The Rhubarb Festival
February 8-11, 2023
“Toronto’s go-to event for thought-provoking, political, adventurous entertainment”
— Toronto Life
Festival Director
Clayton Lee
Back for a 44th year, Rhubarb transforms Buddies into a hotbed of experimentation, with artists challenging our notions of what art-making and art-watching can be. As Canada’s longest-running new works festival, Rhubarb is the place to encounter the most adventurous ideas in performance and to catch familiar and unfamiliar artists venturing into uncharted territory.
This year, the festival intentionally expands its scope internationally, through a curatorial exchange with three live art festivals in Europe and the UK: FLAM in Amsterdam; Les Urbaines in Lausanne, Switzerland; BUZZCUT in Glasgow. As part of this multi-year exchange, Rhubarb will invite artists from and send Canadian artists to each of these contexts to perform.
featuring Mars Alexander, Moe Angelos + Rachel Hauck, Bastien Hippocrate, Simla Civelek, Laura Fisher, Celia Green + Madeleine LeBlanc, Julian Higuerey Núñez + Henry Adam Svec, KINUK (Ursula Johnson + Angella Parsons), Keioui Keijaun Thomas, Myung-Sun Kim + Jody Chan + Ness Lee, Davi Pontes + Wallace Ferreira, Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) + Louwrien Wijers
photo of Clayton Lee by Dylan Mitro, styling by Cat Calica, hair and makeup by Robert Weir
graphic design by Awake Studio
Rhubarb 2023 runs February 8-11, starting at 7PM each night. Your ticket gets you in to all of the performances for that evening.
Due to limited capacity, Thursday’s performances have two ticketing options. The 7PM ticket includes access to Myung-Sun Kim, Jody Chan, and Ness Lee’s piece, Super Queer Social (a lower capacity event where audiences will be unmasked to eat) as well as Publik Universal Frxnd + Louwrien Wijers and Mars Alexander’s pieces at 9PM. The 9PM ticket provides access to the latter two.
Schedule at a Glance
Wednesday, February 8
Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira // Repertório N.2
Julian Higuerey Núñez & Henry Adam Svec // What a peach could have been and might yet become: a conversation about artistic failure and excellence
Laura Fisher // FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace)
Thursday, February 9
Myung-Sun Kim, Jody Chan & Ness Lee // Super Queer Social
Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) & Louwrien Wijers // Not Yet
Mars Alexander // Chocolate Betty Crocker Fudge Goddess
Friday, February 10
KINUK (Ursula Johnson & Angella Parsons) // I Still Like You
Simla Civelek // Chance Variations
Bastien Hippocrate // LoveLettersOrNot
Saturday, February 11
Celia Green & Madeleine LeBlanc // Jason
Keioui Keijaun Thomas // Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls
Throughout, in the cabaret
Moe Angelos & Rachel Hauck // Guzzle ‘n’ Puzzle
Wednesday, February 8
Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira
Repertório N.2
Drawing on dissident and informal techniques of dance and self-defence, Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira experiment with ideas of violence and resistance, all the while embodying and activating visionary fantasies, futurities, and modes of remaining in the world.
Davi Pontes
Instagram
Wallace Ferreira
Instagram
photo by Lucas Canavarro
Julian Higuerey Núñez & Henry Adam Svec
What a peach could have been and might yet become: a conversation about artistic failure and excellence
In 2018, Henry makes a short film starring Julian, entitled What a Peach Is. While the project is rejected by almost every film festival that they apply to, the duo continue to extend the project’s life through sequels, exhibitions, and even a graphic novel. At Rhubarb, they dig into their ongoing commitment to this failed project, raising questions of success, collaboration, and comradery.
What a Peach Is
Website // Instagram // Twitter
Laura Fisher
FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace)
FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) is an installation for gallery spaces and an expanding, archive documenting the ongoing choreographic collaboration between artist Laura Fisher and seven sheets of copper metal.
