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Expect Theatre Kicks off 3-year project with Launch Party for Interdisciplinary HIGH RISE 19 stories in 19 stories…
Toronto, June 11, 2009 – On June 30, 2009 at the Albion Library, Expect Theatre celebrates the beginnings of its bold new three-year theatre project with a kick-off launch party and window into the creation process for what will ultimately be a new multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural production entitled HIGH RISE. As well, the kickoff features fabulous entertainment, food, and a celebration of Multiculturalism Day (June 27), most fitting in this community that boasts one of the most multicultural populations in North America.
The HIGH RISE Project Launch showcases the fascinating photographs and riveting audio recordings of interviews and stories that 19 youth collected from members of Toronto’s Jamestown/Rexdale community at the request of Expect Theatre; source material that will provide a basis for an ambitious new show that will ultimately borrow from theatre, musicals, hip-hop, and these real life stories for HIGH RISE – a theatrical event that will tell 19 stories about growing up in a 19-storey high rise in one of Canada's most culturally diverse, poor, and violent neighbourhoods.
The creation process for HIGH RISE began in this past winter when Expect Theatre Artistic Directors Laura Mullin and Chris Tolley handed out 19 still cameras and audio recorders to 19 young people from that community. After training with professional artists such as Mullin, Tolley, director/producer Joel Gordon and photographer Steve Carty, they were asked to collect stories and photographs from the people who live in the neighbourhood.
What these youth captured through their photographs and audio stories are real-life experiences that reflect the reality of violence, prejudice and poverty as well as the aspirations of the next generation who ultimately hope to rise above it all. The stories tell about arranged marriages, war-torn homelands, gang life and inspirational against-the-odds outcomes. This astonishing raw material amassed by these 19 young people will serve as the basis for the 19 stories in the play.
For example, Omar interviewed his brother about his difficult decision to participate in an arranged marriage with a woman from Somalia that he had never met. They were recently wed over the telephone and have yet to meet in person. A young woman interviewed her friend about her decision to wear a veil after years of bucking the tradition. Arfa interviewed her friend who has visited one of the most dangerous regions of the world: the Talaban-controlled region between Afghanistan and Pakistan and gives an eye-witness account seeing Talaban fighters carrying machine guns and the people caught in the cross hairs.
Mullin and Tolley will craft these true stories into a coherent theatre piece that captures the rich, diverse and highly creative energy that is Rexdale today. Through a collage of the material, HIGH RISE will follow the trajectory of 19 eclectic lives, lived amid the conflict and challenges of an intense and dangerous urban environment. It will reflect real-life neighbourhood tensions: one ethnicity versus another, the old struggling to hold onto the home country versus the young fighting to fit into the new, the community versus the police, the Bloods versus the Crips, and desperation versus hope.
HIGH RISE will feature theatre, video, spoken word, hip hop music, Bhangra and Caribbean dance to reveal the clash of cultures, and the beautiful chaos and energy of what happens when you pack hundreds of young people from the four corners of the earth into a single apartment building in Rexdale.
Mullin and Tolley have worked closely with the community, its youth and artists on three different projects over the past five years. They were continually moved by the richness of the stories of the people that comprise this neighbourhood. “We discovered a rich tapestry of global cultures including Somali, Jamaican, Pakistani, Russian, Italian, South Asian, Sri Lankan, and Saudi Arabian – to name a few,” says Mullin. “These diverse groups reside in one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country, as evidenced by the recent Jamestown gang bust in 2006, the largest in Canadian history,” states Tolley. “To this, add the demographic reality that 25% of the people in this community are under the age of 14. Put it all together and you have a truly unique canvas that will be reflected in High Rise.”
The public is welcome to attend the kick-off party and experience in a visceral way the raw visual and audio stories generated for High Rise thus far, in the centre of the neighbourhood that has revealed its stories to nineteen of its own.
Expect Theatre’s Artistic Directors, Laura Mullin and Chris Tolley have been working as a writing and directing team for over ten years, creating cutting edge events that explore modern urban life such as the plays Romeo/Juliet Remixed, STATIC, the CBC Radio drama The Tunnel Runners and the annual arts festival urbanNOISE.
Expect Theatre Kicks Off 3-year HIGH RISE project with Launch Party
June 30, 2009 at 5pm-8pm @ Albion Library, 1515 Albion Road - FREE
Information: highriseshow.com