Get all the top news & discounts for Toronto & beyond.
FREE FALL is an eight-day biennial national and international performance festival featuring new and hybrid works by emerging and established artists from across Canada. From March 24-31, 2012 FREE FALL '12 will host ten productions with artists from four cities at seven venues in Toronto.
Co-curated by The Theatre Centre's Artistic Director Franco Boni and Praxis Theatre's Michael Wheeler, FREE FALL '12 investigates shared and individual experiences through theatre, installation, performance art, new media, lectures and online performance.
Highlights include the return of Theatre Replacement to examine the hilarious and disturbing nature of the average YouTube commenter inWEETUBE 5400, Liza Balkan's documentary theatre piece OUT THE WINDOW and FREE FALL will bring audiences outside of the theatre with a walking tour, INVISIBLE TORONTO, and a Twitter-fueled voyage on the 501 Streetcar line, ROUTE 501 REVISITED.
FREE FALL '12 will also host industry panels and events such as the Chicago/Toronto Performance Summit where cultural players from these sister cities will share ideas about the process of creating and presenting independent art.
FREE FALL '12 PROGRAM
A LAST RESORT by Rough House Productions (Vancouver)
A multimedia performance in English and Spanish that intimately explores the lengths that two people will go to for a perfect life just beyond the horizon.
BABYLONIA by Radix Theatre (Vancouver)
Babylonia is an interactive mixed reality presentation that will begin online leading up to the live performance, and unfold in real time at the show. Log onto www.babylonia.ca beginning March 19th, 2012 and Prepare for Upload.
DOGGIEWOGGIEZ! POOCHIEWOOCHIEZ! By Everything is Terrible! (Chicago)
A remake of Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult classic film The Holy Mountain, comprised entirely of reclaimed VHS footage of dogs. (Co-presented in partnership with The Drake Hotel)
INVISIBLE TORONTO: A Walking Tour with Falen Johnson (Toronto)
Native Theatre artist Falen Johnson invites audiences to look at the Queen Street West and Ossington Avenue area from an Indigenous perspective. This walking tour focuses on the visibility/invisibility of Indigenous history in the city of Toronto.
INVISIBLITY by The Theatre Centre's Youth Program (Toronto)
Students from the Toronto District School Board Media Arts Co-op programwork with playwright Yvette Nolan and Charles Street Video to create an original video exhibit about their community in The Drake Hotel's new art community space The Drake Lab.
OUT THE WINDOW by Liza Balkan and The Window Collective (Toronto)
Out The Window is a powerful piece of documentary theatre that charts playwright Liza Balkan's journey through the justice system after witnessing a man's final moments during an altercation with Toronto police from her apartment window in August 2000.
THE PALIMPSEST PROJECT 1.3 by re[public] in/decency (Toronto/Chicago) A palimpsest is a piece of parchment or wax tablet that has been written on, and then scraped or washed clean, and used again. This ancient method created a unique phenomenon whereby historical texts were layered onto one another such that the original writing can be discerned through layers of new data. The Palimpsest Project is a performance lecture featuring Toronto artist Coman Poon and Chicago artist Erica Mott, who will layer their work to examine artistic boundaries and collaboration.
This end-to-end ride on the 501 Queen streetcar is a guided tour conducted entirely via Twitter. From Neville Park to Long Branch Jonathan Goldsbie will lead participants in a discussion about the happenings inside and outside the streetcar windows – but no talking allowed.
THAT TREE YOU CLAIMED YOUR THRONE by Ali El-Darsa (Montreal)
Montreal-based artist Ali El-Darsa uses multiple disciplines to reflect on his personal experience of home and displacement. The artist challenges audiences to listen and evaluate the way we process the repetition of information, and the way the information loses its essence over time.
WEETUBE 5400 by Theatre Replacement (Vancouver)
James Long and Maiko Bae Yamamoto of Theatre Replacement take the publicly posted comments from the most notorious YouTube videos and place them in familiar dramatic settings to create hilarious and disturbing dialogue.