Drawing parallels between the material properties of the sheet metal and the artist’s body which experiences chronic pain, the collaboration utilises body heat to create an intimate relationship of co-dependency. FORGED alludes to wider themes around illness, objectification, sexual agency, care, power and intimacy and the complicated relationship between these things that often exist for disabled people.
For Rhubarb they share elements of the archive re-imagined for a
performance venue via the body of an absent performer, inviting audiences to engage with the work through a collective act of resting.
Access Notes: Creatively Audio Described, Audience option to be seated, lie down, stand or move around.
Laura Fisher // creator & performer
Thulani Rachia // dramaturg
Zephyr Liddell // costume designer
Lucas Chih-Peng Kao // cinematographer (Film)
Sky Su & Emma Jane McHenry // audio description (R&D)
Sarah Hopfinger // movement research (R&D)
Website // Instagram // Twitter
Presented in partnership with BUZZCUT
Commissioned and supported by Unlimited, celebrating the work of disabled artists, with funding from Dave Toole OBE Bursary Fund and Creative Scotland. Supported by Dance Base and The Work Room’s residency programme.
The copper used in FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace) is responsibly sourced European copper, re-purposed from industrial waste and manufacturing by-product. The artist is sensitive to the historic and present environmental and colonial impacts of copper mining and commits to working sustainably and respectfully with materials in their practice.
photo by Emily Nicholl
IN THE CABARET
MOE ANGELOS + RACHEL HAUCK
Guzzle ‘n’ Puzzle
Join Moe Angelos in her caftan at the Rachel Hauck-designed Puzzle Lounge! Grab a guzzle from the bar and enjoy some queer eye-hand coordination development! Throw in a few pieces or commit to a full day of jigsaw with one of over 400 puzzles from the archive of the artist Melissa Levin (1958-2015), courtesy of her estate and Nina Levitt.
Moe Angelos // puzzle chaser
Rachel Hauck // environmental designer
Melissa Levin // Lesbian Ancestor
Thursday, February 9
Thursday’s performances have two ticketing options:
- 7PM: includes access to Myung-Sun Kim, Jody Chan, and Ness Lee’s piece, Super Queer Social (a lower capacity event where audiences will be unmasked to eat) as well as Publik Universal Frxnd + Louwrien Wijers and Mars Alexander’s pieces at 9PM.
- 9PM ticket includes access to Publik Universal Frxnd + Louwrien Wijers and Mars Alexander’s pieces.
Myung-Sun Kim, Jody Chan + Ness Lee
Super Queer Social
In channeling our super power of queer desire, SQS v.2 (Super Queer Social) is a gathering over food that explores the meaning of what horizontal lineage and queer heirlooms could be. Each item on the menu and each story offered will evoke the magic of a shared meal to bring forth connection, sustenance, and care. The first iteration of SQS (Super Queer Supper) was a collaboration between Lisa Myers and Myung-Sun Kim in 2018.
Myung-Sun Kim
Instagram
Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) + Louwrien Wijers
Not Yet
A poetic meditation on the death of the artist and an exploration of intergenerational friendship, Not Yet uses textual artworks by Wijers in combination with the Frxnd’s spoken word to punctuate moments in time and evoke past conversations about the future.
Publik Universal Frxnd
Website // Instagram
Louwrien Wijers
Website // Instagram
Presented in partnership with FLAM, and made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund.
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photo courtesy of the artists
Mars Alexander
Chocolate Betty Crocker Fudge Goddess
Who’s in your bed this morning? Italians? Caribbeans? How do you take your coffee? Black? Or with a little bit of milk? Do you prefer white meat or dark meat? In this messy and deliciously interactive burlesque performance, Mars Alexander is the main course—a decadent cake to feast your eyes on and devour.
Mars Alexander // creator + performer
Anna Randall + Claire Geddes Bailey // cake designers
photo by John Brodie
IN THE CABARET
MOE ANGELOS + RACHEL HAUCK
Guzzle ‘n’ Puzzle
Join Moe Angelos in her caftan at the Rachel Hauck-designed Puzzle Lounge! Grab a guzzle from the bar and enjoy some queer eye-hand coordination development! Throw in a few pieces or commit to a full day of jigsaw with one of over 400 puzzles from the archive of the artist Melissa Levin (1958-2015), courtesy of her estate and Nina Levitt.
