REVIEW: At this year’s SummerWorks Performance Festival, physical storytelling is central

iPhoto caption: Ping-Hsiang Wang in ‘Retina Maneuver.’ Photo by Hang Su.

From a dancer becoming a canine to a shy theatre director practicing his swordsmanship, the shows I’ve seen so far at the 2026 SummerWorks Performance Festival use performers’ bodies to dramatize defiance.

SummerWorks’ curated lineup features a handful of full-scale theatre productions, and the majority will appear during the festival’s second and final weekend at venues across Toronto. During the opening days, it was in one stray play — and some dance — where this theme of bodily resistance took form.

k*hole karaoke’s Retina Maneuver, performed at Native Earth’s Aki Studio by the Taiwanese theatre creator Ping-Hsiang Wang, at first approaches autobiography in a strikingly unembodied fashion. Fiddling with a Bluetooth keyboard at a centre-stage desk, Wang details his romantic relationship of 10 years, roving through digital detritus including Amazon purchases, his camera roll, clips from the live-action Mulan remake, and his Apple calendar.

Thanks to an upstage projection screen (graphic design is by Meng-Jiin Hsieh), much of the show resembles an impromptu twitch.tv stream. This relaxed aesthetic inheritance reverberates in the play’s structure — which is so freewheeling that it can feel almost ramshackle — and Wang’s down-to-earth performance. Tense shoulders, a bashful voice, and a near-permanent smile combine with a bright red sweatshirt to exude an sweetly benevolent aura.

Retina Maneuver’s excellent climax mashes together images from throughout the show to subvert this low-key vibe. (The production has closed, so I’ll break the ending down.) First, Wang explains an ambiguous early moment where he’d taken eye drops; we learn it’s medicine that gradually dilates pupils, causing temporary blindness. He says submitting himself to this tender physical state is a way of embracing vulnerability. Wang then reenacts a drill from his mandatory Taiwanese military service (previously shown in video), in which he rapidly slices the air with an invisible sword while shouting the Chinese word for “kill.” His autobiographical ramblings had touched on China’s tense relationship with Taiwan and Hong Kong, and he shares the belief that performing this primarily symbolic drill onstage affects real change, however slight.

This is a visceral physical anchor, but Retina Maneuver’s script is less intuitive. (Dramaturgy is by Wan Shi.) Distractingly for an autobiographical show, basic elements of the story’s logic sometimes don’t add up: for instance, Wang says he started recording everything on a digital calendar because he kept forgetting his boyfriend’s birthday — but when he shows it to us, the calendar extends back to the couple’s first year together, so it’s unclear when this mistake would’ve happened. And while Alicia Keys’ “Girl on Fire” plays during the aforementioned final sequence, the way Wang first introduces this musical motif is unrelated enough to his relationship that I quickly realized he was only discussing the song for the sake of bringing it back later. Overall, much of Retina Maneuver’s content feels reverse-engineered from its ending — which doesn’t diminish the final destination so much as the path toward it.

Marcus Merasty’s dance solo Golden Rez Dog, which ran at the Citadel, also stages a transformation of expansive significance. The performer begins the show hunched over a chalkboard, writing out — at an intentionally illegible angle — the Cree poem “The Old Rez Dog,” by Francine Merasty, their aunt. As Marcus explained in an insightful interview with NEXT Magazine, they and Francine are both interested in the tensions that permeate the figure of the rez dog, which their community traditionally saw as a keeper of the land but, owing to colonization, now often thinks of as wild and unwanted.

Wearing leather boots and earth tones, Merasty circles the chalkboard laboriously, heaving a bulky bag over their shoulder. From this sack come items of a harsher cast — a chain, a helmet, tap shoes — that facilitate their metamorphosis into a rez dog. Soon, Merasty is on all fours, leaping up and down on the chalkboard.

As with Wang’s military drill, it’s an image shaded with rich ambiguities. Merasty’s seemingly uncomfortable outfit weighs them down; their movements pulse with exertion. But an unwanted dog can still bark back, and they remain in control, rage simmering away. Because the chalkboard is this rez dog’s weapon, Merasty’s connection with Francine is ever-present: their metal paws clang off her words, releasing anguished war cries. Unlike in Retina Maneuver, the conflict ends, and Merasty emerges from their transformation, safe — if changed — and ready to smell flowers.

SummerWorks’ 2026 theme is Fight | Flight, and I heard echoes of this phrase in the way both performers dive into adrenaline-pumping battle states as a response to external forces. I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of the festival lineup: offerings include an interdisciplinary play about a sun allergy and a dance show called Body Story, so I expect physical storytelling to remain central.

The 2026 SummerWorks Performance Festival runs until August 16. More information is available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.