Latest news with #LuminatoFestival
Globe and Mail
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Red Like Fruit is a devastating portrayal of how sexism warps women's stories and identities
Title: Red Like Fruit Written by: Hannah Moscovitch Performed by: Michelle Monteith, David Patrick Fleming Directed by: Christian Barry Company: Soulpepper and the Luminato Festival Venue: The Michael Young Theatre, 50 Tank House Lane City: Toronto Year: Until June 15 In 2017, Martin R. Schneider and Nicole Lee Hallberg, coworkers at a resume-editing company, experimented with trading e-mail signatures and found their working experiences suddenly and radically changed. While Nicole as 'Martin' had the easiest week of her career, Martin as 'Nicole' was thoroughly frustrated. Respectful clients became rude, demanding and patronizing when they thought they were dealing with a woman. One male client even propositioned 'Nicole' after brief, e-mail-only contact. Both participants posted individually about their findings; Hallberg wrote an article for Medium, but it was Schneider's tweets that went viral and made headlines. It seemed that a story about sexism in the workplace made a far bigger impact when it was confirmed by a man's voice. That story came to mind as I watched Red Like Fruit, by Governor General's Award-winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch. Under Christian Barry's direction, the production from Halifax's 2B Theatre Company now at Soulpepper as part of the Luminato Festival is a simply delivered and devastating tale of the background radiation of sexism and sexual assault that becomes inextricably baked into women's identities. Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Jordan Tannahill stay true to their roots despite U.S. success Red Like Fruit is arranged around a unique conceit: While the face screaming on the poster and story springing from the stage belong to Lauren (Michelle Monteith), the audience rarely hears her actual voice. Instead, she's asked Luke (David Patrick Flemming) to speak for her, telling her story in the third person as she listens attentively, analyzing its impact on her and the audience and trying to figure out what it all means. Why is she so angry, despite her successful career as a journalist, stable marriage and two healthy children? Why does her chest constrict as she conducts interviews about a high-profile case of domestic violence, where the perpetrator was welcomed back to the Liberal Party after some community service, and the victim's contract was not renewed? What is the difference between 'trauma' and 'experiences' if they both shape us – doesn't every teenager face strange incidents, shrug and move on? And, ultimately, is it worthwhile to put the complex struggle into words, if no one wants to hear them? It's easy to see why Moscovitch's work was a finalist for the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 'the oldest and largest international playwriting prize honoring women+ writing for the English-speaking theatre.' Lauren's crisis, as delivered by Luke, is personal rather than intersectional, but is full of detailed, sharp observations about what it means to live and work in a world where you ultimately feel dismissed and disposable. The political scandal Lauren investigates, not directly ripped from the headlines but inspired by recent incidents, becomes increasingly chilling as she discovers the extent of the victim's injuries and the concerted attempt to discredit her voice. Worse, Lauren finds it so easy to become complicit in this judgment. She scoffs at the victim's pop-star name, as though it makes a difference. She finds the men involved morally repugnant, yet secretly hopes they like her and her work. Monteith delivers a performance that's haunting in its restrained economy, and which matches the economy of the production, which strips down all ornamentation in an attempt to appear as objective as possible. Kaitlin Hickey's set design is limited to a raised black platform with a single chair for Lauren. She's on display, while Luke stands to the side with a music stand. Hickey's costumes are workplace casual attire, Lauren in a fitted white button-down shirt contrasting Luke's shapeless grey sweater, and her lighting slowly darkens and narrows to a spot that alternately pins Lauren further in place and recedes her into the shadows. It's occasionally even possible to forget Monteith is on stage, which is kind of the point. Lauren's not miming her story while Luke tells it; she's listening to it like we are, reacting to her words coming from an out-of-body location. Sometimes she seems miles away, hard and distant; sometimes, she trembles, her eyes shining bright with tears that threaten to fall but never completely emerge. When she speaks to question the proceedings, her voice, a little high, a little thin, clashes with the more assured script Luke delivers. And when she stretches her face into that one silent scream, it's arresting and almost genre-bending, matching the script's turn from a realistic description of lunch with a colleague to a stylized vision of a bathtub brimming with blood – before it blinks back, as though nothing really happened. But what did actually happen? And who are we to judge the things that have happened to us, without outside input? Flemming's Luke, as Lauren's mouthpiece, has a warm, compassionate but slightly detached delivery that lets us occasionally find the humour in the societal contradictions and horrors that Lauren faces. At the same time, the house goes silent when he narrates brutally clinical descriptions of domestic violence and Lauren's experiences with sexual assault – or was it assault? The character is designed to be sympathetic, acknowledging the difficulty of speaking for a woman and checking in with Lauren to see if she wants him to continue. It's simultaneously intriguing and frustrating that we never find out the connection between Luke and Lauren, or whether he has any stake in this, but again, that's the goal. Presented with a largely anonymous narrator, why would we trust him more with a story than the person who experienced it? Is it that he's an unbiased, outside eye? Or is it because he's tall, and male, and reassuring?
Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Moscovitch's drama ‘Red Like Fruit' explores power and memory in post-#MeToo era
TORONTO – A seasoned storyteller whose work often probes the complexities of consent and shades of truth, Hannah Moscovitch seems compelled to search for deeper meanings in both her plays and real life. There's rich significance, she suggests, in bringing her latest meditation on gender and power to a renowned Toronto theatre company once inextricably linked to allegations of sexual misconduct. The celebrated playwright points out that 'Red Like Fruit' hits Soulpepper several years after its co-founder and artistic director Albert Schultz resigned amid allegations of impropriety dating back years. 'They're trying to combat their own legacy,' Moscovitch says of being presented by Soulpepper, in collaboration with the Luminato Festival. Moscovitch's two-hander centres on a journalist whose investigation into a case of domestic violence leads her to reconsider the significance of her own past experiences. Michelle Monteith plays the journalist Lauren, whose doubts about her own memory have her turning to a male character, Luke, played by David Patrick Flemming, to recount her own story back to her. The audience plays witness to Lauren's reaction to hearing someone else present details of her life, a twist on the unreliable narrator trope that raises questions about whose stories get told and whose voice gets heard. Moscovitch, who visited similar themes in her Governor General's Award-winning play 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,' notes her first-ever show at Soulpepper comes after a #MeToo reckoning that included pressure to address long-standing inequities in the theatre world. She credits current artistic director Weyni Mengesha with leading that charge. 'She's entirely changed that institution. I'm so admiring of her programming and her art and I think that she has already completely obliterated any legacy from Albert Schultz,' says Moscovitch. Four actresses sued Schultz in January 2018, claiming he groped them, exposed himself, pressed against them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. Schultz resigned and denied the allegations, saying he would defend himself. The lawsuits were settled that summer with undisclosed terms. Mengesha is equally effusive in describing Halifax-based Moscovitch as a 'brave' artist willing to tackle difficult topics. Mengesha says she flew to Halifax last year to preview 'Red Like Fruit' as it prepared for its world premiere at Bus Stop Theatre, quickly deciding it was important to bring it to Soulpepper. 'She explores things that are tough to talk about, like shame and definitely our own accountability as far as how we believe women or don't believe women,' Mengesha says. 'It's so personal and it's so honest. And what I love about her work is that it's a slow burn in some ways. It's always entertaining and really enjoyable to watch, but the effects of it – you'll be considering it days after.' 'Red Like Fruit' is directed by Moscovitch's husband, Christian Barry, who traces 'a direct line' from its themes to those of 'Sexual Misconduct,' which told of an affair between a married, middle-aged professor and his 19-year-old student. It's currently playing off-Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty. Barry suspects an advantage in being married to the playwright of such charged fare, and he confesses they each have a hard time putting their creative projects aside at the end of the day – work talk will invade conversations at the dinner table or pop up during school drop-off for their son. Such familiarity is especially handy in directing 'Red Like Fruit,' he says, recalling multiple conversations with Moscovitch about her own eureka moments over past encounters. 'There's a lot of unspoken understanding between us about the subtext of what she's writing about. And I think ultimately, when you're sharing things that are this intimately connected with lived experiences, you just want to trust that they're going to be handled with care,' says Barry, artistic director of Halifax's 2b theatre, which marks its 25th anniversary this June. 'And so she has trust in our relationship and in my ability to be able to see not just the text, but the subtext. Not just what's going on, but what it means to her personally and what it means to things that she's lived through that might be similar to what the characters are experiencing.' Moscovitch says 'Red Like Fruit' is not autobiographical but is partly informed by unsettling experiences she's had in a male-dominated creative sphere. 'Having been in the theatre community in Toronto in the 2000s, I would say that a certain amount of sexual misconduct was the price of admission,' says Moscovitch. She says it's taken years to acknowledge and unpack problematic encounters in her own past, which she'd previously laughed off as a joke when recounting to others. 'Culture was informing how we were thinking about our own experiences, and we were both diminishing them and being silenced about them. And I think it creates real confusion, or it did for me,' she says. 'Your first thought is, I'm so lucky nothing ever happened to me. And then you're like, 'Wait a second…. Every experience I've had actually, like, directly contradicts that,'' she says. 'And then you start to go into it – You're like, was that bad or wasn't it bad? Is that just part of growing up? Is that trauma or is that experience?' 'Red Like Fruit' begins with a preview Wednesday and opens Thursday. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.