Moe Angelos // puzzle chaser
Rachel Hauck // environmental designer
Melissa Levin // Lesbian Ancestor
Friday, Feb 10
KINUK (Ursula Johnson + Angella Parsons)
I Still Like You
KINUK, the collaborative duo of Ursula Johnson and Angella Parsons, invites the audience to witness I Still Like You a dialogue on perspectives of bodies sharing common space and time, queerness and cross-cultural (Indigenous/settler) relations contextualised within their interpersonal relationship.
Simla Civelek
Chance Variations
What does it mean to be affected by chance? In its use of AI to generate visuals based on pre-recorded actions, Chance Variations might be considered a performance of a performance of a performance, developed using a variety of propositions that allow for coincidence.
Simla Civelek // Artist
Zhino Yousefi // Digital Artist
photo by Gary C Photography
Bastien Hippocrate
LoveLettersOrNot
A performance experiment using the audience as a scenographic social constellation, this work of autofiction examines the impact of intrafamilial sexual violence on its victims, collateral victims, and perpetrators. LoveLettersOrNot looks at how silence is created, who it serves, and how to move towards healing.
Bastien Hippocrate // artist
Selima Chibout // dramaturge
Presented in partnership with Les Urbaines
Photo by Cynthia Mai Ammann
IN THE CABARET
MOE ANGELOS + RACHEL HAUCK
Guzzle ‘n’ Puzzle
Join Moe Angelos in her caftan at the Rachel Hauck-designed Puzzle Lounge! Grab a guzzle from the bar and enjoy some queer eye-hand coordination development! Throw in a few pieces or commit to a full day of jigsaw with one of over 400 puzzles from the archive of the artist Melissa Levin (1958-2015), courtesy of her estate and Nina Levitt.
Moe Angelos // puzzle chaser
Rachel Hauck // environmental designer
Melissa Levin // Lesbian Ancestor
SATURDAY, FEB 11
Celia Green + Madeleine LeBlanc
Jason
This solo movement piece tackles themes of transformation, pain, and the body, with Celia Green’s emotion-driven choreography inspired by a custom suit by Madeleine LeBlanc.
Keoui Keijaun Thomas
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls
In this three-part film and multimedia performance, Keioui Keijaun Thomas charts a post-apocalyptic geography, imagining a time after mass extinction, when dolls (trans femmes so flawless they’re no longer considered real) are the only ones left. With choreography based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis, the piece moves through sound, light, poetry, and dance to reclaim what it means to be Black and queer in nature.
photo by Maria Baranova
IN THE CABARET
MOE ANGELOS + RACHEL HAUCK
Guzzle ‘n’ Puzzle
Join Moe Angelos in her caftan at the Rachel Hauck-designed Puzzle Lounge! Grab a guzzle from the bar and enjoy some queer eye-hand coordination development! Throw in a few pieces or commit to a full day of jigsaw with one of over 400 puzzles from the archive of the artist Melissa Levin (1958-2015), courtesy of her estate and Nina Levitt.
Moe Angelos // puzzle chaser
Rachel Hauck // environmental designer
Melissa Levin // Lesbian Ancestor
Mars Alexander
Mars Alexander (they/she) otherwise known as the unfriendly, black-hottie… is a non-binary trans femme of Indo-Caribbean descent. By day they work on sets modeling or doing wardrobe, and by night they are a performer/entrepreneur – expressing & honoring states of freedom, queerness, & hedonism. Your typical Mars show contains undertones of mental health, disturbance, fetish & symbolism. Approach with a doobie for good fortune~
Follow Mars on Instagram.
Moe Angelos + Rachel Hauck
Moe Angelos is a theatre artist and writer. Rachel Hauck is a set designer based in New York. Melissa Levin (1958-2015) was a Toronto artist. Moe:” That’s a lot of puzzles.” Rachel: “We need puzzle trays!” Melissa: “Each puzzle piece can be thought of as stored bits of memory.” They invite you grab a drink, pull up to a puzzle and let the memories flow.
