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August 7-17, 2025
SummerWorks Performance Festival (August 7-17, 2025)
BACK TO THE FUTURE | FORWARD TO THE PAST
Entering our 35th year, we’re back with a landmark season of bold performance, intimate creative experiences, and daring artistic interventions exploring time — personal and collective, real and imagined. From August 7–17, 2025, join us as we gather in theatres, in public parks, in galleries, at transit hubs, and in the spaces between.
This year’s Festival theme, Back to the Future | Forward to the Past invites reflection, imagination, and disruption with bold creative expressions that dive deep into temporality, exploring and questioning the past, present, and future, with a gentle curiosity and a critical ferocity. Inspired by the words of Dr. Elder Duke Redbird, and curated by Artistic Director Michael Caldwell, the 2025 edition features works that dive into our memories, our legacies, our bodies, and our relationship to time.
With 40+ projects and over 200 artists, SummerWorks 2025 is a space to gather in curiosity, conversation, and complexity — to mark the past, anchor in the present, and move collectively into imagined futures.
Uncover your next magical experience at the 2025 SummerWorks Performance Festival! Scroll down to learn more about this year’s incredible lineup.
“For our 35th anniversary, we’re not just looking back—we’re pausing in the present to listen carefully, and to imagine what’s ahead. This milestone Festival is filled with contemporary performance works that examine memory, identity, ritual, and resistance through a temporal lens. The artists are reflecting on their histories and lived experiences while boldly pushing towards an imagined future. The result is strikingly intimate and deeply connected.”
— Michael Caldwell, Artistic Director, SummerWorks
The SummerWorks 6-Ticket Pass includes six (6) single general admission tickets to any paid, ticketed Festival event for $80.
The SummerWorks 3-Ticket Pass includes three (3) single general admission tickets to any paid, ticketed Festival event for $40.
SummerWorks offers Pay-What-You-Decide pricing for paid performances, with Single Tickets available at $15, $30, or $45.
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Festival Programming 2025
Accessibility
photo by Henry Chan
SummerWorks is committed to continually increasing accessibility for our artists and audiences. This includes extending accessibility practices throughout the entirety of the artistic and administrative processes.
We strive to go beyond the bare minimum standard of accessibility practices in the performing arts and to support artists, programmers, and partner organizations in considering how access can be incorporated throughout all aspects of a production and throughout all stages, from development to presentation. It is our expectation that the artists we work with will also strive to put accessibility practices at the forefront of the creative process and implementation of their work.
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"Health & Safety Notes" Site 7 (Artery) by Mark Reinhart; Photo by Andrew Williamson
SummerWorks is committed to equity and diversity, both through our program of activities and as an employer. Our practices and procedures aim to reflect the varied needs, expectations, and cultures of all members of our community. We make every effort to ensure that no member of the community receives less favourable treatment in our recruitment process or when accessing our services, on the grounds of gender identity, disability, race, religion or belief, age, or sexual orientation.
Health & Safety
photo by Jae Yang
The health and safety of our patrons, artists, volunteers, and staff is a high priority, linked to SummerWorks’ core value of Care
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