Luminato: puppets, drama, dance, queer sex and a funhouse on steroids

3 June 2019

Festival season is in full swing and Luminato - who brought us the spectacle that was the riotous Riot - dominates June right until Pride. Kicking off with a new production from national treasure Ronnie Burkett is a sure-fire way to generate excitement. Burkett never disappoints and Forget Me Not, billed as a "provocative call-to-arms for poetry and the enduring power of love," is certain to thrill. Because of the logistics of puppet sightlines, tickets are limited and, like Burkett's last masterpiece The Daisy Theatre, the shows will sell out quickly.

Two other stellar homegrown productions return for the festival. Obeah Opera, an "a capella retelling of the Salem witch trials, from the perspective of the Caribbean slave women who experienced it," was breathtaking when it was presented at the arts festival upstaging the Pan American Games. Anyone who missed the extraordinary vocals and powerful women would be wise to grab at this second chance. Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools was not as breathtaking, but it has been touring and it will be fascinating to see how time and refinement on the road has added to Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory's riveting performance.

My colleague Raymond Helkio has already previewed the screening of the documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, but it should be noted that it is followed by a discussion on LGBTQ+ Censorship in Art that not only relates to the film, but is central to our very existence as participants in the dominant culture. Mapplethorpe's example is echoed as the 519 Community Centre hosts The Art of Resistance, a community-based project on the theme of "Grieve, Rise, and Resist" that promises absolutely no censorship of any sort. Mapplethorpe also factors in Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) which melds eight-person choral ensemble Roomful of Teeth with Mapplethorpe's images as projections, and the poetry of Patti Smith, Tuttle and Essex Hemphill.

Queer genius and trickster Tomson Highway is the lyricist for The Cave, an "apocalyptic cabaret" featuring animals fleeing a forest fire and climate change. Highway is brilliant and, while the subject matter may be dire, the execution will be moving and magical. Daniel Brooks (The Runner, Who Killed Spalding Gray?) applies his multi-media sorcery to The Full Light of Day, a "film theatre hybrid about an aging matriarch who must contend with her family’s corrupt legacy before she dies." Masquerade brings spectacle and snow filtered through a Russian sensibility.

There are tragically short appearances by international dance troupes with Yang Liping interpreting Stravinsky's erotic masterpiece Rite of Spring complete with lions, and an avant-garde Columbian company saluting two artistic icons in Flowers for Kazuo Ohno (and Leonard Cohen). Africa is represented by Kira, The Path/La Voie driven by chants and drums. Indigenous voices take centre stage in BIZIINDAN! and a 200 voiced choral piece on the water's edge, Maada'ookii Songlines. And "We The North" fever is reflected in the hoop dreams docu-series True North.

There is more, a multitude of choices that is as multi-faceted and easy to get lost in as the funhouse on steroids that is House of Mirrors, an installation haunting Harbourfront for the duration of Luminato.