“SummerWorks Performance Festival has been a part of my life for many years. The first play I wrote was produced at the Festival. I later served as a producer of the Progress Festival of Performance and Ideas (SummerWorks / The Theatre Centre). For the Festival’s past three iterations, I have served on the producing team for Lab and Exchange activities. These positions have allowed me wonderful opportunities to collaborate with artists in the earliest stages of new work development and exploration, and SummerWorks is an organization that has always made the resources available for me, as a producer, to be able to ask artists What is it you need? and then make that happen (delightful, rare, and so important!).

This year’s SummerWorks Exchange programming unites around the idea of convening community. In my work with artists over the years, I’ve felt the palpable desire for more facilitated intersections between various practices, geographies and economies. The Exchange is an ideal place to come together around these curiosities (and sometimes conflicts) as it also brings local and visiting industry folks into the mix for a larger ripple effect of impact.

This year we’ll look both locally (a conversation between this year’s curatorial team members, a gig worker equity-focused meal hosted by Means of Production, and a reading room designed to cultivate cultural literacy and exchange) and globally (examining the impacts of AI technology on our sector, a sharing of practice from three visiting Taipei-based dance artists, and an invitation for technicians to collaborate with Iranian artists through the lens of the Woman Life Freedom movement).

Collaborating and visioning with this year’s Exchange artists has been an honour. My thanks go out to them, my fellow Co-Curators and the entire SummerWorks team that has been generous and supportive with both its time and energy.”

Sue (she/her) is a creative producer and facilitator. In recent years, she has served as Festival Producer for Aluna Theatre’s CAMINOS and RUTAS festivals, Progress international festival of performance and ideas (SummerWorks/The Theatre Centre), and Weesageechak Begins to Dance (Native Earth). She was the 2018 recipient of The Leonard McHardy and John Harvey Award for Leadership in Administration, and is an Adaptive Facilitator for the Metcalf Foundation’s Staging Change program.

Currently, Sue is collaborating with the Associated Designers of Canada to deliver a series of professional development workshops and training opportunities for designers nationwide. She also serves as Executive Director of the Bonavista Biennale, a public art event that embeds contemporary art in historic spaces and daily places of rural communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador’s Bonavista Peninsula.

“Ballroom, Too is an evening I’ve curated to inhabit the Theatre Centre for this year’s SummerWorks Lab.

Ballroom in this context refers to the Trans, Queer, Black and Latinx community founded in Harlem in the late 1960’s – most famously documented by films like “The Queen” and “Paris Is Burning”. Ballroom in Canada started in Tkaronto in 2010, and now continues to proliferate the country with scenes of their own, predominantly in Montréal, Calgary, and Vancouver.

Three Ballroom artists from around the country, Matthew Cuff – aka Legendary Snoopy 007 (Toronto), ivy hazard – aka Mother Ivy Andromeda 007 (Vancouver), Chéline Lacroix – aka Mother Raven Louboutin Milan (Montréal), are offered time, resources and a place to share their curiosities around bringing Ballroom off the runway and into the theatre. On behalf of the curated artists, I will act as a “translator” between the artists, the SummerWorks team, and the venue staff – in hopes to support each artist’s creative interests, while also honouring the cultural context they bring from Ballroom.

The purpose of this curated Lab offering is to show the value of Ballroom, and that they too should have access to occupy spaces, be resourced, and supported. Ballroom will and has continued to thrive without support, and the idea of this programming is to show what could happen if we reallocate resources to these communities. Ballroom will live with or without us; I just want to see the privileges of support for those that want it.”

Ralph Escamillan (he/him) is a Philippine diasporic performance artist, dancer, choreographer and community leader based in Vancouver, BC. He is a founder of two non-profits: FakeKnot – where he explores intersectionality in his artistic practices, and VanVogueJam – a Ballroom organization creating space for QTBIPOC folks to learn about Vogue and Ballroom Culture. He has worked and toured for a variety of dance companies, danced and choreographed for Film and TV, and continues to walk Balls internationally under the alias Posh Gvaslia Basquiat. www.ralphescamillan.com

“When considering how to pursue curating for SummerWorks, I first knew I wanted to take a value-based approach to my programming choices. Having previously presented work in the Festival, having done documentation for the Festival and now being invited to curate, the rich history I have with the organization stretches back along my artistic journey in a really beautiful way.

As a multi-disciplinary artist, my interests lay in where dance is in conversation with other artistic forms. I have chosen to highlight artists who are working across disciplines that include a nod to movement.

