fbpx FOLDA — Festival of Live Digital Art 2020 | HowlRound Theatre Commons

Livestreamed on this page from on Tuesday 2 June and Wednesday 10 June through Saturday 13 June 2020.

Canada
Tuesday 2 June and Wednesday 10 June through Saturday 13 June 2020

FOLDA — Festival of Live Digital Art 2020

Bringing you to the forefront of Canada’s most innovative live performances

Tuesday 2 June and Wednesday 10 June through Saturday 13 June 2020

SpiderWebShow Performance presented FOLDA — The Festival of Live Digital Art livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 2 June and Wednesday 10 June through Saturday 13 June 2020.

About FOLDA

The Festival of Live Digital Art exists to support artists creating theatre in a digital age. Digital culture and its impact on other art forms moves quickly. From year to year FOLDA presents dynamic and changing answers to the question: Who are the professional artists creating live digital performance today and what are they up to? At FOLDA 2020 we are deeply curious about this question:

  1. How can we make and experience live performance in this new reality, separate, but together?
  2. Who are the artists coming up with creative solutions to our climate emergency?

Schedule

Tuesday 2 June

8:00 p.m. - 9 p.m. — Residency Presentation from Tanya Marquardt
This event has been canceled.

Wednesday 10 June

The Green Rooms: The Earth is Watching…Let’s Act - Livestreaming on this page
4:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 5:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 2:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 1:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Talk to Me
9:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Myth and Infrastructure
10:30 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 11:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 8:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 7:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

SWS Sign Off
11:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Thursday 11 June

The Green Rooms: The Earth is Watching…Let’s Act - Livestreaming on this page
3:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 4:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 1:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 12:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Field Notes from the future with Sea Sick's Alanna Mitchell
7:30 p.m EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 8:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 5:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 4:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Edinburgh Fringe favourite Sea Sick by award-winning Canadian journalist Alanna Mitchell is back – with a twist.

The virtual manifestation of the critically-acclaimed show builds on Mitchell’s final thoughts from the original production:

“Adapt and survive. It’s the essence of Darwin’s teachings and our species is really good at it. Write a new ending. Live to tell another tale.“

Who could have predicted that six years after Sea Sick‘s premiere at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, a global pandemic would immediately shift the world’s priorities? With economic downturn and #StayAtHome compounding the shift, what new opportunities and pathways can we create to move forward in the fight against climate change?

Join Alanna as she brings her infectious curiosity, subtle art of the interview and special guests to this riveting take on how we can collectively adapt to survive.

This show is available with ASL, for more on our access plan click here.

Q&A Field Notes
8:30 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 9:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 6:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 5:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

The Green Rooms: The Earth is Watching…Let’s Act - Livestreaming on this page
9:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

SWS Sign Off
11:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Friday 12 June

The Green Rooms: The Earth is Watching…Let’s Act - Livestreaming on this page
2:30 p.m EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 3:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 12:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 11:30 a.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

May I Take Your Arm
7:30 p.m EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 8:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 5:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 4:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

May I Take Your Arm? (MITYA) – created by Alex Bulmer, Anna Camilleri, and Tristan Whiston – emerged from audio-recorded walks between blind performer Bulmer and strangers who provided sighted guide in a downtown neighbourhood in Toronto; it evolved into a theatre piece that integrates live performance, immersive audio, live video, tactile installation, and audience interaction. And now, May I Take Your Arm is reimagined and remixed as an online performance during a global pandemic when we are not, pointedly, taking each other’s arms.

"May I Take Your Arm? was born from a need to understand where I am — a need to turn space into place, into home.”

In April 2018, I moved into a Toronto apartment in the east end. I knew little about the area, the neighbours, the local history. Although I had spent nearly 16 years in the city between 1988 and 2004, when I left Toronto, the city for me had started at Dufferin St. and ended at Church St.

Throughout that space and that time, I transitioned from living sighted to living blind.

On my return to Toronto, I struggled to reconnect to this place I once called home. It felt more like an undefined space of noise to push through, rather than an actual place, a landscape to encounter, with people to relate to and understand.

I walked with people from the local community, mostly people I’d never met before. We shared stories, memories, and descriptions of what we encountered together and how we engaged with place and home. The way we ‘saw’ our world was forever changed.
— Alex Bulmer

Producer: Red Dress Productions
Co-Creators: Alex Bulmer, Anna Camilleri, and Tristan R Whiston
Performer: Alex Bulmer
Sound Editor and Dramaturge: Tristan R Whiston
Environment Designer and Maker: Anna Camilleri
Live Video Animation: Katie Yealland
Storytellers: Henry Campos, Trisha Lamie, Silvia Marques, Benton McKnight, Vikesh Mehta, Zahra Naqvi, Dwayne Shaw, and Ronnie Thompson

Creative Access Support / Audio Description: Becky Gold

Instagram: @rdpmakesarts
VIMEO: user5040840reddressproductions
FLICKR: reddressproductions
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HesQ5AsV8lM&t=147s

This show is available with audio description and is low vision friendly. For more on our access plan click here.

HAVEN
9:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Two strangers, one shared meal and 6 unanswered questions waiting in sealed envelopes: HAVEN is a two-part theatrical experiment exploring how kindness and ritual can come together online.

