HATCH 2013 Applications Available Now

Harbourfront Centre Invitation for Artist Proposals

HATCH 2013 - Where New Performance Begins

Deadline for Proposals: June 20, 2012 @ 6:00 pm

TORONTO, ON (May 23, 2012) – Harbourfront Centre is pleased to announce an open call for proposals from Toronto-area artists and companies working in the field of performance for the HATCH 2013 season, guest curated by Trevor Schwellnus.

HATCH is designed to incubate and foster invention and innovation in the local performance community. Entering its ninth year, this programme has become an important element in the milieu of local performance development. Past HATCH projects include Hannah Moscovitch’s The Russian Play, Jess Dobkin’s Everything I’ve Got and Maggie MacDonald and Stephanie Markowitz’s Paper Laced With Gold.

HATCH is a key initiative in Harbourfront Centre’s mission to develop local artists and their unique practices. The HATCH residency and mentorship programme provides resources and professional assistance to a new generation of engaging and innovative contemporary artists to reach the next stage in the development in their work and careers.

Harbourfront Centre invites projects from emerging creators as well as established artists engaging in new collaborations or entering into new artistic territory. We encourage performance proposals from artists working across all disciplines, including, but not limited to, dance, theatre, performance art, music, etc.

Companies and artists selected to participate in HATCH will receive a one-week residency in Harbourfront Centre’s Studio Theatre. HATCH is not about an opportunity for staging a fully finished piece but about using the week to develop a new or existing piece of work.
Use of the residency period is at the discretion of the artist and needs of the project (i.e.
workshop, rehearsals, performance, etc.) at least one presentation of the work for the public and/or invited audience.

HATCH is seeking proposals from professional performance creators from across the GTA at any stage in their career. Proposals should demonstrate a clear artistic mandate, for either a new project or entering the next phase of an ongoing project. HATCH is interested in artists/companies whose work is contemporary in nature and committed to the development of inventive and creative performance based art.

This year’s guest curator, Trevor Schwellness is a Toronto-based Stenographer, designing sets, lighting and video for performance with independent artists. He is Artistic Producer of Aluna Theatre and was Designer-in-Residence at the Theatre Centre. Schwellness has collaborated in theatre and dance and has been nominated for 11 Dora Mavor Awards, winning three of them, a Harold and a Children’s Choice Award. His most recent work was Ajax & Little Iliad by Frank Cox-O’Connell and Evan Webber at Harbourfront Centre’s World Stage.


Full criteria, qualification information and instructions for applicants can be found here.  Or by calling 416.973.4237.


Completed applications should be delivered in person, by mail or courier to:

HATCH Proposals
Tanya Carinci
Performing Arts, Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto, ON M5J 2G8

Deadline: June 20, 2012 @ 6 pm

Preview: Pantheon

Harbourfront Centre’s unique performing arts residency programme HATCH, concludes its 2012 programme with Pantheon by Toronto cult queer band, Kids On TV. Pantheon takes place Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 8 pm in the Studio Theatre.

Combining bouncy house music, old-school hip hop, Liberace piano drama, mutant super-hero roller-disco battles, love songs between closeted 20th-century artists and epic choral arrangements, Pantheon celebrates the historical and fictional figures of Kids on TV’s personal and collective mythologies. This brand new work explores inspiring, strange and obscure figures of resistance and sexual revolution. Pantheon is a new focus on performance with reference to queer history, struggle and culture through music, dance, film, performance and politics.

Kids On TV emerged from the Toronto party Vaseline in the spring of 2003.  John Caffery, Minus Smile, and Roxanne Luchak are the core artists and together they have collaborated with musicians such as Boy George, Man Parrish, Shunda K, Julie Faught, Gentleman Reg, Katie Stelmanis of Austra, Diamond Rings and Bruce Benderson. Kids on TV transform environments with projections of their film and video work.  Over the years the party starting band has played in clubs, warehouses, schools, festivals, and bathhouses.

Pantheon aims to conceptualize and foster new material including choreography, photography, music and video and integrate the elements within their performance. “HATCH gives us the opportunity to further explore the mythology we’ve created,” says Kids On TV band member, Caffery, “And to develop innovative ways in which to bring the stories of those personalities within their myths to our audiences.” Since inception the group has focused on personalities that exist and thrive within the intersections of queer/trans, arts, academic, and activist communities.