Connected to values, I am excited to be offering artists time and space to explore their ideas where they are thinking about audiences but they aren’t caught up about producing the final product. In the spirit of the Lab, I crave that the artists have a place to be in discussion across disciplines while cultivating their unique creative process.

I am excited to be bringing live music back to the Festival through the collaboration between Nyda Kwasowsky and Yarro, I want audiences to feel invited in through the intimacy of these artists as they weave together voice and body. The work that Lilia Leon and Irma Villafuerte are interpreting looks at connection and love in a theatrical landscape. To me, a beautiful and necessary part of creating art is having opportunities to be in dialogue with our audiences while the work is being developed, I believe the Lab is the perfect platform for this.”

Aria Evans (they/she/he) is a queer, Toronto based, West Coast born award winning interdisciplinary artist who’s practice spans dance, theatre and film. As a public speaker, activist and creative leader Aria draws on their experiences of being mixed race. Aria is a certified Intimacy Coordinator and with a large-scale vision, collaboration is the departure point to the choreographic work that Aria creates under their company POLITICAL MOVEMENT. Advocating for inclusion and the representation of diversity, Aria uses their artistic practice to question the ways we can coexist together. www.politicalmovement.ca

“I come to curation for this year’s Festival after having been an artist in the Festival for several years in the past. One of the things that I hold up with great importance is the continued evolution of both SummerWorks’ evolution which has greatly increased the level of support to artists, and a methodology which centers care. The work that draws me in is very much that which takes on challenging and at times uncomfortable truths – but that does so with respect and care for the audience as an active participant. Relationality, largely speaking, is a pressing issue to me in the realm of culture – moving past tolerance, past acceptance, past diversity, to try to map a way forward in co-existence and mutual accountability. Perhaps even “family” – one day.

The work that I have primarily brought forward to the presentation stream is The Seventh Fire by Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen. This project was developed with Delinquent Theatre for a unique space in Vancouver – The Lobe Studio – an immersive “4D” sound lab. Now, entering its touring future with Neworld Theatre, this presentation at SummerWorks will be the first attempt for the team to adapt the project to a more flexible audio set-up that will hopefully allow the piece to tour to theatres, community halls, and more remote communities.

Often when a piece is presented, there is an assumption that it is in its final form. But the truth (in my experience) is that projects must continue to adapt to the environments around them. Touring is not the showcase of a finished product, but rather a new form of engagement and opportunity for growth. A successful piece adapts to “invite in” the community where it is presented. And as Dario Fo observed, it is through this process of sharing the work in different regions that a project understands its heartbeat.

It has been a privilege to collaborate with SummerWorks and this team of curators, even more so to have the opportunity to program again for Tkaronto and in collaboration with the artistic community that raised me.”

Jivesh Parasram (he/him) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, and facilitator of Indo-Caribbean descent. Jiv grew up in K’jipuktuk (Halifax) and spent most of his early career in T’karón:to (Toronto); he now resides in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories, MST  (Vancouver). In 2009 he co-founded the award-winning collective Pandemic Theatre, and currently holds the position of Artistic Director for Rumble Theatre in Vancouver. Jiv is also a curation team member for the National Creation Fund.  He has received various nominations including the Governor General’s Literary award. He is the recipient of two “Harold Awards” including the Ken McDougall Award for Direction. Internationally, he also received a “Herald Angel” from the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the 2018 CanadaHub program. Jiv was a member of the Cultural Leaders Lab with the Toronto Arts Council and the Banff Centre and was the recipient of the 2018 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award.

“what i love about festivals in general, and especially about the vibe around summerworks every august, is the boldness they nurture. there’s a permissive magic in the hot august nights, sort of like how you open yourself up to the unexpected when you’re on vacation, you open your senses a bit wider—you never know when you’ll meet someone or something that sticks with you for years.  

summerworks exists to “expand the possibilities of performance,” and that goes for artists and audiences alike. it’s not a crude exhortation to make or see the weirdest thing you can think of, it’s an invitation to soften the edges of your tastes and practices. it’s a chance to have your mind caringly blown either as an artist, a spectator, or just a neighbourhood dweller passing through the park.

