto's central waterfront as a free and open public site. We celebrate the multiplicities of cultures that comprise Canada and enliven the city through the creative imaginations of artists from across the country and around the globe. Harbourfront Centre attracts more than 17 million visits to its site each year to experience 4,000 diverse public events and activities. Harbourfront Centre receives operational support from the Government of Canada and the City of Toronto and program funding from all levels of government, the private sector and individual donors.
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MEDIA CONTACT Chrissi Forte Office: 416-973-4342 | Cell: 416-523-0018 [email protected] 4