From August 9-19, a juried arts festival of a different kind unfolds in Toronto. A home for fringe performance art from across Canada, the SummerWorks Festival has been fostering a collaborative community for 22 years. According to artistic producer Michael Rubenfeld, it’s all about blurring the boundaries between different art forms to create compelling and unique performances. At this year’s festival, many performances will also bridge the gap between the spectators and the spectacle.
Rubenfeld has been involved with the festival since 2001: first as an artist, and now as the man in charge. Over the years, he says the programming focus has shifted towards collaboration. “The question that we’re really serious about is, ‘Why is going to see a piece of music not a piece of theatre?’” he says. To that end, he’s curated a music series that teams up musicians with dancers, artists and designers. Theatre designer Sean Frey, who has collaborated with Feist, is creating an immersive world to accompany an Evening Hymns performance of their new album Spectral Dust, Buck 65 will perform a show of “lost songs” with Ame Henderson, and The Magic will present Chuck Sugarman’s Midnight Special!!!, a Soul Train-inspired variety show.
One of the pieces Rubenfeld is most excited about this year comes from Halifax’s 2b Theatre, who have teamed up with Hawksley Workman to create The God That Comes, a one-man show that utilizes his natural ability as a performer. Other shows see artists using their true experiences to tackle tough topics. My Pregnant Brother tells the true story of a Montreal woman whose sister became pregnant before transitioning from female to male, and One/Un will tackle an Iranian immigrant’s relationship to the country of his birth as it undergoes unimaginable turmoil and he watches from a world away.
Rubenfeld describes SummerWorks as a festival where artists, both new and established, can take a risk, but because the festival is juried, the audience doesn’t have to feel like they are, too. From fostering emerging writers to giving theatre legends like Judith Thompson a chance to embrace a new challenge (in Thompson’s case, directing), the curation of Summerworks feels as much like a playground for creators as it does for the audience.
The inaugural Live Art Series at this year’s festival is curated by Deborah Pearson, founder of the Forest Fringe performance space in Edinburgh, Scotland. This year’s selections include an interactive piece exploring friendships and social media with UK-based artist Brian Lobel, a dreamy tour through a supermarket, and a chance to watch artist David Yee learn other languages via Google Translate. And nothing sums up the SummerWorks spirit of participation and innovation like the Live Art event Dare Night Lockdown, the “Sleepover With One Eye Open”. Presented by Mammalian Diving Reflex, this unique experience was created by the Torontonians, a group of teenagers who participated in a program at MDR and are now inheriting the organization. Dare Night Lockdown is 17 hours of bloodcurdling interactive performance (including Pus Pizza Dinner and the Blood Ball) that finishes with a Mourning Wiener Roast. Throughout the night, there will be ghost stories, dares, astral projection lessons, and more. Participants will hunker down with the teens all night in the Gladstone and prepare to poop their pants. (Really. It’s on the flyer.)
Immersive, intriguing, inspiring, and innovative, the SummerWorks Festival challenges preconceived notions of the limits of the theatrical experience, and every performance seems to offer a new perspective on what Rubenfeld describes as the anchor of the festival’s conversation: “What is performance, what is theatre?”