A devised Peruvian Hamlet, a landmark piece of contemporary English theatre, and a compact Hannah Moscovitch two-hander are among the shows making their Toronto premieres at this June’s 10-day Luminato Festival — the first programmed by artistic director Olivia Ansell.
The arts leader recently moved to Toronto from Australia, where she curated the last four iterations of the Sydney Festival, a three-week annual event that’s similarly international in scope.
“During that time, I grew this love for supporting the voices of artists [and] new contemporary work across the broad realm of disciplines,” Ansell told me over Zoom.
She explained that both festivals exist to serve and represent their respective cities — this year, for instance, Luminato’s overarching theme of DAY:NIGHT honours Toronto’s 24-hour cycle, from morning commutes through Union Station to late-night parties by the harbourfront.
“How do you inherently reflect the identity of a city in festival programming? What makes each international arts festival distinct from the other?” she pondered. “In my opinion, it’s working with an incredible array of artists globally, but also reflecting — through the stories that artists are telling, [as well as] the natural and built architecture — the stories that lie beneath the city’s surface. Stories from thousands of years ago, and stories of now, and stories into the future.”
When it comes to Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, presented at the Jane Mallett Theatre in partnership with TO Live, we might add “stories from 20 years ago” to that list. Since premiering at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, the show has played hundreds of performances across the world — always featuring a different actor opposite the acclaimed English experimentalist.
Without prior knowledge of the plot, the first-time cast member plays a hypnotist who drove the car that killed the daughter of Crouch’s character. Though Crouch doesn’t reveal who’s performing on which date, Luminato has released a list of actors set to appear at some point in the Toronto run; it includes Allegra Fulton, Daniel MacIvor, Karen Robinson, and Qasim Khan.
When I joked that I might have to attend several times to ensure I catch MacIvor, who in some ways feels like Canada’s version of Crouch, Ansell responded that this impulse is a significant part of the production’s appeal. “It does create this cult following,” she said. “Like: ‘Oh, well, I’ve seen it this way, now I’ve got to see it the other night.’ Because every night is a different performance, right? It’s a different interaction, it’s a different energy.”
Though Teatro La Plaza’s Hamlet premiered 14 years after An Oak Tree, it’s already toured internationally to great success. Featuring eight Spanish-speaking actors with Down syndrome, the production takes the tragedy’s well-worn line about being-or-not-being and examines it through a disability lens.
“Chela De Ferrari is a really interesting Latin American theatre director that specializes in working in devised theatre forms with diverse actors,” said Ansell. “And this piece first [came out] of Peru. It travelled around France… [before making] its Edinburgh Festival premiere, and, since then, it’s just continued to reach greater heights,” with presentations at New York’s Lincoln Center and beyond.
Over the last year, the Dane has been a common face on Toronto stages, but Ansell framed Teatro La Plaza’s version as utterly unique. “This is a devised Hamlet, so you can’t come in expecting the traditional text,” she said. “I know you’ve had both dance versions of Hamlet and text-based versions, but this is different. It’s entirely different.”
In addition to these international offerings, Luminato is collaborating with Soulpepper Theatre to co-present 2b theatre’s production of Moscovitch’s Red Like Fruit, which debuted last April in Halifax. In the 80-minute drama, a man named Luke (played by David Parick Flemming) tells the story of Lauren (played by Michelle Monteith), a journalist covering a high-profile domestic violence case.
“I find this play really, really interesting,” said Ansell. “I think it’s such a clever choice that the words are narrated by a male character and not a female. I think some women, when they first [experience] the play, are in a rage because it’s not voiced by a female character on stage… But for me, [that’s exactly] the metaphor. Because [even though] it’s 2025… men are so often speaking for women — the ‘equal seat at the table’ is just not an equal seat at the table, and therein lies the point.”
Three other productions fill out the theatre section of the Luminato program. HANS: My Life in Fairy Tales, a devised world premiere from Craig Francis and Rick Miller, blends Hans Christian Andersen’s biography with aspects of his iconic fairy tales. The installation-like Nigamon/Tunai, by Indigenous writer-performers Émilie Monnet (from Québec) and Waira Nina (from Colombia), unpacks the harmful effects of mineral extraction and colonization. And The 52 Live, presented by Museum of Toronto in association with Luminato, uses a rotating selection of monologues by 24 Canadian playwrights — among them Cheri Maracle, Keira Loughran, and Marcia Johnson — to animate an exhibition about the women who’ve shaped Toronto.
Ansell encourages theatre-lovers to also explore Luminato’s other programming streams. “I think the beauty of arts festivals is that they are truly cross-disciplinary,” she said. “In any given year, a city will have its theatre companies that do September-to-June subscription seasons, usually quite heavily text-based… [But] an arts festival can bring compelling international theatre, be it text-based or not, as well as many other cross-disciplinary projects that… really give you an opportunity to taste something outside of the box.
“I think some hot tips would be to get down to Union Station for Dawn Chorus, directed by Polish opera director Krystian Lada, who I found at [the German arts festival] Ruhrtriennale working with [artistic director] Ivo van Hove,” Ansell continued. “He is directing 123 choristers to disrupt your morning commute with incredible arrangements by Thom Yorke from Radiohead — very theatrical. I would also encourage you to check out What the Day Owes to the Night by Hervé Koubi, the French-Algerian choreographer, who works with capoeira martial arts.”
Ansell went on to highlight the Queen of the Night Communion, a world premiere creation from Tapestry Opera that deconstructs the operatic convention of the mad soprano. Directed by Michael Hidetoshi Mori and performed at Metropolitan United Church on the festival’s first weekend, the show will be very “contemporary and experimental,” according to Ansell.
Dawn choruses, days that owe, queens of the night: the titles of these works directly engage with the theme of DAY:NIGHT, which Ansell sees as paying tribute to the city’s natural rhythms.
“As a newcomer to Toronto, I was immediately inspired by what makes the city tick,” she explained. “The first of things, the last of things. Any day can be ordinary, any day can be extraordinary… I really embrace this sense that the city has a pulse.”
Luminato Festival runs from June 4 to 22. More information is available here.
Luminato Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. His writing has appeared in publications like Maisonneuve, This, and NEXT. He loves the original Super Mario game very much.
LEARN MORE