Simla Civelek
Simla Civelek (b. Istanbul, Turkey) is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada. In her work she investigates the transient nature of the human experience and explores the body’s record and knowledge of the past through gestures. Her performance work has been presented at the FADO Performance Art Centre, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops-BC, Circa in Montréal-QC, Glasshouse Art Life Lab in Brooklyn-NYC, Experimental Action Performance Art Festival in Houston-TX, and OPEN Performance Art Festival in Beijing-China among other venues.
Follow Simla on Instagram or visit her website.
Laura Fisher
Laura Fisher is a queer, white, disabled dance artist and performance maker from Glasgow. A Gemini sun, she’s equally at home on a sweaty dance floor at 4am as she is resting in bed with her cat. Laura works at the intersections of dance, sculpture, participatory practice, and live art, with a conceptually rigorous approach to performance dramaturgy. Interested in the politics of spatiality, embodiement and social choreography, they primarily create work which is site specific or responsive. She is currently researching human – material relations in performance as a crip practice that creates space for new and divergent aesthetic languages of movement and asks wider questions about the parameters of choreographic practice, such as “what we consider dance to be” and “who we consider a dancer”. They are eternally grateful to work with a host of talented collaborators, who are fundamental to the creation of all their work. Laura has been awarded commissions by Unlimited, Fruitmarket gallery & Dance Base, RIG Arts and Paisley Arts, and was awarded the inaugural Dave Toole OBE Bursary Award, supporting the next generation of disabled dancers in the UK, for their 2021 Unlimited Commission work FORGED (in the tender heat of your embrace).
Follow Laura on Instagram, Twitter or visit their website.
Celia Green + Madeleine LeBlanc
Celia Green is a choreographer, writer, and performer. Their focus is on making highly theatrical and intimate performance works that sometimes blend text and movement. They often work collaboratively. In their work they try to give voice to feelings and states that cannot be expressed in everyday words. Celia is inspired by transcendent moments that are created when text and movement are woven together perfectly. The main themes present in their work are freedom, the fragility of identity, and feelings.
Follow Celia on Instagram.
Madeleine LeBlanc is an artist & costume designer based in Toronto. Their work investigates traditional craft skills & techniques, considering both historical and personal histories around the devaluing of craft work. LeBlanc creates art embodying physical, sensorial and emotional labour. They previously attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, along with OCAD University where they were awarded the Material Arts Medal for their graduating thesis. They have worked at The National Ballet of Canada, The Canadian Opera Company and Opera Atelier.
Follow Madeleine on Instagram or visit their website
Bastien Hippocrate
Afrodescendant queer faggot second generation immigrant. Artist performer since his early twenties, he started his career as an autodidact. Instinctively not framable by any kind of authority, the street was his first stage for some spontaneous performances, and squats, and art galleries, and museums and then theatres.
After this journey he finally start to study at La Manufacture HES-SO and receive his diploma in contemporary dance in 2019. Since that he worked with artists as Geraldine Chollet and Valerie Reding, he’s regularly part of Imbricated Real curated by Simone Aughterlony and Marc Streit, he’s also part of Handle With Care organized by Expedition Suisse. Bastien continue to process on his own creations, the last premiere was LoveLettersOrNot during Les Urbaines Festival 2021.
Julian Higuerey Núñez + Henry Adam Svec
Julian Higuerey Núñez’s and Henry Adam Svec’s performances and installations explore exhaustion, mediation, and durability. Often pushing their bodies and their friendship to a breaking point, they have sought solace—if not resolution—through the transformative potential of aesthetic experience. The two were randomly paired as roommates at the Banff Centre in 2011, and since then their collaborations have been presented at Nuit Blanche (Toronto) and Nocturne (Halifax). Individually Julian and Henry have both exhibited work at 7a*11d, FADO Performance Art Centre, and other venues domestically and internationally. What A Peach Is is the first “film” by either.
