THE CAVE
June 15-26
Luminato Festival
Sung in English and Cree, this 75-minute sung-through story cabaret combines live music and immersive visuals with wry humour and poignant storytelling. Intimate and entertaining, The Cave is a timely parable about the folly of our actions and the impact on friends and foes alike of the climate crisis that rages around us.
THE STANDARD SING
Audio Play
From the corner of Spadina and Dundas in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown, two friends, Helen and Justin, find themselves led to an old and abandoned theatre after receiving a cryptic note. Known as The Standard in the early 1920s, during the height of Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act, this venue had a history of renting its space to Cantonese Opera performers. Once inside, Helen and Justin run into the theatre’s mysterious and charismatic caretaker, Mr. Sing, who muses enthusiastically about the theatre’s history of Cantonese Opera performance.
CHINATOWN
September 13-17, 2022
City Opera Vancouver
Chinatown is a story of family and neighbourhood, racism and resistance, history and tomorrow. In two acts and two hours it examines six characters, two families, and a chorus of male ghosts, from the building of the CPR through to our own times. It deals with violence and despair, the Head Tax, the Exclusion Act, paper sons, and paper promise.
It is a Western opera, but incorporates Chinese themes, sounds and sensibilities. And it is a love story.
The inspiration for CHINATOWN lies in our history, a great neighbourhood and its people, and its resistance against racism – both historical, and resurgent today.