While many larger companies routinely fail to represent the diverse cultural make-up of this city, the rEvolver Festival is doing a bang-up job of it.
Of the twelve ticketed shows that will be on view at the Cultch May 11 to 22, seven have been created by artists of colour and Latinx artists or have such artists in significant leadership roles.
I’m particularly interested in Never the Last, which Christine Quintana, who is Latinx, has created with Molly MacKinnon. It’s about violin prodigy and composer Sophie Carmen Friedman, who was born in 1919, and the love she shared with painter Walter Gramatté. Delinquent Theatre, which also brought us the Jessie-winning Stationary: A Recession-Era Musical, is producing. There’s music in this one, too. Hang onto your hats.
And okay.odd intrigues me. Based on the concepts of concentration, mindfulness, and visualization, okay.odd promises to be “Part spiritual retreat and part commentary on our image-inundated affect-obsessed society.” Yeah, baby!
A company called Hong Kong Exile is behind okay.odd. That company consists of director and performer Milton Lim, choreographer and dancer Natalie Tin Yin Gan, and composer/media artist Remy Siu.
Not to forget intersectionality: seven of the shows have also been created or directed by women. And there’s a queer piece called Charisma Furs by Toronto’s Katie Sly.
Good for rEvolver, a relatively low-budget initiative, for showing the larger companies how it can be done!
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