whatapeachis.ca
henryadamsvec.ca
Instagram: @henrysvec @hashtagsushi @whatapeachis
Twitter: @henryadamsvec @jandthesush @peach_what
Keioui Keijaun Thomas
Keioui Keijaun Thomas (b. 1989, USA) is an artist based in Brooklyn, USA. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Thomas has presented work nationally and internationally at venues including Creamcake, Berlin, Germany (2021); Skopje Pride, Skopje, Macedonia (2020); The Rhubarb Festival, Toronto, Canada (2020); Dweller, Brooklyn, USA (2020); Fierce Festival, Birmingham, UK (2019); ANTI — Contemporary Art Festival, Kuopio, Finland (2019); Time Based Arts Festival, Portland, USA (2016); Rapid Pulse, Chicago, USA (2016); SPILL Festival, Ipswich, UK (2014); and Out of Site, Chicago, USA (2014). Solo Performances have been presented at Participant Inc., New York, USA (2021); The Knockdown Center, New York, USA (2018); Housing NY, Brooklyn, USA (2017); Performance Space, Folkestone, UK (2016); and Human Resources, Los Angeles, USA (2015), Perrotin NY, New York, NY (2022).
Follow Keioui on Instagram.
Myung-Sun Kim, Jody Chan + Ness Lee
Myung-Sun Kim is an artist, a cultural worker, a curator, an amateur cook, and an amateur brewer of the Korean rice wine, makgeolli. Her work explores questions of belonging, inheritance, silenced histories, foodways, kinship, queerness, rituals and lineage. Her current research explores the function of art/objects as communal heirlooms and how daily rituals of belonging can further shape our culture and relationships. She has presented my work across North America and in Finland, including Art Gallery of Ontario, MOCA Toronto, FADO Performance Art Centre, and Plug In ICA. As a curator, she has led curatorial programming at galleries and festivals including Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival, The Theatre Centre, and the Toronto Biennial of Art as the Co-Curator of Public Programming & Learning. She has recently curated Fugitive Rituals exhibition at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (July-Dec 2022).
Follow Myung-Sun on Instagram.
Jody Chan (they/them) is a writer, drummer, therapist, and organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Their writing explores themes of home, belonging, kinship, queerness, and Madness/disability. They are the author of haunt (Damaged Goods Press), all our futures (PANK), and sick (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award and 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry. They are also a performing member of Raging Asian Womxn Taiko Drummers (RAW). Their work has received fellowships and support from VONA, Tin House, Feminist Art Collective (FAC), Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.
Follow Jody on Instagram or visit their website.
Ness Lee draws on history and personal narratives to create dreamy and surreal illustrations, paintings, sculptures, and installations. Exploring states of mind during incomprehensible stages of vulnerability, Lee’s work takes form as an effort in seeking comfort, forgiveness, and desire for an end of a self-perpetuated state. Often featuring their unique characters, Lee’s work approaches ideas of identity, culture, love, belonging, and oneness through their line work and novel use of media. Their work has been featured at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Hamilton, as well as galleries in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto. Lee has also participated in mural festivals in Canada and internationally in Hyderabad, India, and Cozumel, Mexico.
Follow Ness on Instagram or visit their website.
KINUK
KINUK is the collaborative duo of Angella Parsons and Ursula Johnson. They met in 2001 at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and married in 2011. Parsons and Johnson explore aspects of their interpersonal relationship, subverting notions of Public vs. Private. Examining the similar and dissimilar perspectives of their individual sociological, philosophical and political ideologies is integral to the practice of KINUK. They utilize relational aesthetics and invite viewers to meet them in rethinking the ways we cohabitate and negotiate shared time and space.