a few years back, that happened to me, i took a chance on a queer-sounding piece with just a set of numbers—is that maybe like a phone number?—as the title. the piece was we quit theatre’s 805-4821 and i was totally floored by the grace, intelligence, and poetry with which they had hacked so much of what i thought theatre was. they tore apart a canonical text through a facebook chat. the production was built from the ground up making accessibility an aesthetic instead of an afterthought. they eschewed easy trauma narratives and blew apart every convention of the identity solo show. and somehow, in spite of (because of?) the strangely distanced performance style, i felt deeply taken care of. who the hell were these folks?

fast forward a few years, and we quit theatre are back at the festival with their latest work, but this hasn’t happened by chance. when i talk about nurturing boldness, i think laura was deliberate about embedding care in many forms into the festival’s values in her tenure. this work has been developed over the last 3 years, including a few stints in the festival’s lab stream, it’s been invested in by some of summerworks’ partners, it’s pivoted to digital and back, and i’m so thrilled to see gislina and dasha returning to share the live premiere of this piece with tkaronto audiences. in this exciting moment of transition for the festival, for me it’s a telling example of the fertile possibilities in the relationships that summerworks grows between artists, audiences, and institutions to foster expansive ways of making and witnessing performance.”

ted witzel (he/him) is a queer theatre-maker, curator, and arts leader who has worked in theatres across canada, as well as the UK, italy, and germany. ted recently finished up four years as artistic associate and laboratory director for the stratford festival, where he oversaw the festival’s research and development initiatives.

in 2019, ted was an artistic leadership resident at the national theatre school and the banff centre.  he has been artist-in-residence at buddies in bad times, harbourfront centre, and the institut für alles mögliche. ted was in the inaugural cohort of york university/canadian stage’s MFA in directing and holds a BA from the university of toronto.  ted is currently based in milan, italy.

recent directing credits include: every little nookie (stratford festival), just a trick (TO live online), susanna fournier’s what happens to you happens to me (canadian stage CSgrid), elizabeth rex (theatre@york), the scavenger’s daughter (buddies/paradigm) and LULU v.7 // aspects of a femme fatale (buddies/red light district).  thisisnttaedon.com

“When I think about SummerWorks, my mind always lands on the unique way this festival brings audiences and artists together to experience parts of our city in new ways. Whether it’s site-specific work, transformed spaces, or new contexts for familiar places, SummerWorks has long been a platform for challenging our ideas about art and the ways we experience gathering. And without fail every year, SummerWorks will bring people together to experience art over food and drink. Those are some of the most impactful festival moments I have in my memory because, like the meal that is consumed at those events, those moments are decidedly shared – intentionally communal.

The Public Works programming centres the role food plays in our daily lives as we emerge again into shared spaces this summer. Food leads us to gathering, to understanding cultural and geographical contexts, and to practicing rituals of care. Setting the intention for pleasure and awareness around our culinary habits are two extraordinary new works:

Aisha Lesley Bentham’s TERRAFORM encourages interaction and reflection as this outdoor installation runs throughout the Festival and culminates in an immersive presentation. And popping up at a Farmer’s Market near you is The Lettuce Head Experience, a participatory dance performance workshop by the always delightful Rock Bottom Movement.

These experiences trace our routines of preparing and consuming food, to curiosities about food in our personal and social lives. Bring your appetite for joy and connection as you take it all in.”

Alison Wong 黃巧文 (she/they) is a director, producer, and performance maker born in Hong Kong and now based in Treaty 13 territory, also known as Toronto. A graduate of York University and Canadian Stage’s MFA in directing, her work in opera and theatre – with a focus on transnational and plurilingual storytelling – has taken her from across Turtle Island to Italy, India, and the Netherlands. Recent directing credits include Blackberry (Red Betty Theatre), nowhen (Canadian Stage/SummerWorks), Cloudless (Periphery/11ours/Canadian Stage), Revolt. She said. Revolt again. (York University), Stormy Weather (IN Series, Washington DC), La fedeltà premiata (Royal Opera House, Mumbai), and The Bremen Town Musicians (Canadian Opera Company). She also was Co-Curator of Canadian Stage’s 2022 Festival of Ideas and Creation. As an independent Creative Producer, she thrives on building world premiere productions of new performance works. She recently produced the world premieres of dance theatre work Cacao | A Venezuelan Lament by Victoria Mata and The First Stone by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. She has also produced with Small Wooden Shoe, Theatre Direct and WeeFestival, SummerWorks Performance Festival, and Luminato Festival Toronto. In 2017, she concluded a five-season term as Artistic Producer with b current, a Toronto-based company of 30+ years dedicated to developing new Canadian performance works by BIPOC artists.