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The Theatre Centre is a performing arts organization and theatre venue in Toronto . It is nationally recognized as a live-arts incubator for the cultural sector in the city. It also provide meeting space for Toronto residents.
The Theatre Centre's mission is to nurture artists, invest in ideas and champion new work and new ways of working.
The Theatre Centre is located on what were traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nation peoples.
The B.A.A.N.N. Theatre Centre was formed in 1979 by a co-operative of five independent theatre companies – Buddies in Bad Times, Autumn Leaf Theatre, AKA Performance Interface, Necessary Angel, and Nightwood Theatre. [1] These groups wanted a space to create, rehearse and present new works. By the mid-1980s, the founding companies had the Theatre Centre.
In 1984, the R+D (Research and Development) program was established and became the leading proponent for theatrical exploration in the city. In 2004, R+D was replaced by a two-year Residency Program. Over the years, The Theatre Centre has supported many companies, productions, artists and ideas. Artists participating in this program have included Jennifer Tarver, Chris Leavins, Sarah Garton Stanley, bluemouth inc., Ame Henderson, ATSA, Cathy Gordon, Independent Aunties, Juliet Palmer, Michael Rubenfeld, One Reed Theatre, Jon McCurley & Ame Lam, Susanna Hood, and Ravi Jain.
In 2002, The Theatre Centre presented its first Free Fall, a biennial festival for works from Canada and other countries.
Franco Boni has been the artistic director of The Theatre Centre since 2003.
In March 2014, Theatre Centre moved into the Carnegie Library building at 1115 Queen Street West following a $6.2 million redevelopment of the property.
The Theatre Centre pursues a mandate of supporting artists who wish to develop works of an experimental or alternative nature, that challenge the definitions of theatrical performance by embracing music, dance, visual art and new media. The company provides space, mentorship, exposure and a sense of community through a series of carefully conceived programs.
The Theatre Centre Café/Bar provides refreshments and exhibits sculptural, video, and performance installations.
The Theatre Centre's Residency Program is a structured two-year program that provides groups/artists with the necessary space, funding and mentorship to craft ideas into finished products. Residency facilitates a highly collaborative artistic process that brings together a variety of participants, both artists and non-artists.
Residency has its roots in the previous R&D programme, Participants in the R&D programme have included Tomson Highway, Daniel Brooks, Daniel MacIvor, Alisa Palmer, Darren O’Donnell, Alejandro Ronciera and Kelly Thornton.
Launched in 2014 to honour the life of artist Tracy Wright, the Tracy Wright Global Archive is the project that challenges artists to explore a burning question and create a new work by engaging deeply with communities and locations across the globe.
In its first year, the Theatre Centre gave four Canadian theatre artists the opportunity to travel to four locations around the world to investigate their own burning question:
As part of the Archive project. Jani Lauzon traveled to Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California. Prophecy Fog, a new project emerging from Lauzon's investigation of this space, weaves together the performance skills of Lauzon, with the expertise of projection designer Alex Williams and the compositions of award-winning composer Marsha Coffey, to elicit a conscious remembering of ancient prophecies that speak to rock teachings, star beings and earth changes.
For his Archive project, Marcus Youssef arrived in Cairo on January 12, 2014, the evening of Egypt's third constitutional referendum since 2011. He left two weeks later, the day after the revolution's third anniversary. In between he was detained briefly by undercover police, witnessed his first car bomb, interviewed a dozen journalists, activists, academics and artists. He also spend time with his Egyptian family for the second time in his life. His question: what is a revolution? His current answer: a better question might be whose.
Whose Revolution? is part memoir of a family and exile, part snapshot of a country in the midst of massive change, and part investigation into what we can ever claim to actually know about another culture or place.
For her Archive project Denise Fujiwara investigated the notion of walking as a medium for transformation. She visited the path of the Shikoku Pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku in Japan. Fujiwara invited small groups to walk in a contemplative way through The Theatre Centre's neighbourhood. Fujiwara shared perspectives and koans that aimed to allow participants to experience time, space and themselves in ways that belie the seeming simplicity of the act of walking.
For her Archive project, Nadia Ross went to India and asked the question What Happened to the Seeker? The project is a story told in three mediums: exhibit, video and performance. Her aim was to find out what happened to that original impulse and asks: how could that collective desire for truth end in such disappointment? As she walks the path of the original Seekers, she does comes face to face with the “thing that was never lost and that can never be found”, and shares her discovery in a story told in triptych form.
Progress is an international festival of performance and ideas presented by the SummerWorks Performance Festival in partnership with The Theatre Centre. The festival is collectively produced by a series of Toronto-based curating companies, operating within a contemporary performance context.
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, Buddies in Bad Times is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical expression". It's the largest and longest-running queer theatre company in the world.
