Toronto’s SummerWorks Performance Festival returns this August to mark its 35th anniversary with a multidisciplinary lineup of theatre, dance, music, and live art presented across the city.
Taking place from August 7 to 17, the 2025 festival features more than 35 projects and over 200 artists. Performances will be staged in theatres, galleries, parks, transit hubs, and other urban spaces.
This year’s programming is centred on the theme Back to the Future / Forward to the Past, inspired by the words of Elder Dr. Duke Redbird. The theme invites artists and audiences to explore time — past, present, and future — through personal, cultural, and political lenses.
Featured works include d’bi.young anitafrika’s The Sankofa Trilogy, a revisiting and reimagining of three of the artist’s earlier plays; Wayne Burns’ Cake, a solo play exploring masculinity and beauty standards; Vanessa Goodman and Caroline Shaw’s Graveyards and Gardens, an immersive blend of dance and live music; and Daniele Bartolini and Vincent Leblanc-Beaudoin’s Le Concierge, a site-specific performance set in the corridors of a Toronto secondary school.
The lineup also features artists from Taiwan and South Korea, works staged in public spaces, community engagement projects, and more.
“For our 35th anniversary, we’re not just looking back — we’re pausing in the present to listen carefully, and to imagine what’s ahead,” wrote artistic director Michael Caldwell in a press release. “This milestone festival is filled with contemporary performance works that examine memory, identity, ritual, and resistance through a temporal lens.”
Tickets will go on sale July 13, with full programming details available on the SummerWorks website.
The SummerWorks Performance Festival runs from August 7 to 17. More information is available here.
SummerWorks Performance Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Krystal Abrigo
Krystal is Intermission’s Publishing and Editorial Assistant. A Scarborough-based writer of Philippine and Egyptian descent, she graduated cum laude with an Honours BA in Professional Writing from York University, specializing in Book Publishing and Corporate/Organizational Communication. She enjoys reading bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin. At any given moment, you can probably find her at a concert or on a long walk somewhere in Toronto.
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