SUMMERWORKS PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL 2025: 

BACK TO THE FUTURE | FORWARD TO THE PAST MARKING 35 YEARS OF RADICAL ARTISTRY, EXPERIMENTATION, AND CREATIVE COLLABORATION 

AUGUST 7–17, 2025 | ACROSS TORONTO 

TORONTO (June 24, 2025) – Entering its 35th year, SummerWorks Performance Festival returns 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, artists and audiences will gather across Toronto for 11 days of theatre, dance, music, and live art 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. 

“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,” says Michael Caldwell, Artistic Director. “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.” 

With 35+ 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. 

Tickets go on sale July 15th. Uncover your next magical experience at the 2025 Festival!