General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994. As pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated activities and continues to be a prominent influence on subsequent generations of artists.
Jani Lauzon is a Canadian director, and multidisciplinary performer of Métis, French, and Finnish ancestry from East Kootenay, British Columbia. Lauzon resides in Toronto, Ontario.
Double Edge Theatre is an cultural cooperative and ensemble collective founded in 1982 by Stacy Klein. Focusing on vigorous physical training and the principle of an artist's autonomy, the company has sought to create work in an ensemble setting intimately woven with the community.
Next Wave is a biennial festival based in Melbourne, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Next Wave encourages interdisciplinary practice and fosters the creation and presentation of works by emerging artists working across a broad range of art forms, including dance, theatre, visual arts, performance, new media, and literature.
Nightwood Theatre is Canada's oldest professional women's theatre and is based in Toronto. It was founded in 1979 by Cynthia Grant, Kim Renders, Mary Vingoe, and Maureen White and was originally a collective. Though it was not the founders' original intention, Nightwood Theatre has become known for producing feminist works. Some of Nightwood's most famous productions include This is For You, Anna (1983) and Good Night Desdemona (1988). Nightwood hosts several annual events including FemCab, the Hysteria Festival, and Groundswell Festival which features readings from participants of Nightwood's Write from the Hip playwright development program.
Ruth Howard is a Canadian artist who creates large-scale arts and theatre projects with urban communities and has been called "a key figure in the Canadian Community Play movement". She is currently the Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre, a company she founded in 2001.
Jumblies Theatre, located in Toronto, Canada is a non-profit organization aimed at expanding arts to everyone.
John Paterson is a Canadian director, devisor, dramaturg, translator, actor and theatre creator who works across Canada, the United Kingdom, and internationally. His favourite credits include directing the installation of The List (BoucheWHACKED!), the site-specific The Women of Troy and F. Garcia Lorca’s The Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa ; production dramaturgy on the English language premiere of H. Muller’s Macbeth: nach Shakespeare; and playing Adolf Hitler and Walt Disney in The Blue Light and Scheffler in The Ugly One.
Koffler Arts is a broad-based cultural institution established in 1977 by Murray and Marvelle Koffler and based at Artscape Youngplace in the West Queen West area of downtown Toronto, Ontario.
The Impakt Festival is a yearly manifestation on media art, founded in 1988 in the city of Utrecht, Netherlands.
Imago Theatre is a professional feminist theatre company based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The company was founded in 1987 by Andres Hausmann, Ray Tomalty, and Kelly Patterson, and is now led by the current Artistic and Executive Director, Krista Jackson. Imago Theatre is a catalyst for conversation, an advocate for gender inclusion and a space that centres feminist values and artistic practices. Imago's ethos is that by holding space for gender-inclusivity and giving power to women and gender-diverse people, art can create a more inclusive, safe, compassionate world.
The Africa Centre, in Cape Town, South Africa, is structured as a not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to provide a platform for Pan-African arts and cultural practice to function as a catalyst for social change. All the projects it conducts, facilitates or supports have some social intention. These projects are supported by a variety of Pan-African artists.
Hysteria: A Festival of Women was a recurring arts festival in Toronto. It was founded in 2003 by Moynan King of the Buddies in Bad Times theatre company in collaboration with Nightwood Theatre.
Monique Mojica is a playwright, director, & actor based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was born in New York City, but came to Canada as founding member of Native Earth Performing Arts.
Mary Vingoe is a Canadian playwright, actress, and theatre director. Vingoe was one of the co-founders of Canadian feminist theatre company Nightwood Theatre and later co-founded Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro and Eastern Front Theatre in Halifax. From 2002 to 2007, Vingoe was artistic director of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. Vingoe is an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the Portia White Prize. Her play Refuge was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2016 Governor General's Awards.
Kim Renders was a Canadian writer, director, actor and designer and a founding member of Nightwood Theatre, the oldest professional feminist theatre company in Canada.
bluemouth inc. is an experimental theater company known for creating immersive performance works. It holds split residence in New York City, Toronto, and Montreal and is an intersection of dance, performance art, visual media, electronic music, lyric poetry, and psychological realism. Collaborative and interdisciplinary in its approach, its hosts traditional theatrical and event-based performative productions.
Kate Lushington is a Canadian theatre artist and teacher. From 1988 to 1993, Lushington was the artistic director of Nightwood Theatre. Lushington has worked with The Clichettes and is the writer of The Apocalypse Plays: A Legacy Project.
Diane Roberts is an interdisciplinary theatre creator. Roberts was a founding member of Obsidian Theatre. Roberts was an artistic co-director of Nightwood Theatre, the artistic director of Urban Ink Productions, and a co-founder and artistic director of Boldskool Productions. She is the creator of the Arrivals Legacy Project.