Zeesy Powers didn’t trample all over my soul like I thought she would. The way my heart was beating when I went into her show I Will Tell You Exactly What I Think of You at SummerWorks, clearly I suspected her of some terrible genius for laying people bare and confirming their worst fears. Thankfully, the show was much more interesting than whatever my fragile ego had in mind.
I Will Tell You Exactly What I Think of You is pretty much exactly what the title suggests, except that Powers doesn’t appear to take any weird relish in being blunt or authoritarian. Performed in a talk-show format and live-streamed on the Internet, participants place themselves opposite Powers and submit to hearing some honest commentary.
For many theatre-makers, SummerWorks is a place to experiment and innovate, eventually taking the experience they gain at the festival to create bigger and better productions. This year SummerWorks’ role as a hothouse for new Canadian theatre has grown beyond individual shows to catalyze a whole new festival: the Musical Works in Concert program is taking flight.
Blindsided, currently playing at SummerWorks, began as a lecture but quickly left the classroom. Performer/creator Sabrina Reeves doesn’t linger in one persona for too long; she skillfully transitions between characters and settings throughout the performance. This play is populated by a wide range of personalities, revealed at various moments across the span of their lives, but only claims a cast of one.
Ben Kamino makes me feel ashamed, in a good way. The dancer and choreographer regularly goes to a place in his performance art that causes some well-shielded part of me to squirm with discomfort, for which I’m grateful. His performance at SummerWorks this year, titled Fathers & Sons, was no exception.
Kafka’s Ape, a sweltering primate named Redpeter, played with astonishing force by Howard Rosenstein in this traveling production currently showing at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, is angry.
He’s had his animal natured forcibly ripped out of him by a profiteering military corporation, spent his life doing the most soul-destroying work imaginable, and now he’s gotten himself drunk. For the esteemed shareholders (played by the audience) of Graywater Corporation, a leader in the so-called “peace industry,” it’s probably not quite the celebratory note they were expecting for their Annual General Meeting. But as theatre, it’s disasterously entertaining.