Hamilton Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Moscovitch's drama ‘Red Like Fruit' explores power and memory in post-#MeToo era
TORONTO - A seasoned storyteller whose work often probes the complexities of consent and shades of truth, Hannah Moscovitch seems compelled to search for deeper meanings in both her plays and real life. There's rich significance, she suggests, in bringing her latest meditation on gender and power to a renowned Toronto theatre company once inextricably linked to allegations of sexual misconduct. The celebrated playwright points out that 'Red Like Fruit' hits Soulpepper several years after its co-founder and artistic director Albert Schultz resigned amid allegations of impropriety dating back years. 'They're trying to combat their own legacy,' Moscovitch says of being presented by Soulpepper, in collaboration with the Luminato Festival. Moscovitch's two-hander centres on a journalist whose investigation into a case of domestic violence leads her to reconsider the significance of her own past experiences. Michelle Monteith plays the journalist Lauren, whose doubts about her own memory have her turning to a male character, Luke, played by David Patrick Flemming, to recount her own story back to her. The audience plays witness to Lauren's reaction to hearing someone else present details of her life, a twist on the unreliable narrator trope that raises questions about whose stories get told and whose voice gets heard. Moscovitch, who visited similar themes in her Governor General's Award-winning play 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,' notes her first-ever show at Soulpepper comes after a #MeToo reckoning that included pressure to address long-standing inequities in the theatre world. She credits current artistic director Weyni Mengesha with leading that charge. 'She's entirely changed that institution. I'm so admiring of her programming and her art and I think that she has already completely obliterated any legacy from Albert Schultz,' says Moscovitch. Four actresses sued Schultz in January 2018, claiming he groped them, exposed himself, pressed against them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. Schultz resigned and denied the allegations, saying he would defend himself. The lawsuits were settled that summer with undisclosed terms. Mengesha is equally effusive in describing Halifax-based Moscovitch as a 'brave' artist willing to tackle difficult topics. Mengesha says she flew to Halifax last year to preview 'Red Like Fruit' as it prepared for its world premiere at Bus Stop Theatre, quickly deciding it was important to bring it to Soulpepper. 'She explores things that are tough to talk about, like shame and definitely our own accountability as far as how we believe women or don't believe women,' Mengesha says. 'It's so personal and it's so honest. And what I love about her work is that it's a slow burn in some ways. It's always entertaining and really enjoyable to watch, but the effects of it – you'll be considering it days after.' 'Red Like Fruit' is directed by Moscovitch's husband, Christian Barry, who traces 'a direct line' from its themes to those of 'Sexual Misconduct,' which told of an affair between a married, middle-aged professor and his 19-year-old student. It's currently playing off-Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty. Barry suspects an advantage in being married to the playwright of such charged fare, and he confesses they each have a hard time putting their creative projects aside at the end of the day – work talk will invade conversations at the dinner table or pop up during school drop-off for their son. Such familiarity is especially handy in directing 'Red Like Fruit,' he says, recalling multiple conversations with Moscovitch about her own eureka moments over past encounters. 'There's a lot of unspoken understanding between us about the subtext of what she's writing about. And I think ultimately, when you're sharing things that are this intimately connected with lived experiences, you just want to trust that they're going to be handled with care,' says Barry, artistic director of Halifax's 2b theatre, which marks its 25th anniversary this June. 'And so she has trust in our relationship and in my ability to be able to see not just the text, but the subtext. Not just what's going on, but what it means to her personally and what it means to things that she's lived through that might be similar to what the characters are experiencing.' Moscovitch says 'Red Like Fruit' is not autobiographical but is partly informed by unsettling experiences she's had in a male-dominated creative sphere. 'Having been in the theatre community in Toronto in the 2000s, I would say that a certain amount of sexual misconduct was the price of admission,' says Moscovitch. She says it's taken years to acknowledge and unpack problematic encounters in her own past, which she'd previously laughed off as a joke when recounting to others. 'Culture was informing how we were thinking about our own experiences, and we were both diminishing them and being silenced about them. And I think it creates real confusion, or it did for me,' she says. 'Your first thought is, I'm so lucky nothing ever happened to me. And then you're like, 'Wait a second.... Every experience I've had actually, like, directly contradicts that,'' she says. 'And then you start to go into it – You're like, was that bad or wasn't it bad? Is that just part of growing up? Is that trauma or is that experience?' 'Red Like Fruit' begins with a preview Wednesday and opens Thursday. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.
