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The Spee Society , Toronto - Host
This year we welcome new host The Spee Society, taking over from our beloved hosts Les Trouvères. The Spee Society is another name for performer/creator Kiersten Tough, well known to Cooking Fire audiences in a number of guises. She performed at the first ever Cooking Fire Theatre Festival in Zuppa Theatre's Uncle Oscar's Experiment, then again with Zuppa Theatre in Open Theatre Kitchen in the festival's third year, and then went on to create her solo show, Lear's Shadow, for Cooking Fire 2007. In 2008, she was back at the festival, co-creating Hellooo, with festival co-artistic director Sarah Cormier. Now we are thrilled to have her back again to host this year's performance extravaganza.
Clyde Umnie Co (Toronto) and NACL (Highland Lake, NY) - The Little Farm Show
The Little Farm Show is a collaboration between Tannis Kowalchuk, actor and artistic director of NACL, a theatre company based in New York State, and Jane Wells, a Toronto-based actor and writer. The two first met when Jane was training with Primus Theatre, the renowned Winnipeg-based physical theatre company of which Tannis was a long-time member. Since Tannis’s move to the United States to found NACL, Jane has had many opportunities to visit, create, teach and perform at NACL with Tannis and the rest of the company. When in residence at NACL, artists also participate in daily chores on the property, cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Two years ago, Tannis and her partner, an organic farmer, bought a small property not far from the Catskills, where NACL has its home, and are now planning their second season of organic produce.
Jane has participated in Cooking Fire every year, either as a performer or as co-host. From her vantage point as the host on stilts, Jane had a clear view of the audience eating the last of their supper, juggling their plates at the first show of the evening, parents handing final bites to their children, eating distractedly and watching the play absorbedly, whole-heartedly. The inherent audience appeal draws on a common intuitive sense: that the making and watching of theatre and the growing and preparing of food share an honest pride and a genuine collective joy.
Tannis and Jane have cooked and gardened and harvested and made theatre together: these experiences, combined with their many years of writing and performing for and with children, made a theatrical collaboration about eating locally and organically, an irresistible temptation.
Théâtre Populaire d’Acadie (Caraquet, NB) and Satellite Theatre (Montreal) - GRUB
Note: Please read out loud to yourselves, using a voiceover tone from a movie trailer.
Ahem.
Satellite Theatre. Oh. My. God.
Based in the dark outskirts of Montreal, Satellite Theatre was founded by Mathieu Chouinard and Marc-André Charron. These two mad movement-scientists’ ultimate goal : bringing to life creation-based physical theatre that is both innovative and inventive, with the collaboration of members from the four corners of the Earth… which is round… but that’s another story.
Our two space ninjas are presently working on a new food-based spectacle named BOUFFE. But for you, our Ontarian friends, it’ll be GRUB.
Yes, shudder.
Their last show Mouving, co-produced with Houppz Theatre (SplasH2O) and presented at last year’s Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, has since then been on two tours and has been seen by over 15,000 baffled spectators. It’s now on it’s way to France, Quebec, and other beautiful places, that don’t have to speak french. Snuck up their lab-coat sleeves is their next ambitious program: Les Trois Mousquetaires: Plomberie (The Three Musketeers: Plumbing) on it’s plunging way in 2013.
Mathieu and Marc-André also regularly give workshops to younger and older actors on various physical theatre topics and other creative things, slowly polluting the minds of entire populations.
Satellite Theatre wants to take over the world. First.
Theatre Smith-Gilmour (Toronto) - GRIMM too
Occupying an essential place in the landscape of Canadian Theatre, Theatre Smith-Gilmour has been creating original theatre since 1980. Their highly esteemed body of work includes the acclaimed Chekhov Cycle, which has been performed in Toronto, across Canada, throughout Asia and at the prestigious 2007 Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow. In 2007, Smith and Gilmour travelled to Shanghai, China to co-create and perform Lu Xun Blossoms with the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre. This was the first ever Sino-Canadian co-production, which honours Lu Xun’s legacy as one of the greatest Chinese literary figures of the 20th Century. Called “both humorous and wailful” (Oriental Morning Post), Lu Xun Blossoms went on to play to sold-out houses in Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau. Theatre Smith-Gilmour has been nominated for 24 Dora Awards, and won 8, including Outstanding Production for Chekhov’s shorts and Chekhov longs…In the Ravine, Outstanding Direction (Michele Smith and Dean Gilmour), Outstanding Actor (Dean Gilmour) and Outstanding New Play for Chekhov longs…In the Ravine.
The Hinterlands (Milwaukee, WI) - The Dead Road
The Hinterlands are an ensemble of Milwaukee based artists who create original, multidisciplinary performance works, explore the art of the performer through explosive and ecstatic training and play, and engage their community through direct collaboration and exchange. Our Mission: To create essential, immediate, and visceral performances which propel our audiences into a landscape of questions, possibilities, and unknowns. To develop training for the 21st century performer which integrates body and voice, content and form, impulse and technique, technology and tradition. To band together with our community to explore the unmapped regions of our culture, our world, and ourselves: the hinterlands.
The Hinterlands Ensemble formed in September 2009 and is made up of core members Richard Newman, Brian Moore, Liza Bielby, and Norah Sadava. Before forming The Hinterlands, Newman, Moore, Bielby, and Sadava worked with diverse international ensembles including Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), The Dell’Arte Company (Blue Lake, CA), Theatre X (Milwaukee, WI), Jinjiang Yishu Tuan (Chengdu, China), Bond Street Theatre (New York, NY), Redmoon Theatre (Chigago, IL), and Changfu Jutuan (Chengdu, China). They have performed throughout North America as well as in Kosovo, Bali, Germany, Macedonia, Poland, Spain, Columbia, and China.
The Hinterlands premiered Isaac Newton is Our DJ, an interactive dance party, science experiment, and clown play celebrating and debating the life and laws of Sir Isaac Newton, in January 2010. In September 2010, The Hinterlands will mount the second phase of The Breaking Bread Performance Project, a long-term collaboration between U.S. and Kosovar artists initiated by Hinterlands Co-Artistic Director Richard Newman. In collaboration with The National Theatre of Kosovo and Global Motion Social Dance Theatre, The Hinterlands will conduct workshops and create a non-verbal street performance with a group of Albanian, Serbian, and Roma teenagers in Prishtina, Kosovo. The Hinterlands are partially funded by The Puffin Foundation and CEC ArtsLink.
The Alchemical Opera Project (Easthampton, MA) - Come and Sleep
The Alchemical Opera Project seeks to explore the fusion of operatic vocalism, physical theatre, and design. Drawing on Western classical art song and operatic music as initial source material, the Alchemical Opera Project develops original work through a combination of movement-based improvisation and research. Producing fantastic worlds that are extraordinarily visual and aurally lush, Alchemical Opera Project strives to further expand the possibilities of canonized musical material through experimentation, improvisation, and recontextualization. Through the confluence of the operatic voice, instrumental sound, poetry, and movement, Alchemical Opera Project hopes to enrich the frontiers of human imagination.
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