The Queen West Project

Performance

The Queen West Project had each of the six audience members wearing headphones, and using a map, on their own distinct route through the Queen West neighbourhood, leading to the grounds of CAMH, where they then followed a dancer through the grounds of CAMH. The piece ended in the community garden at the rear of the CAMH grounds, where all six audience members gathered with the six dancers.

In collaboration with choreographer and artist Allison Cummings, I spent several months in Toronto in 2012 making The Queen West Project, which premiered Theatre Passe Muraille’s Theatre Beyond Walls season, funded by a special 50th anniversary grant from the Metcalfe Foundation. The Queen West Project was a site specific immersive dance piece for six audience members at a time, questioning the relationship between homelessness and mental health in Queen West. Queen West is one of Canada’s most rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods, and a neighbourhood that is built around Canada’s oldest mental health facility, CAMH. The piece was written in consultation with former street youth living at Eva’s Phoenix, and a past resident of CAMH.

Listen to a clip on Soundcloud

Video

Performances

Past Performances

12/09/201213/09/2012

Queen Street West, with a meeting point at MOCCA.

Toronto, Canada

Reviews

"In three decades of theatre, this ranks, despite its brevity, as one of the most intimate and moving pieces of theatre this reviewer has ever experienced." *****

John Coulbourn, Special to the Sun

Credits

Directed by

Deborah Pearson and Allison Cummings

Concept and Script

Deborah Pearson in consultation with Eva's Phoenix

Choreography

Allison Cummings

Dancers

Lucy Rupert, Viv Moore, Jolyane Langlois, Kevin A. Ormsby, Andrew Hartley and Bill Coleman

Sound Designer and Composer

Thomas Ryder Payne

Stage Manager

Gillian Lewis

Commissioned by Theatre Passe Muraille for the Theatre Beyond Walls season.

Related Projects

CO-ED

CO-ED (Or how to become your gender in 10 easy steps) was a double bill for the final year drama students at York University of an all male play directed by Ross Manson called Table Talk that I wrote when I was 22 years old, and a devised piece based on that first play, called The Play About the Other Play, created by myself, the director Claire Calnan, and the female students.

Music’s Been Ruined by Dating

Music’s Been Ruined by Dating was an intimate piece for four audience members at a time, staged in a tent made of bedsheets.

Like You Were Before

Like You Were Before was developed at BAC and the Arches. It was presented as a studio show, but in Edinburgh I performed an intimate version at Alphabet Video, the legendary independent video store that has since closed, and where I worked when I first arrived in the UK.