All theatre, on some level, is about death. The question of mortality is, of course, a core plot element in nearly all tragedies and even a few comedies. But whether the subject is specifically raised, it’s present in the medium itself. When you’re watching theatre, you’re observing human bodies experiencing the passage of time; we leave every show we see a little older, a little closer to the end of our lives.
The specter of death is omnipresent in Phalanx, one of the offerings at this August’s SummerWorks Performance Festival. First presented by DNA Theatre in 1998, the current version was catalyzed in 2023, perhaps fittingly, by the passing of former artistic director Hillar Liitoja.
In the weeks after his death, Cathy Gordon (who co-directed the original work with Liitoja) and Allison Cummings (a longtime DNA performer who appeared in it), struck up a conversion about performing part of Phalanx during Liitoja’s memorial service. They ended up scrapping the idea but later decided to remount the piece in its entirety as a way to introduce it to a new generation of audiences.
I never had the chance to work with DNA. But many of my early collaborators began their careers under Liitoja’s tutelage, so I was deeply influenced by him without entirely knowing it. When I learned of his passing, I immediately knew I had to write something because I assumed (correctly) that no other journalist would. After hearing about the remount of Phalanx, I decided that I had to do the same, both to document the creative process and to provide space for the artists involved to reflect on why they were doing the show and what they hoped to achieve.
Both versions of Phalanx see a group of nine performers walk through various locations around Toronto’s King and Bathurst neighbourhood. In keeping with the title, they move in a Greek military formation, their footsteps in unison, faces expressionless, eyes fixed on the horizon. Arriving at different sites, they spontaneously scatter, completing a series of movement scores and then reforming, before treading wordlessly to their next destination. Are they a group of soldiers? A procession of mourners? A cadre of spirits? Liitoja never said; as with all of his works, the performers had to find the necessary motivations for their actions and audiences would arrive at their own conclusions.
Like many DNA shows, the original prioritized specific images over performer safety. Actors sprinted across busy intersections, intentionally disrupting traffic. The women in the show doffed their tops and stood motionless for several minutes in front of St. Mary’s Church at Bathurst and Adelaide. Two performers danced up and down a rickety ladder leaning against the façade of Liitoja’s home. Before each performance, they would leave a couple of cigarettes on a third floor window sill for them to smoke post-show, both a way to calm their nerves and a self-congratulatory prize for again completing the piece without shattering a femur.
The current version is decidedly more staid, in part because everyone involved is older. (Cummings’ company Moonhorse Dance Theatre, which produced the reimagined version, specifically focuses on artists over the age of 45.) The ladder dance and the nudity are gone. Carefully monitored road crossings have replaced darting between moving cars, with festival staff and volunteers patiently stopping traffic. The show is also smaller in scope now. In 1998, it spanned a larger area and lasted two-and-a-half hours. Today, it’s more compact and clocks in at just over 60 minutes.
Along with Cummings and Louis Labérge-Côté, who performed in the original and serve as co-directors on this incarnation, the company includes seven new dancers, stage manager Chad Dembski (who was also part of the first run), and costume designer Wendy White (who didn’t work on the original, but collaborated on numerous other DNA projects).
This time, in contrast with Liitoja’s typical methodology, the question of “why” was present throughout the rehearsal period. Even on closing night, the team doesn’t have a unified rationale for doing the piece in 2025. Instead, it’s the process of asking and the joy of not entirely knowing that unites the group during their quest to realize the piece.
The show now begins at Victoria Memorial Square, a park on the south side of Wellington Street that in the late 18th century served as a cemetery for fallen soldiers from nearby Fort York. Most of the headstones disappeared long ago, probably for use as building materials. But a handful remain, organized as a sculpture on the park’s eastern edge, a nod to the nearly 500 people buried there.
On the day I see the show, the Blue Jays have scored a victory against the Texas Rangers and clumps of fans are heading for neighbourhood pubs to celebrate. I strike up a conversation with a woman in her 20s sporting full Jays regalia who’s paused to watch while her friends wait impatiently on the sidewalk. I sidle up and identify myself as a journalist working on an article about the performance. I’m curious about her thoughts as an accidental audience member. “It seems kind of spooky,” she says. “I thought they were going to start dancing flash mob style, but now it just seems demonic. I think I should probably leave.”
After performing a series of scores around the park, the performers walk north across Wellington to a courtyard surrounded by condos. Initially, the plan was to wade through a large fountain there. But 10 days before the show, they arrived to rehearse only to find that the water had been drained. After reconceiving that section for a patch of dry concrete, they showed up a few days later to see that the bottom of the fountain had been covered with a massive Roots-branded decal, presumably for some pop-up event the following week. This unpredictability is a reality familiar to anyone working with site-specific performance: you can rehearse the piece as much as you want but you can never really rehearse the venue.
