The 2010 Canoe Theatre Festival

Small Wooden Shoe - Toronto

"a completely different kind of show from some of Toronto's most exciting new generation of theatre artists"
- Michael Clark, Curator

Gutenberg, Copernican, Newtonian, Industrial, Darwinian, Nuclear, Information: 7 scientific revolutions a grade 8 teacher once said altered the course of humanity.

Demonstrating the difficulty of demonstrating the effects of progress on our lives, six performers, not in any way experts in science, attempt to understand and question our notions of progress and knowledge. With unrehearsed questions and answers, live demonstrations, ukulele sing-alongs and a Staples catalogue worth of whiteboards and things they found around the house, they share that research with an audience. Absurd and delightful with a critical eye and a casual formalism, Small Wooden Shoe tries to help. And believes live performance might just be the best way.

"Dedicated to the Revolutions is the creative interpretation of how change occurs."
- Walrus Blog

"thought-provoking and aesthetically interesting, but most importantly, ... a sense of fun."
- The Globe and Mail

"Charmingly insistent on the right of non-experts and artists to grapple with what science means for how we understand progress ... and how we understand ourselves."
- Nora Young, CBC's Spark

" the kind of fun show that'll also appeal to those who don't usually go to the theatre."
- NOW Weekly, Toronto Review

Watch a video of Dedicated to the Revolutions.

Conceived and Directed by Jacob Zimmer
In Collaboration with Ame Henderson
Created with and Performed by Frank Cox-O'Connell, Chad Dembski, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Erin Shields, Evan Webber
Created with and Designed by Trevor Schwellnus
Created with and produced by Erika Hennebury

Second Playing Space, Timms Centre for the Arts (87 Ave & 112 St)
Length: 90 Minutes
Tickets: $20 (Students/Seniors: $18)

Originally produced with the assistance of One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo, Calgary's International Festival of the Arts and in association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Presented in partnership with The High Performance Rodeo.

Prosperous Tangueros Consortium - Edmonton

Tango - the definitive dance of sexual tension. Intense, deadly serious, multi-faceted.

Raven - does not give a fuck about complexity or dance. Takes a beak to the balloons humans blow out of their heads and asses. POP! Hop. Squawk.

Narrative, imagery and Argentine tango interweave in Blood Opera to create a luscious dance of word and flesh. The words come from award winning poet Jannie Edwards' book of the same title. The piece is structured like a songbook, so it can take us - from chats in the garden with Judas and Freud, to pornography and prairie family dinners, to suicides and epic prairie sunsets.

Each song/dance becomes more intense with the supercharged energies of money, lust, poetry, family, elopement, breakup, fatigue and ecstasy - which Raven hops in with his one-liners to take the piss out of.

Inspired by the Argentine tango, Blood Opera brings together mythic streams from the Old and New, North and South Worlds. It's a fusion of forms, as is the tango itself. The tango was born of African slave music rhythms and European bandoneon and violin melody; of Old World classical ballroom and the hot Latin dances of the New World rhythms and European bandoneon and violin melody.

Poetry by Jannie Edwards
Directed & Dramaturged by Mark Henderson
Choreographed by Kathleen Ochoa

La Cité Theatre (8627 - 91 Street)
Tickets: $20 (Students/Seniors: $18)

Awards for the Poet
Blood Opera: The Raven Tango Poems
Arc Poem of the Year contest, 2003, 2nd place
Lapointe Prize, Acorn-Livesay People's Festival, 2000 (1 st)

Surreal SoReal Theatre – Edmonton

"a surreal high energy ride of physical theatre from one of Edmonton's hottest young companies”
– Michal Clark, Curator

Four marionettes from a traveling show fall off their wagon in the big city and become fugitives, running from their mysterious creator, Grumplestock. Now Tilly, Cresh, Tubix and Morelle must hide away in the dark city Bowble, meeting an array of characters clinging to their rigid class systems. Grumplestock's marionettes feel the secret of Bowble creep closer as the truth of their creation becomes clear.

The wild adventure of Grumplestock's puts strings on the actors; marionettes who transform into over twenty-five characters in the world of Bowble. This mesmerizing piece of theatre brings the inevitability of fate and our constant search for escape to the foreground.

