The future of art has arrived at Luminato Festival Toronto

Just over 3 months ago, Toronto’s international arts festival dedicated to performance, media and visual arts, and programming, heralded a name change. Luminato became Luminato Festival Toronto. The name reflects the Festival’s successful 13-year history in Toronto and reinforces Toronto and Canada as “global destinations for world-class arts and culture”. 

 Along with the name change came the announcement of festival dates and programming of more than 40 free and ticketed events across the city. Just three weeks later, the COVID-19 lockdown descended. 

The intrepid festival was undaunted. The future of theatre is now, so the reinvention continues. Luminato Festival Toronto: Virtual 2020 runs from Thursday, June 11 7 p.m. (EDT) until Saturday, June 13, 12 midnight (EDT). The program includes more than 20 hours of free programming, 4 world premieres and 4 works created specifically for the virtual edition. Having always prided itself on providing something for everyone, the festival now truly offers something to anyone, anywhere in the world. “Accessibility is top of mind for me, first of all, with the festival having gone virtual and being available far and wide,” says Cathy Gordon, Festival and Community Engagement Manager. ”It has allowed people to go to shows with friends who live in different cities, who live in different countries. You get to meet up in these various watch parties or listening rooms and have this joint experience that has been really wonderful for some folks who hadn’t been able to do that.”

In her view, “everything has pros and cons.” The pros in this environment are that “we get to broadcast May I Take Your Arm? a performance by Alex Bulmer that otherwise we would not be able to share with our Luminato audiences.” She explains that Kingston-based FOLDA (Festival of Live Digital Arts) is the festival that is presenting this work that Red Dress Productions is producing with Bulmer. May I Take Your Arm? (created by Alex Bulmer, Anna Camilleri, Tristan Whiston and Katie Yealland) emerged from audio-recorded walks between Bulmer, who is a blind performer, and strangers who acted as sighted guides in downtown Toronto. These recordings evolved into an immersive, interactive theatre piece, and May I Take Your Arm? has now been further reimagined as an online performance during a global pandemic when taking one other’s arms is no longer an option. May I Take Your Arm? is one of two Luminato listening parties for the blind and low vision community, hosted by Christine Malec. 

“In this new world, we can have . . . simultaneous broadcasts occurring, so different people, depending on what platform they go to, will have a similar experience. And then if people choose to come and experience that show with our particular listening party, then we have created a unique experience by having Christine, who is such a gifted host, podcaster, producer and interviewer hosting the listening party to keep the social aspect going.” Prior to Luminato, Malec had already conducted an interview with Bulmer and Sarah Garton Stanley (co-creator of FOLDA and associate artistic director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre), which aired on the access media international platform. Despite that platform having already gone out internationally, “we already have a few people registering for the listening party as we speak”. Gordon aims to have a “real cross-section of folks” come in and enjoy the experience, which includes a post-show talk with Bulmer, who’s in a different city, “which is pretty wild”.

And what about other kinds of accessibility? “Absolutely!” Gordon smiles. “Right now, there are multiple points of access to address: American Sign Language (ASL) being one way, captioning being another way, and we are embracing both of those in this festival.” In February, organizers were looking at relaxed performances, physical access, financial access, and social support. This meant putting supports in place to ensure that people felt safe before they arrived. They planned for a check-in point, with volunteers available to ensure that people had the support they needed to get from a parking lot or TTC stop to that check-in point. They planned for the social context: in the form of a host who can identify with their lived experience and provide valuable extra context for the work they’re going to see. That’s how the relationship with Christine evolved: “She was one of the supports that we are already bringing on for partially-sighted audiences. Then Natasha Bacchus was the host that we had identified for the ASL Afternoon.” Bacchus herself is a performer, and she will be performing two short excerpts of Maya Angelou poems which are interpreted into ASL.

With so much to choose from – requiring just the easy click of a mouse – how to choose? “In typical Luminato style, there’s a little something for everyone, so it really depends on what you’re interested in,” offers Gordon. “We have drama. We have theatre. We have panels. We have community engagement. We have some ‘classics from the vault’, as [Luminato’s Artistic Director] Naomi Campbell likes to say. Festival offerings include a conversation about Refuge, a new album by the multi-Juno Award Award-nominated Sultans of String; a request radio hour with Ron Nelson; and a conversation about climate change and activism with UK-based live artist Amy Sharrocks. Science journalist and author of Sea Sick, Alanna Mitchell even demonstrates the art of the interview in Field Notes from the Future, produced by The Theatre Centre and presented by FOLDA. 

Highlights of previous Luminato Festivals are also reprised: for instance, from Luminato 2015 comes R. Murray Schafer’s theatrical oratorio Apocalypsis (with a cast of 1,000!), as well as Blast Theory’s single-shot film My One Demand, which Gordon describes as “ a very unusual production, like the single longest livestream ever”. She recalls that the concept was that the show was live, but audience members would experience it as if they were inside a movie theatre, like Scotiabank Plaza. “What you were watching on the screen was literally happening out in the street in this very, very long dolly shot that was over an hour and a half walk, with all these different characters arriving and interacting and overlapping on this long journey through the city and, especially in this moment, going outside.” 

Also being reprised is 2019’s sleeper hit cabaret concert The Cave with music by John Millard, lyrics by Tomson Highway, and direction by Adam Paolozza. The Cave is one of the Festival’s “high-quality recordings where, typically, the circumstances of the recordings are a little bit unique. The Cave was livestreamed last year. It was the only show that was livestreamed that year, but it was set up to be livestreamed, as opposed to, ‘oh, we have to figure out how to livestream all of a sudden. Oh my goodness!’ This was purposefully, carefully crafted and intentionally set up at that time – and now we have this recording that we’re able to use at this moment, as well as the subject matter being apropos and really relevant!”

My One Demand will also be captioned as part of the feature piece within the ASL afternoon, and The Cave is the Festival’s second listening party on Saturday night, audio described by Rebecca Singh.

On Friday, June 12 and Saturday, June 13, the Festival will feature late night programming with a Black Summers Night dance party with Unit 2, Black Lives Matter Toronto and Tea Base and The REVELATION, featuring Les Femmes Fatales with DJ Nik Red and Live VJ Roxanne Luchak. Special appearances include Anishinaabe hand drummer-singer Nimkii Osawamick, Juno Award-winner Quique Escamilla. and Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Zuppa Theatre Co. While Black Summers Night is going to be an “incredible experience” Gordon, notes the “added urgency” it assumes now, when the world is standing together to dismantle systemic anti-Black racism. “The onus is on us to also step up, recognizing institutionally that it has to be addressed and knowing that this has already been part of our urgent conversations.” Black Summers Night will be “based around a specific audience, an audience that needs a place that feels safe and feels joyous and feels relevant to what they need in this moment. The event is raising funds in support of the Regis Korchinski-Paquet gofundme campaign.

Luminato Festival Toronto: Virtual 2020 continues until midnight on June 13. The full schedule is available here.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2020