CBC
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The most exciting performances at the 2025 Luminato Festival
What's happening at this year's Luminato Festival? There'll be music, dance, theatre, public art and a 2.7 tonne iceberg dangled above a downtown Toronto intersection. In short, expect something you've never experienced before, and that's especially true of the productions making their big debut at the festival. The annual event runs from June 4 to 22 at venues across the city and includes several original commissions and Canadian premieres. But in a place like Toronto, you've got to go big if you want to capture folks' attention. "Luminato has really taken to this idea of allowing Torontonians and visitors to see the city in a new and unexpected way, and we do that by injecting art into places where you might not expect it," says Lucy Eveleigh, an executive producer at Luminato. "Of course, it's also in theatres and the places you would expect it," she laughs. But if "you're going through Brookfield Place and you just stumble across a giant hamster wheel in rainbow colours, you're gonna say 'what is going on?'" Yes, a human-sized hamster wheel will indeed be stationed in the Financial District. (Eveleigh has more to say about that later.) And as that project's rat-race vibes might suggest, the theme of this year's program is Day: Night, a topic selected by Luminato's new artistic director, Olivia Ansell. Ansell knows what it's like to see a city through fresh eyes. A relative newcomer to Toronto, she previously helmed the Sydney Festival in Australia, and 2025 marks her inaugural program for Luminato. "What I noticed upon arriving was the pulse of the city: the energy, the conversations, the culture," she says. "I just started to feel like the energy of this city was really a 24-hour cyclical affair." For three weeks this June, Luminato will be contributing to the city's round-the-clock hustle. The program features a mix of ticketed and free events, and several offerings have never been presented in Canada before. Here are a few of those highlights plus info on where you can find them. Dawn Chorus When: June 4 and 5 For thousands of people, every weekday begins with a mad dash through Union Station, and on the morning of June 4, Luminato will launch its 19th edition from the same chaotic site. The festival opens with a free immersive production, Dawn Chorus. It's an all-new work which is making its world premiere at the festival, and for an hour starting at 7:30 a.m., classical choirs will wander up and down the halls of Toronto's busiest transit hub. In roaming packs, they'll perform the production's titular song (a 2019 track by Radiohead's Thom Yorke). And if passersby aren't too fussed about missing their first meeting of the day, they can follow the singers through the building, Pied Piper-style. Polish opera director Krystian Lada is the architect of the piece, and according to Ansell, more than 100 local singers were recruited for the show. If all goes to plan, a growing audience of 9-to-5-ers will follow the choirs into the Great Hall, where everyone will ultimately gather for the production's grand finale. "Everybody's early morning commute will be beautifully and sonically interrupted with a cacophony of sound at Union Station," says Ansell. Adds Eveleigh: "I think it will be very special for people to just happen upon." If you miss out on the action because you were too busy queuing for coffee, a repeat performance will take place the following morning. Where: Sankofa Square When: June 7 and 8 Billboards, buskers, screaming street preachers. Everything at Sankofa Square is fighting for your attention. But on Luminato's opening weekend, I'd wager nothing will match the pure spectacle of Thaw, a durational performance staged 20 metres above the ground — on a hunk of ice that's melting in the sun. The show, which is free to attend, will be appearing in the square on back-to-back days. Running from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. on June 7 and 8, it features a revolving cast of daring solo actors who will perform from on top of the ice. Created by Joshua Thomson of Australia's Legs On the Wall theatre company, the piece was originally commissioned for the Sydney Festival in 2022, during Ansell's tenure as festival director. Since then, it's toured to cities including Auckland, Antwerp and London. This upcoming production for Luminato will be Thaw 's first appearance in North America. "It's talking about there being no time to waste," says Ansell. "In our plans to have greater sustainability and climate action, we have made progress, but you know, are we making progress fast enough?" Queen of the Night Communion When: June 6 and 7 Luminato loves doing shows in "unusual spaces," says Eveleigh, and that's the case here too. This original commission from Toronto's Tapestry Opera is set in a neo-gothic church downtown. There, audiences will mingle with a cast of infamous characters, including the Queen of the Night herself. "There's going to be beautiful singing and an organist and it's going to be very