Koffler Centre of the Arts Sets Winter/Spring 2015 Lineup: Live Performances & More!

On the heels of a robust and successful fall season featuring several sold-out events, the Koffler Centre of the Arts is delighted to announce its visual arts, literary, and live performance programming for Winter/Spring 2015. The Koffler's contemporary cultural offerings continue to engage audiences and create dialogue within the context of its new home at Artscape Youngplace and beyond.

Among the highlights of Winter/Spring 2015 is a remarkable evening with Art Spiegelman, the legendary, innovative, and sometimes controversial Pulitzer Prize-winning artist/illustrator, comic book legend and author of Maus. On stage, the Koffler will co-present two North American premieres: Marathon, a theatre/dance performance presented in collaboration with SummerWorks Performance's Progress Festival, and Ballad of the Burning Star, a drag cabaret show from London-based Theatre Ad Infinitum, co-presented with Acting Up Stage Company. The Koffler Gallery will present two new exhibitions - ULTRA-PARALLEL by Toronto-based artist Kristiina Lahde, and Erratics featuring installations by poet/novelist Martha Baillie, and artist/curator Malka Greene together with screenwriter Alan Resnick - in Winter/Spring 2015.

Cathy Jonasson, Executive Director of the Koffler, said, "This is an incredibly exciting time for the Koffler Centre of the Arts. During our first year at our new home in this vibrant cultural hub, we've been thrilled to forge new and energizing relationships with a fresh set of artists, presenters, curators, and the extended community. We've enjoyed exploring innovative collaborations with Volcano Theatre, the Theatre Centre, International Festival of Authors, CONTACT Photography Festival, Small World Music, SKETCH, and others, and look forward to investigating all of the options that this new context offers to us and our audience."

In the Fall of 2013, the Koffler Centre of the Arts moved to its new home at Artscape Youngplace, located in the West Queen West neighbourhood - one of the country's most vibrant cultural communities. As part of its commitment to presenting high-quality contemporary cultural events that leverage this new context while maintaining ties within its core community, the Koffler is recalibrating and revamping several of its current programs. As a result, the annual Canadian Jewish Book Awards will be on hiatus for 2015 and will resume, invigorated and reinvented, in 2016.

Several new initiatives and collaborations, such as new play readings with Volcano and Tarragon Theatres, and Koffler Couture were introduced in the past year and have allowed the Koffler to tap into a hive of cutting-edge creativity. Two new positions - Director of Public Programs & Engagement, and Director of Literary Programs - were recently created to help foster closer ties within a local, national and international context.

KOFFLER WINTER/SPRING 2015 HIGHLIGHTS:

KOFFLER GALLERY EXHIBITION

Kristiina Lahde: ULTRA-PARALLEL

January 22 - March 29, 2015
Koffler Gallery | Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street | Curator: Mona Filip
WINTER OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, January 22, 2015 | 6 - 9 PM | FREE

Toronto artist Kristiina Lahde transforms ordinary objects and materials through a process of geometric re-organization in which measurement and pattern play a significant role. For her solo show at the Koffler Gallery, she expands her work to a larger scale, engaging the three-dimensional space and reimagining elementary forms and tools that mediate empirical explorations and our understanding of the physical world. Full details.

Presented by the Koffler Gallery and generously supported by the Hal Jackman Foundation.

LITERARY PROGRAM

Art Spiegelman: What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?

Monday, January 26, 2015 | 7 PM
Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, 506 Bloor St W, Toronto
General $39, Students/Seniors $29

Art Spiegelman's comics are best known for their shifting cartoon styles and sometimes controversial content. In his talk What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?, Spiegelman takes his audience on a chronological tour of the evolution of comics, while explaining the value of this medium and why it should not be ignored. In our post-literate culture the importance of the comic is on the rise, for "comics echo the way the brain works. People think in iconographic images, not in holograms, and people think in bursts of language, not in paragraphs." Full details.

Presented by the Koffler Centre of the Arts.

THEATRE/DANCE PERFORMANCE, NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Marathon

February 4 - 6, 2015 | 7:30 PM
The Theatre Centre | 1115 Queen Street West
Regular $30 | Students, Seniors, Arts Workers $20

Three figures run in a circle, struggling to continue as they spiral into the depths of Israeli consciousness. As their journey becomes harder and more painful, their stories break down, revealing the wounds of contemporary Israeli society. Combining dance, text, theatre, and grueling physicality, Marathon uses the autobiographical stories of the performers to reflect a state of constant emergency.

Marathon premiered at the 2012 Acco Fringe Festival, and the Toronto performances mark its North American English-language premiere. Full details.

Marathon is co-presented with the Koffler Centre for the Arts, and generously supported by Spotlight on Israel, the Embassy of Israel, and the Israeli Consulate (Toronto). Presented as part of Progress Festival, a new international festival of performance and ideas produced by the SummerWorks Performance Festival in partnership with The Theatre Centre.

KOFFLER GALLERY EXHIBITION

Erratics
Martha Baillie | Malka Greene & Alan Resnick
April 16 - June 14, 2015
Koffler Gallery | Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street | Curator: Mona Filip

SPRING OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, April 16, 2015 | 6 - 9 PM | Free

Exploring the tensions between memory and fiction, Erratics brings together two archives - one real, the other fictitious. Toronto artist/curator Malka Greene and screenwriter Alan Resnick's Discovered Stories mines a newly found archive comprising World War II reconnaissance photography and other documents belonging to Dr. Morris Resnick, Alan's father. Greene and Resnick catalogue the material and create a museum-like installation about the life of an Ontario Jewish family. Complementing their search for verity is Toronto author Martha Baillie's approach to bringing to life her most recent novel, The Search for Heinrich Schlogel through music, voice recordings and postcards. Narrated by an unnamed archivist, Baillie's hypnotic novel attempts to piece together the truth about Schlogel's life - his journey from his stifling small German town to exploring the Canadian North and finding himself lost in time. Full details.

Presented by the Koffler Gallery. A Featured Exhibition in the 2015 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

CABARET-DRAG PERFORMANCE, NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Ballad of the Burning Star
May 18 - 24, 2015
The Theatre Centre | 1115 Queen Street West

Armed with music, killer heels and a lethal troop of divas, an enraged Israeli executes a story of victimhood, persecution, aggression and love. With shrapnel-sharp voices and moves as smooth as an oiled tank chain, this cabaret troop invites you on a journey into the core of a conflicted Jewish state. This provocative production took the Edinburgh Festival 2013 by storm, winning three awards and critical acclaim across the board. Full details.

Co-presented by Acting Up Stage Company and the Koffler Centre for the Arts.