/swiCH/
noun

1. A device for making or breaking the connection in an electrical current.
2. An act of adopting one policy or way of life, or choosing one type of item, in place of another; a change, especially a radical one.

verb

1. To change the position, direction or focus of.
2. beat or flick with or as if with a switch.

slang

1. A person who vacillates between dominant & submissive, or top & bottom positions within sexual roles, also known as ‘versatile.’

Switching Regent(s): Making Street Theatre Magic is centered around spontaneity, collaboration, creativity, street-based performance, and radical love, to affirm and uplift the true herstories of our neighborhoods and queer communities. To not only imagine decolonial and liberatory futures but create them in the here and now.

Switching Regent(s): Making Street Theatre Magic is a culmination of a four-day residency run by the Switch Collective in Regent Park. The residency consists of a small group of multi & interdisciplinary queer (2SQT) artists who have explored techniques for creating radical & roving queer street performance that literally moves the public landscapes of Regent Park.

The Switching Regent(s): Making Street Theatre Magic sharing is a moving street performance through Regent Park that will explore the architecture, current and past herstories of the neighborhood; not the least of which is the ongoing urban development by the city in partnership with private interests, along with racialized, (Im)migrant and queer realities in the area.

The performance is an offering to the people and places of Regent Park – those remembered and forgotten by time and gentrification. It is an evocation to the life-affirming resilience, pain, joy, grief, labor, madness, and ancestry of queer artists in Toronto and those rising across time.

Produced by: The Switch Collective
Core Members: Naty Tremblay, Sedina Fiati, Lexi Sproule
Switch Collaborator: Faith-Ann Mendes

Artist-Collaborators: Lana Kouchnir, Leon Tsai, Ana Maria Higuera, Azul Paixão, Rosalind Goodwin , TJ Banate, brawk hessel, Sydney Jinjoe, Micha Edwards

Production Manager/Stage Manager: Lexi Sproule
Apprentice Street Manager: Lesile Leonard
Technical Direction: Mojo Noble
Facilitators: Daniel Jelani Ellis and Jody Chan

 

Learn more about the Switch Collective: www.switch-collective.com

The Switching Regent(s) performance on August 6th will follow this route around the Regent Park neighbourhood.

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In anticipation of the Festival, you can move through the city streets on an audio journey, Switching Queen(s): Back Alley Galaxies, originally commissioned and presented by b current, interrogating the challenges – stemming from colonialism, capitalism, gentrification – that the area of Parkdale and its inhabitants face.

Experience Switching Queen(s): Back Alley Galaxies audio journey HERE!

Or follow these four steps:

1. Download the Echoes app on your smartphone via the Apple store/Google Play
2. Search for b current WOYW: Switching Queen(s) Back Alley Galaxies
3. Head to Masaryk-Cowan Park in Parkdale, Toronto
4. Pop in headphones and stream the walk!

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