For the launch of World Stage 2015 we’re back with an unprecedented party collaboration between two of Toronto’s most august families. Bigger venue. Bigger beats. Bigger ball. Reflective, refractive or totally transparent — just dress as your most authentic self. Join the World Stage team and 2015 artists as we celebrate the World Stage season at what could become one of Toronto’s most iconoclastic institutions.

2 - The #Artlive Ball, World Stage with House of Nuance and House of Monroe | Jan 24

In near silence, a trio of red-robed evangelizing cardinals perform their abbreviated version of the Bible, ably assisted by their young, Muslim, female stage-manager. 

3 - The Cardinals, Stan's Cafe | Feb 12-15

All Our Happy Days Are Stupid tells the story of two families on permanent vacation, searching for contentment and authenticity outside the confines of their flat-fronted black and-white existence. Sheila Heti’s eclectic play was called “unstageable” by the Toronto theatre company that commissioned it nearly a decade ago. It took the dogged curiosity of Jordan Tannahill and his Suburban Beast co-conspirator Erin Brubacher to put together a company of artists bold enough to reveal all its playful seriousness. Singing music penned by Dan Bejar (Destroyer, The New Pornographers), the exceptional cast of Toronto bright lights push Heti’s hyper-realism through realms of the absurd and back again to the unmistakably familiar. They arrive at what feels remarkably like wisdom.

4 - All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, Sheila Heti / Suburban Beast | Feb 11-14

Illusionist and performer Geoff Sobelle’s The Object Lesson unpacks the material components of memory. From the depths of a glittering sky-high junkpile installation, Sobelle produces an impossible profusion of artifacts. The objects he presents recount a story of life and love. They seem to contain the past itself. Combining charmingly simple delivery and meticulous stagecraft, The Object Lesson is a meditation on the things we keep and the things we throw away. It is a magic act of storytelling by one of the US’s most unusually gifted performers.

5 - The Object Lesson, Geoff Sobelle | Feb 18-22

Choreographer William Yong proposes a future in which human labour produces energy and the pleasure of movement works to integrate technology into the social sphere. Thanks to a multi-year creative partnership with ground-breaking researchers at York University and interactive designers Aesthetec Studio, Zata Omm is undertaking a formal experiment of the most absolute practicality: What does a show that is powered by sustainability look like?

6 - vox:lumen, Zata Omm Dance Projects, | Mar 4-7

Disabled Theater is a performance of the encounter between maverick French choreographer Jérôme Bel and the artists of Zürich’s Theater HORA, a company that promotes and presents the work of people with intellectual disabilities. This playful but confrontational work is trademark Bel – a disconcertingly honest re-staging of the choreographer’s first meeting with the performers, where his questions and their presence reveal the dynamics of exclusion and the limits of political correctness. Disabled Theater is a profound reimagination of the stage and its possibilities – one that ultimately expands the humanity that we hold in common.

7 - Disabled Theater, Jérôme Bel & Theater HORA | Mar 25-28

Me So You So Me is a story in dance where manga-influenced slapstick transcends the limitations of the girl-boy duet. Freely mixing martial arts, mime, kathak and ballet, David Raymond and Tiffany Tregarthen have developed a virtuosic movement language that’s both totally recognizable and unlike anything else you’ve seen. In Me So You So Me, the duo presents a pair of shifting characters, inner animals and super heroes. Floating over a raw, toybox score composed by Japanese experimental percussionist Asa Chang, Me So You So Me‘s infectious and exuberant theatricality is a deep and surprising pleasure.

8 - Me So You So Me, Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, | April 15-18

What do we reveal by dressing up? Returning to World Stage following their 2012 triple Dora-nominated Paris1994/Gallery, The Dietrich Group confirms its position as an internationally active platform for dance-powered works that blur the edges of the performance disciplines.

9 - This Is A Costume Drama, The Dietrich Group | Apr 29- May 2

In Broome, Western Australia, where Asian, Australian-Indigenous and Western-settler cultures collide, a remarkable new intercultural expression is emerging – and Marrugeku is at the forefront of this emergence. The dance theatre company documents and shares the memories and experiences of indigenous culture through visually spectacular performances that imagine remote communities and international art festivals to be their simultaneous context.

10 - Gudirr Gudirr, Marrugeku | May 6-9

With works like THE SHIPMENT and UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW, New York City’s Young Jean Lee has emerged as one of the most important voices of contemporary US theatre. Directing an acclaimed cast of avant-garde performers drawn from the Wooster Group and Elevator Repair Service, she’s playing it straight, literally. A linear narrative, a realistic set and characters that, until just a minute ago, were the default voice of Western society – a father and his three sons, celebrating Christmas together at home. STRAIGHT WHITE MEN is an experiment in non-experiment. Hilarious and provocative, it’s a genre-shifting re-deployment of straight theatrical convention.

11 - STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, Young Jean Lee Theater Company | Jun 3-6

World Stage is Harbourfront Centre's signature series of contemporary Canadian and international performance. 

http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage

WORLD STAGE

Popular tracks