"Grumplestock's may be the most refreshingly different and sophisticated piece of theatrical creation at this year's [2006 Fringe] festival"
– Vue Weekly

"...so new, so wonderfully fresh, that it takes your breath away"
4 and a half Suns – The Edmonton Sun

"...a slick, smart and magical little play that manages to be gritty and earnest at once. The writing and performances are endlessly clever"
– Edmonton Journal

Written by: Jon Lachlan Stewart, Kevin Jesuino, and Trish Lorenz
Directed by: Clinton Carew
Featuring: Jesse Gervais, Kristi Gunther-Hansen, Jon Lachlan Stewart, Vincent Forcier
Set, Costume and Lighting design: Cory Sincennes
Makeup by: Tata Tuviera

Second Playing Space, Timms Centre for the Arts (87 Ave & 112 St)
Tickets:$20 (Students/Seniors: $18)

Cowgirl Opera Theatre - Edmonton

"a rock music spectacle that dares us to consider what we consume as entertainment" - Michael Clark, Curator

In a surreal prairie landscape, wayward girls are being lured into the tent-prayer meetings of a glamorous female evangelist. She and her bible-salesman boyfriend quickly groom their new devotees into peep-show players, presenting acts that delight, horrify, and ensure salvation. There is no who-done-it here, no crime to solve, no story to unravel. At this peep show nothing matters but everything has a price. It's a backward world where public execution is a performance, and accidental necrophiliacs can find redemption in true love.

After a sold-out run in Winnipeg, the world's worst peep show is back featuring the music of Curtis Ross (bebop Cortez), a five-piece band and eight performers.

PIG will implicate you in a world of faith, justice, public spectacle and non-Kosher meat.

"Its humour and comic timing are throbbing with hilarity, after my sides had recovered from the strain of constant laughter."
- SEE Magazine

"I've seen a lot of "out there" shows in my years as a reviewer. I can honestly say ... I've never seen a show as appallingly offensive, sacrilegious, profane, or disgusting as Pig. It's also outrageously hilarious, and I loved it."
- Joff Schmidt, CBC Winnipeg

"Pig... is the best musical to hit the fringe since Hedwig and the Angry Inch. - Five stars!"
- Bob Williams, Winnipeg Free Press

"Not for the faint of heart, the squeamish, or anyone hoping to get into heaven."
- Brad Cartman, Winnipeg Sun

See Images from PIG!

Written by: Kristine Nutting
Music by: Curtis Ross and Jason Kodie
Directed by: Eileen Sproule
Featuring: Jesse Gervais, Georgina Beaty, Joelle Prefontaine, Caitlin Fulton, Andraea Sartison, Ava Markus, Kristine Nutting
Lighting Design:  Russel Ault
The Band: Jason Kodie (le fuzz), Silas Grevis (James T Kirks), Curtis Ross (bebop Cortez, Bronto Scorpio), Cam Boyce (Str8 Up Gypsies)

La Cité Theatre (8627 91 Street)
Length: 120 minutes
Tickets: $20 (Students/Seniors: $18)

Rotozaza Theatre - London, UK

"Etiquette difficult to describe but unforgettable to experience."
- Michael Clark, Curator

You're in a Paris café, a character in a Jean-Luc Godard movie. Or you find yourself an old man finding yourself in a conversation with a beautiful stranger. Or, onstage in Ibsen's classic play "A Doll's House"

Etiquette is an intimate half-hour experience for two people at a café table that people around the globe have experienced. It creates a private space in a public setting where the two people are the performers and the only audience. No one else watches - others in the cafe are unaware. The two wear headphones that tell them what to say to each other, what to do. Etiquette offers the fantasy of speaking to someone without having to plan what you say, and the thrill of disowning your responsibility for it. In the conversation, the roles of 'audience' and 'actor' are imperceptibly assumed and exchanged.

"Etiquette explores the gap between language and meaning. In creating an entirely private space in a public setting, something extraordinary happens."
- Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

If the line between audience and performer seems blurred, Rotozaza's new drama, Etiquette, erases it entirely.
- Jason Zinoman, The New York Times

Read the full New York Times review.

Watch a video about Etiquette.

Conceived Written and directed by Ant Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali

Leva Café (11053 86 Avenue)
Length: 30 Minutes
Tickets:$8

Etiquette can be experienced in 13 different languages, including: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Slovene, and Japanese.

Presented in partnership with The Vancouver East Cultural Centre