Events

An X-rated narrative that is part storytelling, part photo-essay, part rope bondage demonstration, How to Self-Suspend is an interactive performance about how trauma shapes the choices we make, and how the choices we make reflect (and can perpetuate) trauma.

The narrative of this piece tracks Mx. Sly’s existence in three cities: their violent childhood in Montréal, their late twenties in the Toronto rope bondage community, and their early thirties living on the edge of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. How to Self-Suspend is unsparing in its details, and uses Sly’s history to ask uncomfortable questions of its audiences through, at times, ethically-questionable means.

While consent violations dominate our news headlines, and, conversely, art audiences expect to receive content and trigger warnings, How to Self-Suspend examines how closely performance is allowed to reflect reality and asks the audience how much reality they’re willing to be witness to before it feels like a consent breach.

Savagely Funny —NOW Magazine

Like a Mike Holmes episode penned by Franz Kafka … Hines at her most horrifyingly hilarious —The Globe and Mail

From the director of Mump & Smoot and creator of The Pochsy Plays. A perfect little coach house turns into a real-life nightmare in Karen Hines’ comic, Kafkaesque tale about the darker side of home ownership. Inspired by true events, Crawlspace moves past “cautionary” as it snakes through the brutal battleground of the contemporary real estate, decorative twig orbs and the transcendence of the human soul.

Crawlspace premiered in the storefront living room of the tiny arts hub Videofag and has since toured from Toronto to Vancouver, playing micro theatres and massive dining rooms. Crawlspace is a blistering act of consumer advocacy that may make you glad to be a renter. Crawlspace is now in development as a feature film.

VOLUME II

Choreographed and interpreted by
Geneviève Boulet, Erin O’Loughlin, and Laura Toma

Woven together in the image of a braid, the three members of LA TRESSE Collective focus their research on an unconventional femininity. In this second volume, LA TRESSE explores a feminine force through an intense and total physical presence. The women are lead to discover a sacred connection anchored in desire, ritual and devotion.

A GIRL

Choreography by Roy Assaf
Interpretation by Geneviève Boulet

Roy Assaf and Geneviève Boulet met in the summer of 2014 at the Dance Biennial in Venice, Italy. After their encounter they felt a strong urge to collaborate once more. They did not want to let financial constraints or distance infringe on the very simple desire to collaborate and create with one another. This fuelled their desire to make possible, beyond these boundaries, the time and place to create a solo. A year later they met in Montreal to create A GIRL. The solo is the daughter of Girls, a 50 minute quintet. From a dance of five women on white linoleum comes a dance of one woman on a single meter, a runway on which she approaches and retreats repeatedly, revealing herself.

From the minds behind The Highest Step in the World, Tomorrow’s Child and The Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst comes a new show of epic proportions. GIANT is the amazing story of professional wrestler André the Giant, one of the most recognizable and beloved public figures ever, told from the perspective of the one person he left behind.

Packed with captivating imagery, animated objects, and the raw spectacle of a wrestling match, GIANT unfolds as a boisterous alternative to the traditional bio-pic. A cast of five women tells the story with a raucous high theatricality that bodyslams professional wrestling’s hypermasculine culture. Ghost River’s trademark collaborative approach to theatre means that design, direction, script and performance all work together to stage an unstageable protagonist (7’4” and 520 pounds!), using the language of theatrical scale to express the extraordinary life of a person of extraordinary size.

Tickets available for purchase at www.puppetfestival.ca/project/giant/