Check out a snippet of the band below:

And click here for ticket information.

Preview: Paper Laced with Gold

Harbourfront Centre’s performing arts residency programme, HATCH 2012, continues with Paper Laced With Gold on Saturday, April 28 at 8 pm in the Studio Theatre. Paper Laced Productions, the creative team behind the Rat King Rock Opera, unite in the creation of a new musical. Paper Laced With Gold features writer/co-director Maggie MacDonald and producer/co-director Stephanie Markowitz, with music composed and performed by Stevie Jackson of Belle and Sebastian.

Paper Laced with Gold is a new musical about two of these lost characters, living on the banks of the once thriving St. Lawrence Seaway. For 10 years, Betty has been waiting tables at a truck stop, day-dreaming her life away. One night, Kevin, a young thug with a familiar face, tries to steal her car. While awaiting the police, Kevin recognizes Betty as his old babysitter, and she recognizes him as a frightened, closeted teen. Slowly they reveal their mutual recognition, and Kevin tells the story of what brought him to the truck stop. Paper Laced with Gold is a folk-rock musical that pays tribute to the storytelling style of forgotten dramas of the silver screen, and the golden sound of the AM radio waves that drew Glenn Gould to the North Shore of Lake Superior, in “The Search for Petula Clark.”

Paper Laced Productions is writer/co-director Maggie MacDonald and producer/co-director Stephanie Markowitz. They focus on themes of gender, physical difference, class, and environmental issues, pursuing social justice through art that communicates passionately, and without irony. Their choice to work with artists from a mix of disciplines as performers is one of the ways they achieve a raw and innocent performance style that minimizes the feeling of separation between audience and performer.

Maggie MacDonald is a novelist (Kill the Robot), musician (Betty Burke, The Hidden Cameras, Barcelona Pavilion, Republic of Safety) and environmental campaigner. MacDonald grew up along the banks of the mighty St. Lawrence River, a stone’s throw from the now defunct Domtar paper mill.

Stephanie Markowitz is a filmmaker, theatre artist, producer and musician (The Phonemes, Vag Halen). She recently produced a series of ten short films titled Little Films About Big Moments. Stephanie has produced a number of other short films and is currently developing a film adaptation of Zoe Whittall’s novel Bottle Rocket Hearts.

The original music for the show is performed by Scottish guitarist and songwriter Stevie Jackson, acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter Lisa Bozikovic (named one of the CBC’s “10 Artists to Watch” in 2010). The show features a cast that includes members of The Organ (Katie Ritchie), The Bicycles (Drew Smith), and all-lesbian, all-classic rock, cover band Vag Halen (Vanessa Dunn, Ritchie).  Installation artist Bojana Stancic makes her musical theatre debut as the owner of the truck stop, and performance artist Liz Peterson (Express Yourself) plays Betty, a waitress from Cornwall who stopped for coffee, and stayed for ten years. Amy Siegal is stage managing the production, and performer Stancic doubles as set designer.

For ticket information click here.

Preview: The Sheets, The...

HATCH 2012 presents THE SHEETS, THE… by Salvatore Antonio.  An Inaugural new work by The Empty Whole Group

The Empty Whole Group, a new multi-disciplinary theatre company in Toronto, launches on April 21st, 2012 at 8pm, with their first project, THE SHEETS, THE ..., as a part of Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH 2012.

THE SHEETS, THE... is written and directed by Governor General Award-nominated Salvatore Antonio. As part of the HATCH programme’s mandate of highlighting original, exciting and fresh voices in creation, Antonio offers a one-night-only experience of a new and challenging multi-disciplinary work-in-progress, that explores the expression (or lack thereof) of intimacy in all its modern day banality, disconnectedness, and solitude. Set in a hotel room, and centered around the role of the bed as witness, THE SHEETS, THE… unfolds as a revealing and unsparing foray into the depths of the physical and psychological core of the human need for emotional connection, sexual release, and simple tactile contact.

Salvatore Antonio, an established actor (Léo, Hosanna, Refugee Hotel) and writer (In Gabriel’s Kitchen, for which he was named a G.G Finalist 2007), has brought together a group of progressive performers and collaborators—both established and emerging—to breathe life into this creation that flirts with the boundaries of conventional theatre, performance art, dance and visual art. Artists include Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Greg Gale, Thomas Olajide, Jason Jazrawy, William Christopher Ellis, David Christo, Zion Forrest Lee, Amy Lee Lavoie (assistant director and dramaturge) and multi-award-winning Beth Kates (designer) have joined forces to build this charged and challenging piece.

