Ideas & Industry: PuSh Assembly Week 1 highlights

January 16, 2017

However you describe yourself—whether emerging, mid-career or established; dance, theatre, music, inter/multi/pluri-discipline; artist, manager, presenter, producer or curator; first-time single-ticket buying audience member or ongoing PuSh Passholder—the PuSh Assembly is designed to enhance your PuSh Festival experience, to connect with the ideas and the people behind the work you see on stage, to engage with what’s behind the work and what drives it.

Above all else, I hope the work you experience will move you, inspire you, resonate with you after you’ve left the theatre. If you want to take that one step further, we invite you to join us for the PuSh Assembly to dig deeper into that experience, through workshops, talks, and opportunities to connect, share, and network with performing arts professionals.

It’s a lot to navigate, so once again the PuSh Assembly features two series: Ideas and Industry.

The Ideas Series takes place through the three weeks of the Festival; it is free and open access, targeted to as broad an audience as possible. The Industry Series requires a pass and is concentrated during the final week; it focuses on practitioners, those developing or deep into their careers in the field of contemporary performance and wishing to connect with colleagues.

Take a workshop, maybe even two! Go behind the scenes at a post-show conversation. Get up close and personal at a artist chat. Step inside the academy. Find out about new projects at a pitch session. Hear from foremost leaders in contemporary performance presentation today.

—Joyce Rosario, Associate Curator

Joyce’s Week 1 PuSh Assembly Highlights:

Ideas Series
One of my highlights of last year’s PuSh Assembly was our first Critical Ideas series, in partnership with SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies and headed by Peter Dickinson, faculty member in both the English Department and the School for Contemporary Arts at SFU (in addition to being PuSh’s former board president!).

You may have noticed that there’s a ton of “works based on other work” at PuSh this year. For example, Brett Bailey’s adaptation of Verdi’s Macbeth (itself an adaptation of Shakespeare’s), and Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s adaptation of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, to name a few. The first Friday of our Critical Ideas series digs deep into staged adaptations, from the history, aesthetics and ethics.

Workshops
This year, we’re offering more workshops than ever before. In just the first week, we have a two-day choreographic intensive with Jan Martens (Sweat Baby Sweat), and a half-day masterclass with Jibz Cameron (Dynasty Handbag).