In our noisy media-driven world we are inundated by comments and messages, often anonymous, that reveal judgmental and cruel opinions. Liked and shared posts signal what we accept and reject; creating algorithms that keep us in the bubbles of our own biases. Inspired by video sharing and chatting services HAVEN creates a digital space that explores generosity, vulnerability and connection.

Phase One:
Two strangers sit down and share a meal over Zoom. Over the course of the meal, they are prompted to ask their dining companion a series of questions. Without preparation or artifice, the participants are asked to bring themselves and their lived experiences to the table. The questions and spontaneous answers are punctuated by moments of pause, and reflection.

HAVEN: Phase One invites the audience to witness two strangers coming together to discover shared values, care and connection through this digital haven.

Phase Two:
Phase Two transforms the previous night’s dinner interaction into a script. Without having witnessed it the night before, two professional actors (themselves strangers) are asked to perform the conversation and ritual as honestly as they can while their lines are fed to them live through an earpiece. Each performer, without the context of body language or tone, must make spontaneous decisions about how they will embody the words of another.

HAVEN: Phase two invites the audience to a theatrical experiment that asks: Can connection, community and kindness be found in the anonymous words of strangers?

HAVEN has several prompts for its audience to reflect upon, we suggest bringing a candle and ignition source to enhance your experience.

This World Made Itself
10:30 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 11:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 8:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 7:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

This World Made Itself is a multimedia live performance work combining projected animation and the artist’s own shadow silhouette, as she interacts with the fantastical world of video, merging film and theater to create a unique kind of spectacle. This World Made Itself is a visually and musically rich journey through the history of the earth, from the universe’s epic beginnings to the complex world of humanity. The piece is at once semi-scientific (like flipping through a children’s encyclopedia), and emotional, surreal, and dreamlike.

Created and performed by Miwa Matreyek

Music by Steve Ellison (Flying Lotus), Careful (aka Eric Lindley) and Mileece

SWS Sign Off
11:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Saturday 12 June

HAVEN
7:30 p.m EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 8:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 5:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 4:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Two strangers, one shared meal and 6 unanswered questions waiting in sealed envelopes: HAVEN is a two-part theatrical experiment exploring how kindness and ritual can come together online.

In our noisy media-driven world we are inundated by comments and messages, often anonymous, that reveal judgmental and cruel opinions. Liked and shared posts signal what we accept and reject; creating algorithms that keep us in the bubbles of our own biases. Inspired by video sharing and chatting services HAVEN creates a digital space that explores generosity, vulnerability and connection.

Phase One:
Two strangers sit down and share a meal over Zoom. Over the course of the meal, they are prompted to ask their dining companion a series of questions. Without preparation or artifice, the participants are asked to bring themselves and their lived experiences to the table. The questions and spontaneous answers are punctuated by moments of pause, and reflection.

HAVEN: Phase One invites the audience to witness two strangers coming together to discover shared values, care and connection through this digital haven.

Phase Two:
Phase Two transforms the previous night’s dinner interaction into a script. Without having witnessed it the night before, two professional actors (themselves strangers) are asked to perform the conversation and ritual as honestly as they can while their lines are fed to them live through an earpiece. Each performer, without the context of body language or tone, must make spontaneous decisions about how they will embody the words of another.

HAVEN: Phase two invites the audience to a theatrical experiment that asks: Can connection, community and kindness be found in the anonymous words of strangers?

HAVEN has several prompts for its audience to reflect upon, we suggest bringing a candle and ignition source to enhance your experience.

iskwē
9:30 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

iskwē | ᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ is, among many other things, an artist – a creator and communicator of music and of movement, of pictures, poetry and prose. And through it all, she’s a teller of stories that have impacted our past and will inform our future. acākosīk | ᐊᒐᑯᓯᐠ is the culmination of her creation and collaboration to this point. It’s a collection of seven sonic explorations that not only blur lines between sources and styles, but also between the actual and the ideal, the real and imagined.

Building on the foundation of potent, cross-cultural electro-pop established on her self-titled 2013 debut and the Juno-nominated, Polaris Music Prize Long-Listed 2017 follow-up The Fight Within, acākosīk incorporates more intense and urgent tinges of alternative, post-rock, and even industrial. The cohesive-yet-combustible result tips a cap to modern innovators like Florence + The Machine and FKA twigs while simultaneously borrowing sounds accumulated over centuries by iskwē’s cree and Métis ancestors.

This show is available with captioning and is low vision friendly. For more on our access plan click here.

Infinitely Yours
10:30 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 11:30 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 8:30 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 7:30 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

Infinitely Yours by Miwa Matreyek is an emotional, dream-like meditation on climate catastrophe and the Anthropocene — the proposed current era where human influence has affected almost all realms of earth’s natural systems. Miwa’s shadow traverses macro and micro scales, as her silhouette shape-shifts to experience the world from various perspectives, the creator, destroyer, and the destroyed. An earth overflowing with trash. A person drowning in a plastic-filled ocean. A school of fish caught in a net. The work is an emotionally impactful, embodied illustration of the news headlines we see every day, and the complex harm humanity causes to the world — and what it might mean for all of us; humanity, as well as other life, and the earth itself — to be living in this changing world.

Created and performed by Miwa Matreyek

All music for Infinitely Yours composed, recorded and performed by Morgan Sorne http://www.sorne.com/

 

SWS Sign Off
11:00 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC -4) / 10:00 p.m. ADT (Halifax, UTC -3) / 7:00 p.m. MDT (Denver, UTC -6) / 6:00 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC -7).

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.

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