Expanding the possibilities
of performance
Performance Festival: August 7-17, 2025
Announcing the inaugural artists and companies in the 2025/26 Associate Artists program!
A new programming initiative at SummerWorks, the Associate Artists program provides an opportunity for three (3) artists or companies to come into a more intimate, supportive, and long-term engagement with the organization. At its core, the program is designed to offer tangible supports for selected artists or companies, over the course of two years.
SummerWorks will present each Associate Artist within two summer Festivals, and support the development of their creative projects. The program is iterative by design, with responsive opportunities for research, collaboration, and public engagement in each Festival context, and throughout the year.
We are thrilled to announce the three (3) artists/companies for 2025/26 – The Switch Collective, Johnnie McNamara Walker, and Chimerik 似不像. Uncover more about the 2025/26 Associate Artists, and stay tuned to our platforms for updates on their artistic happenings.
THE SWITCH COLLECTIVE
The Switch Collective is an interdisciplinary performance troupe in Tk’aronto (canada) that has been co-producing new research-creation methodologies and roving political performance works for the public sphere since 2018. Switch centers the unique knowledge systems, activism and artistic expressions of Two Spirit, Queer & Trans folks (2SQT), Black, Indigenous & Peoples of Color (BIPOC), and the lived wisdoms of intersectionality marginalized folks who varyingly experience the world as fat, mad, disabled, working class and/or criminalized. Switch devises work through a decolonial and transformative justice framework of inqueery that leverages rigorous archival research, deep site based learning, interdisciplinary collaboration and “switchy improv” to create new works in perpetual movement.
Core Collective Members: Naty Tremblay, Sedina Fiati, Alexandra Sproule, Faith-Ann Mendez, and Mojo Noble
“We are excited to continue our multi-year collaboration with SummerWorks, with Switching Regent(s). The 2025 iteration builds upon our 2023 intensive for 2SLGTBQIA+ artists and our 2024 Regent Park Pride Storylab. In a time of social and political backlash towards our communities, we will bring together 2SLGTBQIA+ artists, Regent Park residents and community members to explore experimental performance, using storytelling, community conversation, and art creation, skill-building working toward a full roving performance piece in 2026.“
LEARN MOREJOHNNIE MCNAMARA WALKER
Johnnie McNamara Walker is a Queer writer and performer from Toronto who has been producing his own work for the stage for twenty years. His first solo show, Redheaded Stepchild, premiered at SummerWorks in 2010 and went on to tour Canada coast-to-coast. It is available in print from Playwrights Canada Press. His recent solo show, The Heterosexuals, has toured to Dublin, Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Rochester, Atlanta, where it won the Audience Favourite Award at Lavender Fest, and recently completed an Off-Broadway run at The SoHo Playhouse in NYC. He also continues to tour his newest solo work Iggy Beamish Destroys Traditional Marriage. Johnnie’s play Shove It Down My Throat premiered at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of its 40th Anniversary Season in 2019.
Johnnie is a founding member of the burlesque troupe BoylesqueTO and has written and hosted dozens of their shows, which have been performed across North America and been honoured at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. He is also a DJ and nightlife producer and spent eight years running the popular queer event series HEY GIRL HEY.
“I’m thrilled to be back at SummerWorks working on a project that is so dear to my heart. GAYLORD is a tribute to the life and legacy of Will Munro, one of the key figures in Toronto’s Queer nightlife history who died way too young. Will was a DJ, an activist, a visual artist, a restauranteur—but mostly importantly, he was a community builder. It was impossible to be a Queer person living in Toronto in the 2000s and not feel the gravitational pull of Will Munro. His monthly party, Vazaleen turned macho rock venues into Queer weirdo clubhouses. His y-front underwear-based art projects scandalized the prudes and brought tighty-whiteys back into vogue. And his beloved bar The Beaver continued to be the de facto HQ of Toronto’s alt queer scene until the Pandemic finally shuttered its doors. Over the next two years, I’ll be writing, researching, and workshopping this project, including a sneak peek presentation at this year’s festival and a premiere in 2026. GAYLORD is an attempt to both honour that just-out-of-reach moment from our city’s past and, hopefully, bring some of its magic back to life—Toronto has never needed it more! “
LEARN MORECHIMERIK 似不像
Led by Sammy Chien and Caroline MacCaull, Chimerik 似不像 is a multi-award-winning interdisciplinary nonprofit arts organization consisting of artists from underrepresented groups (people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, Immigrants, Women in technology, Linguistic/Language minorities, neurodiversities, Youth and next generation) from various age groups, backgrounds, levels of experience, and disciplines including: contemporary dance, performance art, Interactive technology/installations, film/video, new media, XR, projection & lighting design, experimental music, sound art, visual arts. Through arts, technology, and ritual practices, each individual is capable of expanding our human potentials (such as neuroplasticity) to collectively have an energetic ripple effect to the sociopolitical, artistic and spiritual impact to humanity at large.
“We’re honoured and excited to be joining SummerWorks as Associate Artists for 2025/2026. SummerWorks has long been a space we admire for its bold, curious, and generous approach to performance, and being invited into a deeper relationship with the festival is something we’re very grateful for.
“Over the next two years, we’re excited to be in an extended, evolving dialogue that mirrors the fluidity and expansiveness of Chimerik 似不像’s practice. Some of the planned relational processes and projects we will be undertaking during this time are: the continued development of emerging Chimerik 似不像 artist Brigita Gedgaudas’ new work Be Vardų, Be Kojų, supporting a small cohort of interns exploring creative archival practices through new media, offering community new media workshops and preparing for the next edition of interplay_the recent interdisciplinary live online performance festival Chimerik 似不像 was gifted to continue, among other exciting undertakings.“
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