THE SHEETS, THE... marks the first production from The Empty Whole Group. Under the artistic directorship of Antonio, The Empty Whole Group gathers like-minded artists to build around a central theme for each future production. The Empty Whole Group’s mandate is to produce  original performances that remain vital, while blurring the lines of what is considered theatre, dance, music or visual art.

HATCH 2012 runs from April 14 – May 5, 2012. Patrons can purchase a HATCH pass (includes tickets to all four productions) for $40, individual tickets for $15, or students/seniors/arts professionals $12. Visit the website here or call the box office at 416-973-4000 for more information.  Following each HATCH presentation, there is a Q&A, where the audience can engage with presenting artists.

ABOUT HATCH
Now in its ninth year, HATCH is a key initiative in Harbourfront Centre’s mission to develop local artists and their unique practices. HATCH mentorship provides resources and professional assistance to contemporary artists looking to explore a new element of their practice. By giving the space and time for this to happen, Harbourfront Centre hopes to develop and grow the best new work coming out of Toronto. This season’s guest curator is Toronto-based performance artist, Jess Dobkin.


HATCH has produced many projects which have gone on to presentations around the world and have garnered awards and professional accolades, including Hannah Moscovitch’s The Russian Play and Aluna Theatre’s Nohayquiensepa.

Harbourfront Centre News: Hatch presents Mortified

The Harbourfront's 2012 HATCH season continues with MORTIFIED.  HATCH is the Harbourfront Centre's performing arts residency program, and this year they have collaborated with dancer/choreographer Jenn Goodwin and visual artist Camilla Singh.  The pair have created MORTIFIED, an experimental experience of movement and mayhem. The two utilize mediums unfamiliar to them, like cheerleading, drums and tap dance, to connect with the audience and to facilitate a renegade concert.  Throughout,Goodwin and Singh use their new skills to explore themes of tension and transition with an eye towards emotional states of being.

“We like the uncertainty that’s contained in this way of working,” says Singh. “It has lead to a method of being able to read the information that’s contained in something like a state of anxiety rather than being by controlled it, says Singh.

*Jenn Goodwin is from Burlington, Ont. She grew up playing with Barbie, listening to Black Sabbath, hosting make-out parties in her parents’ basement, and falling in love weekly. She moved to Montreal and received a BFA at Concordia University in Contemporary Dance with a minor in Video, and was at once thrilled and horrified by the amount of rolling around on the floor. Her dance work has been performed all over Canada, NYC, Amsterdam, Australia and Brussels. She was twice nominated for the KM Hunter Award in dance. Her short dance films have been screened at festivals across Canada, NYC and Europe. She also programs art and performances for Toronto Special Events, including Nuit Blanche.

*Camilla Singh builds things faithfully to her ideas and not always to a recurrent medium or form, and she shares Catherine Opie’s view that “…it’s transgressive just to try to live your life the way you actually want to live it.”  Singh left her role as curator of Toronto’s MOCCA to experiment with materials in her studio and probe the questions that had formed around the experience of working in an office for decade. She is currently researching and producing a series of uniforms for curators called Uniforms for Non-Uniform Workwhich will comprise a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University in 2013, curated by Emelie Chhangur. 

*HATCH 2012 runs from April 14 – May 5, 2012. Patrons can purchase a HATCH pass (includes tickets to all four productions) for $40, individual tickets for $15, or students/seniors/arts professionals $12. Visit the Harbourfront Centre website or call the box office at 416. 973.4000 for more information.  Following each HATCH presentation, there is a Q&A and opportunity to engage and interact with the artists, as well as a post-show reception.

*ABOUT HATCH Now in its ninth year, HATCH is a key initiative in Harbourfront Centre’s mission to develop local artists and their unique practices. HATCH mentorship provides resources and professional assistance to contemporary artists looking to explore a new element of their practice. By giving the space and time for this to happen, Harbourfront Centre hopes to develop and grow the best new work coming out of Toronto. This season’s guest curator is Toronto-based performance artist Jess Dobkin.

*Information from the Harbourfront Centre Press Release