Neanderthal Arts Festival

Brief Encounters is an interdisciplinary performance experiment designed to fuse disciplines and push artistic boundaries. Under the mentorship of Katy Harris-McLeod and Mara Branscombe, the guest performers pick twelve inspiring artists/creators and match them in unusual pairings. Two weeks prior to the show dates the artists are allowed meet and begin working. From this point on, the only criteria is that the piece be a new collaborative effort. The Tomorrow Collective brings a one of a kind artistic mash-up to the Neanderthal Festival.

Produced by Katy Harris-McLeod, Mara Branscombe & Kristina Lemieux

Click on the Artist names to find out a little bit about each pairing.

• Cristina Bucci (Urban Dance) + Scruffmouth (Spoken Word)
• Susan Bertoia (Theatre) + Gurp Sian (Bhangra Dance)
• Jesse Scott (Creative Coder) + Kenji Maeda (Theatre and Film)
• Riel Hahn (Comedian) + Corbin Murdoch (Songwriter)

What might these artists put together? Only way is to buy a ticket and find out!

A new creation by Conrad Alexandrowicz that explores our addiction to tragedy, comedy, melodrama, horror and fairytale. The work incorporates movement, invented speech and experimental poetry imploring texts by Canadian poet Erin Mouré. The genres of storytelling suggest that theatre is going on all around us. This is not really a play at all, but a performance work about playmaking.

With four fearless actors (Sebastian Kroon, Jane Osbourne, Linda Quibell and Crystal Verge), House of X offers its viewers a black comedy exploring the funny, disturbing and mysterious.

Originally from Toronto, Conrad Alexandrowicz has performed with a number of Canadian dance companies and also produces his own work. He has created over 45 dance and physical-theatre works, some of which have been presented across Canada, in New York, and Europe. Conrad founded Wild Excursions Performance in 1994 as a physical theatre company and has previously won the Critics’ Choice Award for Innovation (Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards 2004).

House of X opens on Thursday the 19th at the Historic Theatre. To read more about this production from the Georgia Straight's Kathleen Oliver, click here.