Theatre Centre to Present Cynthia Hopkins' THIS CLEMENT WORLD, 1/29-2/2

The Theatre Centre, in partnership with Cape Farewell Foundation, presents This Clement World, a theatrical music piece that is part of Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Performance Series. Written and performed by Cynthia Hopkins, with direction by DJ Mendel and design by Jeff Sugg, the production is on stage at The Great Hall Black Box Theatre (1087 Queen St West) from January 29 to February 2. Performed live with a 15-member chorus and band, This Clement World pays tribute to our rapidly changing environment by blending theatre, avant-folk rock and documentary film.

Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Exhibition + Festival, is a four month cultural engagement with the issue of climate change. Led by the Cape Farewell Foundation, the festival features a series of multifaceted public programs and events, including an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum and the Performance Series, curated and presented by The Theatre Centre.

"We're immensely proud to be partnering with Cape Farewell," said Franco Boni general and artistic director of The Theatre Centre. "We're asking the question, how can we as a community work together to communicate the truth about climate change and slow down the enormous negative impact our species is having on our planet? It's a privilege to be hosting this conversation, beginning with This Clement World. This program reminds me how critical a role our cultural community and our art play in communicating a truth."

Presented as a live documentary film, This Clement ­World grapples with environmental crisis using a skillfully crafted narrative, shown through the prism of Cynthia Hopkins' deeply personal­ lens and wild cross-disciplinary style. The piece blends expansive avant-folk orchestration with outlandish fiction and Hopkins' own documentary footage from an Arctic expedition with Cape Farewell, infusing our global climate crisis with humour, poetics and urgency.

As a writer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and theatre artist, Hopkins creates and performs unique multi-media pieces that intertwine truth and fiction. She won the 2007 Alpert Award in Theater and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work attempts to change disturbance into works of intrigue and hope - provoking emotion and engaging the senses.

Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Performance Series with The Theatre Centre kicks off on January 26 with a performance by internationally renowned contemporary Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq and frequent collaborator Michael Red. The evening begins with a set by Kitchener-based experimental-glam pop duo Post-Normal. The artists explore music's capacity to express the knowledge of socio-environmental change. Scientifically and artistically, they examine the awe-inspiring dynamics of the environment - like the sound of a flock of geese, or the rhythm of the changing Arctic tide - from Inuit and Western perspectives, on the local and global scale. Other productions in the Performance Series include Sea Sick by Alanna Mitchell (March 19 to 23), presented at The Theatre Centre's new live arts hub and incubator at 1115 Queen St. West.

Tickets for performances in the Carbon 14: Climate is Culture Performance Series range in price from $25 to $30 and are available online at Ticketwise.ca or by phone at 416.538.0988 More information available at capefarewellfoundation.com/carbon14/category/performance-series

Photo by Jeff Sugg