2018 Participants
(to the moon + tiresius + names spoken out loud + government tweets + song cycles)
Maria and the Man in the Moon
Madeline Hall & Mitchel Rose (Aplombusrhombus)
Madeleine Hall
Lab Experience
We used the Summer Lab to discover what our big idea would like like if we broke it down and looked at it through a smaller lens. We came to the process with a lot of ideas and needed an outlet to test them: we had bikes and balloons and a willingness to fall on our faces. We ran. We fell. Occasionally we soared. But most of all...we explored. We created something that resembled a skeleton of our ideas and we created something we needed to push further. Our aspiration to create and present something polished pushed us to foster our creative habits and also forced us to reject our normal process so we could discover a new way of attacking our work. We went to the moon and back (at least once) and we were left with a few great ideas, a few that didn’t work at all, and at least a room full of ideas that we want to explore a few moons from now. What a trip indeed.
Mitchel Rose
Much to (un)do
Lola Ryan and Patrick Teed
Poetry by Lola Ryan
Lab Experience
Much to (un)do was a skeleton, the bones of a shared story that we embraced in its essence. We were Tiresias, Tiresia, Zeus and Hera, Lola and her predecessor. In this first iteration, the narrative was holographic, present in all times and in all places. Both loving and cruel, we spoke in image and metaphor, moved in the same way. We know the territory - now we must draw the map
Lola Ryan
Patrick Teed
Ndishnikaaz [My Name Is…]
Brittany Johnston and Emily Seguin
with Montana Adams, Elaine Endanawas, Ludmylla Reis
Lab Experience
“I stand on the shoulders of all the women who came before me…”
Ndishnikaaz [My Name Is…] was created out of a need to build social awareness around the national epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women across Turtle Island. The project is deeply steeped in Indigenous cosmology to reflect Indigenous ways of being/seeing/relating to the world. We wrote a script (and performed in the round) to reflect the traditional teachings found in the First Nations Medicine Wheel. This wheel symbolizes one’s journey through life and the lessons we stumble across along the way. Sometimes that journey is cut short…
We titled the project Ndishnikaaz, meaning “my name is”, to honour the lives of the countless Indigenous women who were lost prematurely. CBC News created a web database which displays 306 cases of women who have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada since the 1960’s. A large portion of these cases go unresolved and become another faceless statistic. Our goal was to create a Call to Action for all Canadians.
Future: We intend to continue developing the work into a One Act play, with the goal of touring to the show to first Nations communities and Indigenous Arts festivals.
Brittany Johnston Emily Seguin
Montana Adams Elaine Endanawas
Ludmylla Reis
@TheMayor
Patrick Gauthier
with Nicholas Amott, John Doucet, Laura Hall and Geoff McBride
Lab Experience
The lead up to the 2018 municipal election was frustrating. I had a growing distaste for the current mayor, but no credible alternative to vote for. The city deserved an election campaign where serious issues – transit, taxes, sprawl, environment, infrastructure – were raised and discussed. The outcome felt inevitable, but someone needed to ask these questions.
So, it was either run for mayor, or write a play about it. Since I'm horribly unqualified for the former...
It might be too inspired by current events, or maybe not inspired enough. I wanted to explore satire and farce. I think if the audience is laughing, they're more receptive to what you have to say.
Patrick Gauthier
Nick Amott Laura Hall
John Doucet Geoff McBride
EVE
Doreen Taylor-CLaxton, Christopher Moore,
Hilde van den Heuvel
In a song cycle called Song of Eve, you’d expect Adam, Eve, a snake and a tree in a garden. But what if there’s no Adam, no snake and no tree?…. ƎVE uses 4 songs from Gabriel Fauré’s Chanson d’ Ève, projected photography, a bee video and a very large basil plant to explore modern issues of consent, #metoo, and the role of faith in secular society. Moving forward we hope to include the remaining songs of the cycle, more photos, and further explore and clarify the themes of faith, power, responsibility and environmental issues.
Doreen Taylor-Claxton Christopher Moore
