This is Not a Theater
From conversations with Plays & Players actors, directors, and stagehands from the last forty years, Indian-Thai artist Navin Rawanchaikul reproduces that history, and his own experiences researching it, on gigantic illustrative banners, a comic book, and video portraits. Rawanchaikul's participatory and community-based illustrative aesthetic breaks down the barriers between artist and audience with lively humor and the stunning breath of his company's colorful and detailed work.
Audiences can read the comic book based on interviews, listen to a live four-piece band playing music from past productions, view a theatrical installation transpiring in the theater, and listen audio recordings of stories told by past performers at Plays & Players. Serving as a reflection on the community and theatrical productions, This is Not a Theater comprises the history and personality that has inhabited this site from its beginnings to the present.
All The Sex I've Ever Had
“At first, it was interesting to talk about sex, but after spending time with a bunch of seniors in Toronto, I realized the thing that’s really exciting is their ontological state of mind, the way they are in the world, their openness and generosity.” Darren O’Donnell, artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex
“A portrait . . . that is both heart rendering and joyously life-affirming.” The Straits Times
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Senior citizens from Philadelphia tell you all about sex: the evolution of their sexuality over the course of their lives, the current state of their romantic affairs, their challenges and pleasures. No topic is too hot: first crushes, lost virginity, turbulent affairs, relationships that transcend class and racial boundaries, and deaths of loved ones. Hear the experiences of entire lifetimes as a panel of elders triggers conversations, fields questions, and dances with the audience.
Toronto's theater-laboratory Mammalian Diving Reflex presents their latest socially conscious reality theater piece, one that challenges the cultural neutering of older people and discussions of sex. All the Sex I’ve Ever Had reestablishes seniors as people who have a lot to teach and a lot to share—and who demonstrate how ageing can yield a way of existing that is open, generous, and fearless.
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Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier conducting culturally explorative work from Toronto, Canada, since 1993. Evolving from staged-based performance, the artists of Mammalian are committed to the creation of “social acupuncture”—playful, provocative, site-specific, and social-specific participatory performances that extend the reach of theater-based productions, gallery-based participatory installations, video products, art objects, and theoretical texts. At the core of the sociological art shop are artistic and managing producers, Eva Verity and Jenna Winter; youth program “Young Mammals” director and programmer, Annie Wong and Alexandra Hong; and artistic and research director, Darren O’Donnell. The team has successfully carried their energies into the fields of urban planning, writing, directing, art history, education, photography, videography, filmmaking, industrial design, acting, playwriting, and qualitative and quantitative research. They have traveled more than fifty cities with collaborators including international art festivals, art galleries, city administrations, schools, and other socially-related institutions.
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This presentation of All the Sex I've Ever Had has been made possible in part by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts Theatre International Program and the Ontario Arts Council's National and International Touring program.
