This season, Factory launches CrossCurrents Canada, presentations of uncompromising Canadian stories by intercultural artists from across the country. For its debut CrossCurrents Canada production, Factory presents WE KEEP COMING BACK, a (mostly) true story of a Canadian artist, his mother, and the odyssey to their pre-Holocaust familial homes in Poland.
On their quest to work on their relationship and discover their lost ancestral history, real-life mother and son, Mary Berchard and Michael Rubenfeld head to Poland for the first time. This site of historic trauma offers healing, new friends, new love, and a surprising vibrant Jewish revival. Polish collaborator Katka Reszke, writer, filmmaker, and researcher in Jewish history, culture, and identity, acts as guide and adds her own incredible stories to the mix. Intimate and humorous, WE KEEP COMING BACK explores how confronting ghosts and pre-conceived ideas can uncover something beautiful and transformative.
Selfconscious Theatre, led by Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley, was established as a laboratory for the artists to use the theatrical form to investigate personal narratives that challenge the boundaries of realities. Through the imaginative telling of their own stories, they guide themselves, and their audiences, towards new perceptions and possible futures. Michael and Sarah are marking 10 years of Selfconscious Theatre collaborations.
Michael Rubenfeld is a performance maker, cultural producer, playwright and actor originally from Winnipeg and now residing in Toronto and Poland. He served as the Artistic Producer of SummerWorks for eight years, from 2008-2016, during which time he also initiated Progress: An International Festival of Performance and Ideas. In 2017, he founded CanadaHub, a program of contemporary Canadian performance presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which won the prestigious Scotland Herald Angel award in its second year. That same year, in Krakow, Poland, Michael also co-founded FestivALT: New Currents of Radical Jewish Art in Poland.
Director, dramaturg and conversationalist, Sarah Garton Stanley is from Montreal, now lives in Kingston and works from Ottawa. Associate Artistic Director for English Theatre at Canada's National Arts Centre, she leads The Cycles and The Collaborations. Sarah co-curates foldA and way back was Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Recent directing: Out The Window (Luminato Festival/Theatre Centre) Kill Me Now (RMTC/NAC English Theatre); Bunny (The Tarragon Theatre/The Stratford Festival).
WE KEEP COMING BACK runs November 14-25, 2018, with opening night on Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 8pm.
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