Davi Pontes + Wallace Ferreira
Davi Pontes is an artist, choreographer and researcher. Graduated in Arts from Universidade Federal Fluminense and Master in Arts (Contemporary Studies of Arts) from the same institution. He studied at Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo ESMAE (Porto, Portugal). Since 2016 she has presented her work in art galleries and national and International festivals, mainly at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), My Wild Flag (Stockholm), Pivô (São Paulo), Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon), Rua das Gaivotas 6 (Porto), Bienal Sesc de Dança, MITsp – Mostra Internacional de Teatro de São Paulo, Les Urbaines festival (Switzerland), Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo), Valongo Festival Internacional da Imagem (São Paulo), Programa Rumos Itaú Cultural 2021, Panorama Festival (Rio de Janeiro), 5° Mostra de Dança Itaú Cultural ( São paulo), Artfizz – HOA Galeria (USA) and resident at ImPulsTanz 2022 [8: tension] Young Choreographers’ Series (Austria), La Becque (Switzerland), Pivô Arte Research Program, in the MAM Rio Arts Research Residency Program and in the Escola Livre de Artes – ELÃ among others. Awarded artist at ImPulsTanz – Young Choreographers’ Award, 2022 (Austria)Directed the film Delirar o racial in partnership with artist Wallace Ferreira, work commissioned by the Pivô Satélite Program, 2021. From a corporal research, his practice carries the constant challenge of positioning choreography and raciality to respond to the ontoepistemological conditions of modern thought, and have as main project to analyze the conjunctures in which violence is being practiced in the global present.
Follow Davi on Instagram.
Wallace Ferreira is a choreographer, performer, visual artist. Graduated from Escola Livre de Artes da Maré(ELÃ) and Escola de Artes Visuais Parque Lage. Winner of ImPulsTanz – Young Choreographers’ Award 2022, with a residency in the ImPulsTanz [8:tension] series, in 2022 she joins the art resident at Instituto Inclusartiz. She builds strategies and choreographs actions to escape from representations. Through indisciplinary practices, her creations provoke through indisciplinary practices, her creations provoke accidents between dance, performance and visual arts languages temporary practices, applying aspects such as mimesis, representation and studies of images of images choreographed by dissident bodies, in an attempt to archive actions to elaborate resistances and conjure ways to remain in the world. Driven by the challenges of tensioning the present, since 2018 she has presented her works in art galleries, national and international festivals such as Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (NY), Panorama Festival, ArtRio, Lateral Roma, HOA ART, Artfizz, Jaqueline Martins Gallery, Les Urbaines(CH), SP- ARTE, Display (CZ), Itaú Cultural, SESC, A Gentil Carioca gallery, Despina. Among her most recent works
Repertory” trilogy in partnership with the artist Davi Pontes that was in Vermelho Gallery’s VERBO Show, Valongo International Image Festival, Anita schwartz art gallery, Frestas – Arts Triennial 2020/21, My Wild Flags (SE). Directed the film Delirar o racial in partnership with artist Davi Pontes, commissioned by the Satellite Pivot Program, 2021. Within the Ballroom/Vogue culture she received the title of Imperatriz of the House of Mamba Negra acting in São Paulo, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro promoting the mission of taking peripheral cultures to institutional spaces, being furtive resistances circumventing any attempt of capture, creating breaches in the values and senses through practices that the body as an agent of history, repositioning naturalized codes in the social spheres and articulating strategies to betray language and superimpose other meanings.
Follow Wallace on Instagram.
Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) + Louwrien Wijers
The Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) is currently an artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Frxnd refers to a historical figure but it might also simply be just reappearing. A heretic, a quack, or a contradiction in terms, the Frxnd is an enunciation of a higher power or spirit. They are, and perhaps, always were, an instrument to go beyond the limited imagination and perspective of one’s own specific subject position.
Follow them on Instagram or visit their website.
Louwrien Wijers is a visual artist and writer, but feels herself to be a sculptor. Influenced by eighteen years of work alongside Joseph Beuys and her inspiring experiences of Fluxus in Paris in 1964, she describes her work as both mental and material sculpture. Her most renowned and important mental sculpture is ‘Art meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy’, which was realised in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1990. This work brought together artists, scientists, spiritual leaders and economists including Robert Rauschenberg, David Bohm, the Dalai Lama and Stanislav Menshikov for a series of panels taking place over five days.
Follow Louwrien on Instagram or visit her website.
