FESTIVAL OF IDEAS AND CREATION produced by Canadian Stage at the Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley), from Monday (June 8) to June 27. Most events free, ticketed events $15-$50. 416-860-4685, 416-368-3110, canstage.com/festival. See listing.
Don’t think luminato is the only festival in town. This week Canadian Stage throws open the doors of its Berkeley Street Theatre for a 20-day series of events to make you to rethink your notions of theatre.
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The timing of CanStage’s Festival Of Ideas And Creation couldn’t be better. The venerable institution is entering a new phase under incoming artistic and general director Matthew Jocelyn, who takes up his full-time duties in July.
“It’s really appropriate,” says the festival’s director, Natasha Mytnowych. “Matthew’s been exploring a lot of questions around what’s going on in Toronto, in Canada and the rest of the world and how the company continues to evolve and make changes. We’re doing a similar thing with the festival.”
A list of participants in the three-week event reads like a who’s who of the theatre scene, full of big names like Judith Thompson and Daniel MacIvor and emerging artists you might not know but should.
Mytnowych, who helmed Tarragon’s Paprika Festival for three seasons and has directed works like The Russian Play, says much of the programming centres around issues of accessibility, language and collaboration.
Accessibility (reasonable ticket prices, chances for young artists to try things out) and collaboration might be self-explanatory, but what about language?
“It’s about theatrical language – design and lighting, working with projections,” says Mytnowych. “But it’s also about linguistic languages. One hundred languages are spoken in this city, but about 99 per cent of the theatre is in English.
“We’re looking at dialect and accents. And we’re talking with companies like Theatrefront that have collaborated with artists in other countries. How do you push the boundaries and expand the stories that get told on our stages?”
One of the highlights of the festival is a three-night public reading of Tom Stoppard’s epic look at intellectual life in pre-revolutionary Russia, The Coast Of Utopia, which Mytnowych and associate directors Clare Calnan and Ravi Jain are directing June 17 to 19.
“The scale of the piece and the complexity of its staging would probably make mounting a full production in Toronto unlikely,” she says about the nine-hour trilogy that wowed London and New York. “But who knows? Perhaps hearing the plays read aloud will inspire someone to take it on.”
Casting actors for the reading has been really satisfying, she says.
“Of course, we’re drawing from a culturally diverse group of artists, but we decided to push some boundaries with the reading and include some cross-gender casting, too,” says Mytnowych.
“One of the lead characters is Alexander Herzen, a 22-year-old revolutionary. When we were talking about revolutionaries in our own community, we thought of d’bi.young. She reflects the essence of a revolutionary. Why not cast her as a young, white Russian idealist?”
About half the festival’s events are open to the public, including a conversation and celebration of musical theatre great William Finn (June 22), whose Elegies, A New Brain, Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have all received productions here.
As well, look for readings of new plays by Thompson, Anusree Roy, Damien Atkins and Ed Roy.
“In some cases these are first drafts,” says Mytnowych, who calls herself a reading junkie. “There’s something magical about that environment and the way your imagination gets engaged. Go with an open mind. Offer feedback. Discuss it afterwards in the lobby.”
glenns@nowtoronto.com
