12 Toronto Theatre Projects Awarded INCUBATE Grants

Toronto Arts Council’s INCUBATE program, now in its second year, has awarded grants totaling $75,000 to 12 theatre projects being developed by Toronto arts organizations for international festivals and presenters.

INCUBATE is funded through a contribution of $25,000 from the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council and $50,000 from Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts and Creativity through Toronto Arts Foundation.

Projects chosen for seed funding range from the most ambitious, cross border productions undertaken by a particular theatre company or collective, to dramatic representations of highly local events. “As with last year’s applications, we saw a truly impressive range of proposals this year”, said Claire Hopkinson, Executive Director of Toronto Arts Council “The number of ambitious collaborations and innovative projects seeded for the international stage is indicative of the tremendous range of creative innovation happening here in Toronto”.

Incubate jury member Chris Lorway commented “I was thrilled to review another strong pool of applications”. Lorway, also Artistic Director of Luminato, added “I’m also proud to report that two of last year’s successful projects – Erika Batdorf’s One Pure Longing and a workshop of Maryem Tollar’s Journey From Alif to Zed - will be featured as part of this year’s Luminato Festival.”

INCUBATE is a juried program, designed to provide seed money to facilitate the early planning stages of project proposals being developed for presentation to international festivals and presenters. The maximum grant available is 85% of eligible expenses up to $10,000. This year’s program was theatre projects. In 2009 the focus was on music, and the program will continue to target different artistic disciplines in future years.

INCUBATE funded projects 2010:

Blackandblue Dance Projects will create and document a new dance/theatre work by Sasha Ivanochko for a large group of multigenerational dancers in response to the lyrics and score of Olivier Messiaen’s Trios Petites Liturgies de la Presence Divine.

Bluemouth Inc. Presents will co-create an interdisciplinary, site-specific work with Hammergin, an Irish company on Cape Clear Island, Ireland’s most southerly island. The work will examine local history, culture and traditions.

Crow’s Theatre plans to further develop Liza Balkan’s Out the Window and to document the workshop process. The work is inspired by the true-life death of a man during an encounter with police in Toronto.

Mammalian Diving Reflex will research, develop and document 600,000 Years. The work, developed in collaboration with Australian artist Lenine Bourket, examines young people’s relationship to their local community through ‘being’ in public spaces.

Modest Productions will develop and document two new works by Rehan Ansari and Bilal Hasan Minto. The two thematically linked one-act plays, presented under the title Split Screen, explore local struggles and uncertainty within a global context and the challenges of migration to the west.

Native Earth Performing Arts will develop Tombs of the Vanishing Indian by Marie Clements. The work explores the human ramifications of government policies regarding the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including the collection, storage, and display of Aboriginal artifacts in museums.

Necessary Angel Theatre Company and Quebec director Bridgitte Haentjens will collaborate with a diverse group of fifty women on the development and documentation of a large-scale work that expresses the diversity of Toronto. The work combines song, movement and music with a poetic text to explore the separation of daughter and mother.

(OMK) The Cathy Gordon Collective will promote and develop Lost & Found, an on-going large-scale project to create community-specific work with artists and residents. Each project creates a catalogue that is followed through to the next part. This stage of development will publish a catalogue and website document for two parts: Loss in Lansdowne and Memoirs Mile End: Marchez Un Mile. The catalogue and website will be used for promotion but are also source materials for the development workshop.

Praxis Theatre will develop Section 98, an open-sourced, interactive work that uses performances and technology to explore and debate individual and civil rights.

Small Wooden Shoe will develop a new translation, including a film component, of Bertold Brecht’s Life of Galileo, translated by Jacob Zimmer and Birgit Schreyer. The work exposes and questions Galileo’s choices so that we might see the processes that lay behind them exploring modernist ideas of scientific research.

Theatre Centre will develop work by resident companies, Public Recordings and Out the Window Collective, to prepare them for the international market. They will promote the Centre’s residency program which connects companies with potential bookers.

Topological Theatre will develop, document and create promotion materials for Lost Voices by Ed Roy. The work examines the growing phenomenon of unaccompanied minors crossing borders at international airports.

Jury members:

Naomi Campbell is an award-winning producer of over seventy new Canadian works. She is the producer for Nightswimming and DVxT Theatre and previously worked with Mammalian Diving Reflex. Naomi is the Industry Series Producer and Touring Liaison for Magnetic North Theatre Festival and has been involved in creating new Canadian theatre since the early 80's as a director, designer, dramaturg, performer, stage manager and producer.

Shannon Cochrane is a Toronto based artist and performer. Her work has been presented in galleries, theatre festivals and performance art events for all kinds of audiences from kids to curators, across Canada and internationally. Shannon is co-founder and curator of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art and is currently the Artistic and Administrative Director of FADO Performance Art Centre.

Allen Kaeja is a Gemini nominated director and award winning choreographer who has created over 90 stage works and choreographed for 26 films. He is Co-Artistic Director of Kaeja d’Dance with Karen Kaeja and co-founder of the CanAsian International Dance Festival. He has received commissions from companies in Sweden, Portugal, UK, India, Mexico, across Canada and the USA and most recently from Soulpepper Theatre Company and from Panta Rei, Norway.

Chris Lorway is the Artistic Director of Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts + Creativity. He was previously a Senior Consultant for AEA Consulting in New York where he worked on a number of projects including long term strategy development for the Edinburgh Festivals, audience research for Carnegie Hall, New York City Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Centre and Signature Theatre Company.

For more information contact Claire Hopkinson, TAC Executive Director at 416-392-6802 ext 203 or claire@torontoartscouncil.org.