Volume 23 Issue 2 - October 2017

Beat by Beat | Music Theatre
Collaboration
Is the Watchword
as 2017/18 Gets
Underway
JENNIFER PARR
The fall theatre season in Toronto is usually overshadowed by
TIFF, so most seasons launch after the end of that festival. One
company that did start during the film festival in mid-September
was Red Sky Performance, launching their 2017/18 slate of shows
with the magical Miigis transforming the military colonial setting of
Fort York into a site of myth and reconciliation. Red Sky is all over
the city this year, it seems (as well as touring internationally), and,
as such, is a perfect exemplar of two themes emerging from season
announcements: the increased presence of Indigenous artists and
companies on the Toronto scene on their own and in collaboration
with other companies; and collaboration itself, which can be seen
across the board in the arts scene.
On October 7, Red Sky partners with the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra to present, as part of Canada 150, the world premiere of
Adizokan, a new genre-bending creation that explores an image-rich
experience of Indigenous dance, video, music, electroacoustic and
orchestral music. Next they collaborate with Canadian Stage to present
the Toronto debut of Backbone (November 2 to 12), a cutting edge
Indigenous dance creation noted for its masculine ferocity, inspired
by the spine of the continents (originally co-commissioned with the
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity).
Canadian Stage
Collaboration is at the heart of the Canadian Stage season, a theme
chosen to celebrate their 35th year and featuring a plethora of genrebending
creations from around the country, most involving music,
and many choreographed movement, as integral ingredients. Their
first production (before Backbone), as previewed in our September
issue, is a collaboration with the Musical Stage Company and Yonge
Street Theatricals: Life After, a newly expanded and developed
version of the Toronto Fringe Festival musical hit by Britta Johnson,
directed by Robert McQueen. Opening on September 29 and running
until October 22, Life After is already generating a lot of buzz. Along
with theatrical productions at the Bluma Appel and Berkeley Street
Theatres there is also an intriguing wide-ranging music series which
includes (in March) a bringing together of multi-award-winning Inuit
throat singer Tanya Tagaq with trailblazing Greenlandic mask dancer
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory in a concert event combining tour-deforce
vocals, kinetic movement and powerful spoken word.
Buddies in Bad Times
Bathory also collaborates with Canadian poet, composer and
performance artist Evalyn Parry for Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools
(October 24 to November 5) at Buddies in Bad Times, in a co-production
with Theatre Passe Muraille as part of a new initiative between
those two companies to share resources and introduce audiences to
the work being done on other stages in Toronto. Both powerful storytellers,
Parry and Bathory, who met on an Arctic expedition from
Iqaluit to Greenland, will use music, movement and video as well as
spoken word to map new territory together in a work that gives voice
Backbone
and body to the histories, culture and climate we’ve inherited, and
asks how we reckon with “these sharp tools.”
Tarragon
Across the city, Tarragon Theatre has two musicals as part of its
mainstage season: in January Richard Rose directs a new version of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, reimagined through the powerful lens of rock
‘n’ roll with a score and music direction by Thomas Ryder Payne.
Earlier, in November, Tarragon presents the Macau Experimental
Theatre/Music Picnic/Point View Art Association Production of Mr.
Shi and His Lover, another show that began life at a festival, in this
case the 2016 SummerWorks festival where it was an award-winning
hit. Performed in English and Mandarin and with performers from
Toronto and Macau, Mr. Shi and His Lover, written by Wong Teng Chi
and Njo Kong Kie with music and music direction by Kie, tells the
real-life story of a French diplomat in China who falls in love with a
mysterious opera singer. With music inspired by Chinese opera and
vintage pop from both East and West, the show will be performed in
Mandarin with English surtitles.
(Kie, who is also the long-serving music director of Montreal’s La
La La Human Steps, also collaborates with Canadian Stage toward the
end of their season [April 26 to May 6], introducing the Macau-based
Folga Gaang Project in their Toronto debut with the hybrid musical
performance Picnic in the Cemetery.)
Soulpepper
Almost cheek by jowl with Canadian Stage downtown, Soulpepper
presents a more traditional season but again, music plays an
important part, with the blues-infused Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
in the spring. Soulpepper’s expanded concert series also begins
in October with Riverboat Coffee House: The Yorkville Scene
(October 6 to 14), bringing to life the 1964 launching pad of Canadian
singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Murray
McLauchlan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. Mike Ross will musicdirect
a lineup of multi-disciplinary artists as they celebrate the stories
and songs that made Yorkville the place to be in the free-loving 60s.
The series also includes A Very Soulpepper Christmas (December 15),
Prohibition, the Concert (February 9, 10, 14) and A Moveable Feast;
Paris in the 20s (March 30 to April 2). Created by Albert Schultz, with
overall music direction by Mike Ross, the scripted concert series has
a lively energy marked by its collaborative nature and its bringing
together of different Toronto artists and musicians for each event.
Soundstreams
Downtown and uptown, venue depending on the type of event,
is Toronto’s eclectic and experimental yet classical Soundstreams,
where music combines with dance and theatre in ever-evolving
combinations.
Soundstreams’ 35th season opens very strongly with two productions
in October. On October 16 at Koerner Hall, Northern Encounters
celebrates Canada 150 and Finland at 100 with Europe’s northernmost
professional orchestra, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra,
performing music by Jean Sibelius, Harry Somers and Claude Vivier
and, most interestingly for me, includes a new dance piece by powerhouse
Canadian choreographer Michael Greyeyes to Vivier’s Zipangu
exploring the idea of “the city of gold.”
34 | October 2017 thewholenote.com