dark and sort of mysterious," says Eveleigh of the ticketed show, which is billed as an immersive experience. "It won't feel like any sort of regular concert recital," says Ansell. "It'll be somewhat liberated and edgy," she says. "'Up close' is probably the best way to describe it." Where: Brookfield Place, Bay Adelaide Centre, First Canadian Place When: June 4 to July 25 "It's a bit of an oasis in the middle of the city," says Eveleigh, describing this free public-art project by Hiromi Tango. The artist, who's based in Australia, is known for playing with all the colours of the spectrum, and Rainbow Dreams is her first exhibition in North America. For the multi-site show, she'll be painting the town red (and yellow and green, etc.) at three separate locations downtown. Each of those spaces will be transformed into kaleidoscopic environments where visitors are encouraged to hang out. "She has created this world, essentially," says Eveleigh. At First Canadian Place, there's Rainbow Calm, where visitors can chill on beanbag chairs. At Brookfield Place, passersby can go for a run on the Rainbow Wheel (the aforementioned giant hamster spinner). Plus, a variety of free public events will be hosted at each site through the run of the exhibition: pilates, yoga, origami workshops and more. The artist herself will even be in town to lead a tour. Dandyism When: June 8, 10, 14-15 This free production will be popping up at locations throughout the GTA, including The Well (June 8), Scarborough Town Centre (June 10) and Brampton Farmers Market (June 14), so watch the Luminato website for the latest information. Created by London-based choreographer Ziza Patrick, who's also part of the show, Dandyism features dance, spoken-word and incredible costumes which are assembled from local thrift shops. The production is a celebration of resistance and self-expression, inspired by the Sapeurs of the Congo, and when Eveleigh caught it at a past edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, she knew Toronto audiences would love it. Dandyism will be making its Canadian premiere at Luminato. "[The performers] encourage folks to dance with them and so there's this real energy exchange," she says. "I'm excited to see that happen here in various places in Toronto." When: June 13 to 15 Endlessly retold and remounted, Hamlet is arguably the most famous play in the world. But this particular production, which is making its Canadian premiere at Luminato, isn't strictly Shakespeare. Created by Peru's Teatro La Plaza, and starring a cast of eight actors with Down syndrome, Hamlet will arrive in Toronto this June following several international appearances, including a recent run at the Lincoln Center in New York. In one review, the Guardian described the show as "a comment on Shakespeare's Hamlet — and our world — rather than an enactment of it." The performers portray the Danish prince (among other characters) interchangeably, and stories from their own lives are blended with Shakespeare. Luminato's Olivia Ansell fell in love with the production after seeing a performance in Brussels. "I just love the joy that it brought the audience," she says. "Hamlet is like, "I've got this life and I'm going to do something with it," says Ansell. (To be or not to be, you know?) "These young people on stage are just so full of life and full of joy and full of their own agency.… It's a brilliant piece to see." Terceradix Luminarium When: June 4 to 22 During Luminato, Harbourfront Centre will serve as the festival's hub. It's where you'll find the widest assortment of programming, including an entire weekend of free music (June 13 to 15). But the biggest attraction has got to be Terceradix Luminarium, and I mean that quite literally. From the outside, this 41-metre-long inflatable sculpture could be mistaken for the world's largest bouncy castle. In reality, however, the experience sounds way more chill. Described as a "walk-in sculpture" on the festival website, it's an immersive environment of soothing light and colour. According to Ansell, ticket holders can expect "a gentle, luminous experience," and visitors are encouraged to wander through it at their own pace. Created by the UK-based design company Architects of Air, Terceradix Luminarium has put down stakes in other cities before, and it is, in fact, one of several touring "luminaria" in the company's collection. This is its first appearance in Canada, however, and special to Luminato, Aaron Schwebel, the concertmaster at the National Ballet of Canada, has created an original show that will be staged inside the structure. Terceradix Luminarium: Bach & Beyond features a mix of classical and contemporary music, as performed by a string duo. "I think it's the first time a festival's done anything like this inside an Architects of Air structure," says Ansell. "The light and the colour: it really does play with your senses when listening to the music. And so there are parts of music at Triceradex where we encourage you to lie down and close your eyes." (Those shows, which are also ticketed, run June 5 to 8 and June 19 to 22.)