Following this, they continue north, crossing King, winding through several alleys until they emerge on Adelaide for the last stretch. A guy in a Domino’s Pizza car pulls over and leans out his window to ask what’s up. I tell him it’s an experimental theatre piece. “Oh,” he says. “I thought it was something traditional, like a religious ceremony.” A young gay couple pass by hand in hand. “Is this like a cult or something?” one of them inquires. “No,” I tell them. “It’s an artwork.” They shrug and keep walking.
What’s notable about all of these reactions is that they are, in a sense, accurate descriptions of the show. For many who worked with DNA, the experience was not unlike joining a cult: a group of people orbiting a charismatic leader, making art as a kind of ritual, with a hint of the demonic. Liitoja’s work celebrated creation as an act of madness and performance as a kind of spiritual possession. The idea of the show as spooky isn’t far off either. The original work served as an elegy for both a person and a performance. Today it’s also a requiem for Liitoja himself.
The penultimate moments of the piece see the performers stand silently in front of DNA House on Bathurst (the unofficial name for Liitoja’s former home, now under the care of new owners — unaffiliated with the company and, as best I can tell, unaware of the show). Finally, they move to the Factory Theatre courtyard, where they conclude by walking slowly through a pile of carnations.
The “carnation crush” evokes both another performance and another death. Originally, that section served as a tribute to actor Ken McDougall, a pioneering member of the Toronto experimental theatre community who performed in and directed works with DNA, Buddies in Bad Times, Platform 9, and Da Da Kamera.
McDougall’s last stage role before his death from AIDS in 1994 was a DNA piece called The Last Supper, in which he played a character dying from the same illness that claimed his own life. In the final moments of that piece, McDougall held a carnation toward the audience before snapping the stem. Liitoja kept the flower from the closing show in a broken glass on his mantelpiece for three decades as a reminder of that performance, the fragility of life, and the finality of death. Today, the carnation crush remains an elegy for McDougall while becoming one for Liitoja.
The whole process of creating the new production was, in many ways, a meditation on loss. Liitoja rarely made videos of his shows; most of his peak works were staged during the 1980s and early 1990s when recording technology was cumbersome, expensive, and produced less than stellar results. Someone did manage to capture about 30 minutes of the original on tape. But nearly the entire reconstruction was based on the recollections of Cummings and Labérge-Côté, a flawed technology at the best of times, even more so as our memories become less reliable with age.
Along with mourning Liitoja and McDougall, the show now serves as a requiem for a Toronto that no longer exists. During the 1990s, this part of the city was rather derelict. Sketchy rooming houses offered accommodation for the area’s struggling residents. Performance venues like Damn Straight and Symptom Hall provided space for parties, shows, and workshops. Storefront venues hosted techno parties with up-and-coming DJs. Painters and sculptors scored cheap studios in attics and basements.
Other memories are more fuzzy. “What used to be there?” I ask myself, staring up at an anonymous glass condo tower as the performers walk past it. Was it the coffee shop that offered unlimited refills but didn’t have a washroom? Or that 24-hour convenience store where you could grab a $5 pack of cigarettes at 4 a.m.? There’s that spot at the corner of Bathurst and Queen which used to house the Bassment, a notoriously sketchy afterhours that shuttered around 2000 after two people got shot. The cheap falafel place is gone, replaced by a fancy Thai restaurant. The former Big Bop, one of the city’s best music venues, is now an interior design store. A few weeks after the show, Velvet Underground, the long-running goth-industrial club where I celebrated both my 19th and 20th birthdays, announces it’s closing its doors.
In conversations with the company, the subject of the ‘90s comes up a lot. We talk about how there was more freedom then; rents were lower, spaces were more accessible, and funding was less competitive. We had more liberty to argue about art and politics without the self-censorship many creators grapple with today. We never aimed to comfort people with our work. We wanted to make things that were exciting, provocative, and, at least occasionally, enraging.
After the show, we gather on a nearby patio to toast the work and its creators. I ask the table what they think they’ve achieved in presenting this version nearly three decades after the original. “It’s like a scream,” Cummings says. “A scream for the death of experimental theatre in Canada and a plea for younger artists to understand and respect their history.” A group of Jays fans clomp by loudly, while we sit in silence together, staring up at the moon.
Thanks you to interviewees Allison Cummings, Louis Labérge-Côté, Chad Dembski, Coman Poon, and Viv Moore — as well as the rest of the company for welcoming me into their rehearsal process: Tara Butler, Tina Fushell, Bonnie Kim, Bee Pallomina, Nicola Pantin, and Wendy White.
The 2025 SummerWorks Performance Festival ran from August 7 to 17. You can learn more about Phalanx: Revival here.
WRITTEN BY
Chris Dupuis
Chris Dupuis is a nomadic writer/creator/curator originally from Toronto.
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