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Culture Stage

SummerWorks on the page and on the stage

SummerWorks has gone on quite a journey since it began 19 years ago. Started in 1991 by a group of five people, the festival’s first productions were chosen on a first-come, first-selected process. That grew into a lottery and then, when Franco Boni came on board as festival head in 2002, the move began a gradual shift to a fully juried festival.

When he took over last year, Michael Rubenfeld expanded the SummerWorks mandate to include music and performance he’s added another element this year with SummerWalks (see here) three guided tours around the Queen West area. That segment of Queen now defines the geography and in some sense the spirit of the fest: edgy, experimental and interdependent in terms of community.

Last night’s opening party was also the occasion for the launch of SummerWorks: Great Plays From The Indie Theatre Festival, an anthology published by Playwrights Canada Press. Rubenfeld selected and edited the volume, which includes Morwyn Brebner‘s Matador Love and Our Father, Matthew MacFadzean‘s richardthesecond, Keira Loughran‘s Little Dragon, Alan Dilworth‘s The Unforgetting and a work by visiting western artists Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn‘s Any Night.

A great collection of plays, some of which have had post-festival remounts (MacFadzean’s and Loughran’s) and some of which (Brebner’s and Dilworth’s) deserve a full production.

Smaller than the Fringe, SummerWorks still offers a problem for audiences: what to check out in the dozens of shows — theatre, music, and performance — available between today and August 16.

One way is to see the work of some of the skilled artists participating in SummerWorks. Here’s a brief and by no means comprehensive list of the talent in the festival:

DAVE DEVEAU – the queer playwright/performer was part of the festival in 2007 with his play Nelly Boy. An opera librettist as well as playwright, Deveau’s back with his solo show My Funny Valentine, based on a real-life event in which one teen shot another after the latter asked him to be his valentine. Cameron Mackenzie directs.

D’BI.YOUNG – I first saw actor, writer and dub poet young in the SummerWorks production of yagayah, which she co-wrote she mesmerized me and others with her intensity and stage-sized smile. She’s back with Benu, in which a woman who’s just given birth looks at life and death in a hospital room Natasha Mytnowych directs. Moving to the directing chair, young helms Sketch’in Toronto, a collective presented by Sketch Youth.

THE ROOM – Not one artist but a whole bunch of them, collaborating on a piece called Red Machine, about a man in a surreal motel room who’s trying to break his writer’s block. The collective, which includes seven playwrights and three directors, mounted three interconnected works in the Fringe and follow it up here with the project’s second part, with scripts by Tara Beagan, Rick Roberts and Jenny Young. I found the first part sometimes hard to follow but always intriguing in its mysteries and energetic in its presentation. Directed by Chris Hanratty and Geoffrey Pounsett.

KEITH KLASSEN – An opera performer as savvy about theatre as about singing, Klassen is a regular with Tapestry New Opera. For SummerWorks he’s collaborating again with composer Njo Kong Kie on La Señorita Mundo: An Operatic Allegory, which promises a bit of sex, comedy and horror. Librettist Kico Gonzalez-Risso directs.

MAEV BEATY and ERIN SHIELDS – These two writer/performers have a long history with SummerWorks. This year they’re collaborating on Montparnasse, which I first saw in shorter form at last winter’s Rhubarb. In this tale of artists, models and patrons in 20s Paris, the two play various parts, sometimes clothed and sometimes not. Andrea Donaldson directs. Shields also has a play of her own, The Epic Of Gilgamesh, in the festival.

NICOLAS BILLON – A playwright who first made his mark in new works at Stratford, Billon’s having a busy summer. His adaptation of Molière’s The Sicilian was a Fringe hit his SummerWorks show, Greenland, looks at the emotional rifts within a family that have geological parallels in the North Atlantic. The director is Ravi Jain.

PATRICIA O’CALLAGHAN – Another singer/actor with a direct line to the heart of a song, O’Callaghan’s part of XXX Live Nude Girls, which advertises itself as a Barbie opera for the 21st century. There are no guys in the cast, so maybe this is a work sans Ken. Graham Cozzubbo directs.

For details on venues and performance times for these shows, see SummerWorks listings.

And check NOW’s online coverage regularly for reviews, updates and talk about SummerWorks reviews will appear in print August 13.

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