Clayton Lee // festival director
Sue Balint // industry series concierge
Dylan Tate-Howarth // festival coordinator
Rach Shaen // festival lighting designer
Amber Pattison // head technician – running crew
Kit Norman // head technician – operator
Theo Belc, Luke Dobson, El Patey, Diamond Srey,
Katherine Teed-Arthur + Van Ward // crew
THANK YOU
Rose Akras, Navid Amini and The Theatre Centre, Marcio Beauclair, Shannon Cochrane, Julie Dabrusin, Jess Dobkin,
Marci Ien, Luzminda Longkines, Cedric Ortiz, J.T. Pickering, Ysaline Rochat, Paul Smith, Karl Taylor, Tracy Tidgwell, William Zapata
Over the past three years, Rhubarb has been developing relationships with live art festivals around the world, with the intention of contextualizing local artistic practice within a larger, global performance ecology.
This year’s festival presents three artists in partnership with live art festivals in the UK and Europe: Bastien Hippocrate through Les Urbaines (Lausanne, Switzerland); Laura Fisher through BUZZCUT (Glasgow, UK); and Publik Universal Frxnd (fka Richard John Jones) + Louwrien Wijers through FLAM (Amsterdam, Netherlands). This exchange follows appearances by Rhubarb artists at these same international festivals over the past year.
In addition, this year the Rhubarb Festival welcomes live art producers and curators from across Canada and beyond, with an industry initiative that includes taking in performances, connecting with local and international curators and artists, as well as seeing highlights of Toronto’s artistic and performance ecology.
If you are a visiting presenter, please feel free to reach out to Festival Director Clayton Lee at clayton@buddiesinbadtimes.com.
Sue Balint // industry concierge
The curatorial network and industry series are made possible through the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts. The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is supporting the participation of one industry series member.
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ABOUT THE CURATORIAL NETWORK PARTNERS
//BUZZCUT//
//BUZZCUT// is a organisation dedicated to creating exciting, supportive environments for artists and audiences to experiment with live performance. From its beginnings in 2012, //BUZZCUTT// is now an internationally recognised organisation supporting radical performance practises from all over the world, holding annual festivals of Live Art, year-round artist development opportunities and their monthly performance programme Double Thrills.
FLAM
FLAM, Festival of Live Art Amsterdam was founded in 2011 by artists Rose Akras and Dirk-Jan Jager. FLAM was the first recurrent festival happening in gallery spaces in the Netherlands, dedicated to live art as a genre which is not tied to a discipline or conventional relations of duration, public and space.
Les Urbaines
Taking place in various locations in Lausanne, Renens and Chavannes, Les Urbaines festival creates a vibrant time-space dedicated to emerging arts: a place that seeks to capture the moment when singular practices take shape and prefigure the aesthetics of tomorrow. The festival is entirely free of charge and brings together over forty projects (visual works, live shows, DJ sets, performances, workshops).
Launched to mark the festival’s 35th anniversary, The Rhubarb Archive is a (hopefully) comprehensive list of all the projects, performances, experiments, parties, and special events to ever grace the stage at Canada’s longest-running new works festival
VISIT THE ARCHIVE“TORONTO’S GO-TO EVENT FOR THOUGHT-PROVOKING, POLITICAL, ADVENTUROUS ENTERTAINMENT”
-Toronto Life
“ONE OF THE BEST EVENTS ON THE TORONTO THEATRE CALENDAR”
-Toronto Star
“A TORONTO THEATRE INSTITUTION”
-Xtra
“THE WILDEST THEATRE FEST IN TOWN”
-Toronto Life
“RHUBARB IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT, BUT EVEN MORE IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST”
-My Gay Toronto
Buy Tickets
Government Partner
Dates & Times
February 8-11
7:00PM
Tickets
$10/$25/$40/$70
For each of our mainstage shows this season, we’re offering tickets at a range of price points, though seating is general admission, and every seat is just as good as the next. If cost is a barrier, this is your chance to get an affordable ticket. If you are able to pay more, this is your chance to increase your support for the work onstage and ensure it stays affordable for those who need it.
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