KEYNOTE PROJECT

PERFORMANCE ENCYCLOPAEDIA PUBLIC RECORDINGS (CAN)
Brought Exclusively to ATF2017 by OzAsia Festival.
Supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council.

A cast of writers produce an encyclopaedia of making and witnessing that’s readable only in the highly contingent and social conditions of performance. The book’s publication is performed for, and by, the audience: they witness the process of printing, binding and distribution, before opening and reading a text. 

Every iteration of the performance encyclopaedia is an entirely new and revealing group effort. The book stays in print for just an hour. At the end, a bell sounds, the lighting changes, and the encyclopaedias go out of print. For the brief time it remains in circulation, the performance encyclopaedia stages a present moment where reading is a convivial act and writing produces not objects, but temporal and collective experience.

TOMOYUKI ARAI

Tomoyuki Arai (Director, Sound Live Tokyo / Program Officer, TPAM – Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama). Born in Yokohama in 1974. BA in literature at Waseda University and MA in theatre and film arts at its Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Has been working with PARC – Japan Center, Pacific Basin Arts Communication after archival work at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, technical work with Gekidan Kaitaisha and videomaking for movements for contingent workers’ labor union and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Translated works by The Wooster Group, Tim Etchells / Forced Entertainment, Ant Hampton / Rotozaza, Jacob Wren / PME, MaisonDahlBonnema & Needcompany, Evan Webber / Small Wooden Shoe, Jun Tsutsui / dracom, Tori Kudo / Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Mark Teh / Five Arts Centre, Taher Najib, Ho Rui An and Ken Jacobs.

SHANNON COCHRANE

Shannon Cochrane is a Toronto based performance artist. Her work has been presented in festivals, theatres and at various events across Canada and the USA, and in over 18 countries across Europe, Asia, and the UK. Cochrane is the Artistic Director of FADO Performance Art Centre (established 1993), a Toronto-based artist-run centre that presents the work of contemporary performance artists from across Canada and around the world. Shannon is also a co-founding member of the Toronto Performance Art Collective (established 1997), which presents the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art every two years in Toronto.

 

AME HENDERSON

Ame Henderson grew up on Vancouver Island and now lives in Toronto where she is an Associate Artist with Public Recordings, a collaborative operation that conjoins artistic research, performance creation, learning, and publication. Henderson’s choreographic works have been researched and performed across Canada and internationally. In 2014 she was artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario where the project rehearsal/performance investigated that institution’s history of live performance. Other recent projects include Henderson/Castle: voyager, a commission on the invitation of Toronto Dance Theatre created in collaboration with acclaimed musician Jennifer Castle and Out of Season, a new duet with Matija Ferlin. 

 

EVAN WEBBER

Evan Webber is a writer and performance maker who lives in Toronto. Evan’s work considers the relationship between time and text, and between narratives and institutions. Recent projects include the ongoing HOW TO WORK: a performance encyclopaedia (2011-15), rehearsal/performance (2014) and CAPITALIST DUETS (2015). His plays include Ajax and Little Iliad (2012), co-created with Frank Cox-O’Connell and Antigone Dead People (2014), a co-production of Toronto’s Small Wooden Shoe and Osaka, Japan’s experimental theatre company, dracom. Evan’s an Associate Artist of Public Recordings, and he is curator of the HATCH performance residency at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. His work’s been shown across Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Evan is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, where he is now a guest instructor.

AUSTRALIAN COLLABORATORS

JOSHUA CAMPTON

Josh Campton is a young Aboriginal artist with disability. He is a Larrakia (N.T.), Wadaman and Karajarri (W.A.) man and he also has connections to Western Victoria. He has ancestors who came to Australia in the 1800’s from Ireland, China, Germany, Japan, England, the Philippines and Scotland.
Josh is a dancer, actor and poet. He performs with Restless Dance Theatre, No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, Tutti and Tracking Culture with Kura Yerlo. He has performed in Darwin, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, and has appeared in a number of films and documentaries including Lost in Confusion (2011/12), Mauriceʼs Symphony (2015/16), Mutt (to be released 2017) and Jeremy the Dud (to be released in October 2017). Josh was awarded a Jump Mentorship through the Australia Council in 2012. His own film, The Landscape Diaries, a dance film with poetry will be released late 2017. 

 

JANE HOWARD

Jane Howard is a contributing editor at Kill Your Darlings, coordinator of HIVE at the Adelaide Film Festival, and a freelance arts journalist, critic and researcher. Translated into multiple languages, she has worked for the Guardian across Australia and in Asia, and her work has been commissioned in Scotland, Canada, and the Czech Republic. Her experimental criticism projects have been supported by organisations including The Lifted Brow and the Performance & Art Development Agency. She is currently writing a book about art and grief, and Jane tweets as @noplain.

 

AFEIF ISMAIL

Afeif Ismail is an internationally published playwright and poet whose works are translated into German and Swedish. 

Afeif’s cultural identity as a ‘Son of the World’ is informed by being an Arabic-speaking, African Sudanese Australian. Afeif’s plays have been recognized in Australia and internationally through winning awards, invitations and nominations. 

 

 

 

 

 

PHILIP KAVANAGH

Philip Kavanagh is a playwright based between Adelaide and Sydney. His writing credits include: for the State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA)/Brink Productions: an adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe; for Tiny Bricks/Brink Productions/Adelaide Festival 2016: Deluge; and for STCSA: Jesikah. Phillip completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Flinders University, and a Graduate Diploma of Dramatic Art (Playwriting) at NIDA. Phillip has been awarded the Patrick White Playwrights Award, the Jill Blewett Playwrights Award, the STCSA Flinders University Young Playwrights Award and the Colin Thiele Creative Writing Scholarship.

 

 

 

MERLYNN TONG

Merlynn Tong is a Chinese Singaporean Actor and Playwright based in Brisbane, Australia. Some of her performances include Viral (2016, Shock Therapy Productions, Gold Coast Arts Centre), Straight White Men (2016, La Boite Theatre), Ma Ma Ma Mad (2015, Wonderland Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse), The Theory of Everything (2015, Brisbane Festival), The Wizards from Oz (2015, Taiwan, Taoyuan International Children’s Festival), Hot Brown Honey (2015, Judith Wright Centre), The C Word (2014, Dir: Todd MacDonald, Metro Arts), American Music Club (2014, Brisbane Festival), The Golden Show (2012, Japan, Dairakudakan Dance Group) and hosting Out of the Box Children’s Festival (2014, QPAC).

As a playwright, she has recently published two of her one-woman shows, Ma Ma Ma Mad (2015) and Blue Bones (2016). Ma Ma Ma Mad is based on the true story of her mother’s suicide and Blue Bones is a semi-auto biography of teenage romance as it blossoms in the bustling streets of Singapore and soon, combusts into a dynamo of domestic violence. Merlynn is currently working with Playlab and Playwriting Australia (Lotus Programme) to create her third play, Hot Wet Void, a sticky journey through the confessions of migrants living in humid Singapore.