A year and a half in the making, Everything Under the Moon is the most ambitious creation to date by celebrated Toronto visual and performance artist Shary Boyle and innovative Winnipeg songwriter and performer Christine Fellows. Presented as part of Harbourfront Centre's 2012 World Stage season, and in association with The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, it premieres in a five-show run from February 18 to 23, 2012 at Enwave Theatre (through Family Day weekend and beyond
Boyle and Fellows have enchanted audiences internationally with their daring, moving collaborations, presenting wildly imaginative performances from Dawson City, Yukon to Paris, France. With Everything Under the Moon, they've pulled out all the stops, creating a modern classic epic adventure tale that blurs the lines between musical theatre and visual spectacle.
Everything Under the Moon is an old-time shadow play re-imagined; a fantastical, theatrical performance work pairing hand-animated, real-time projected images with live music and song that tells the story of two small, winged creatures - a honey bee and a little brown bat - as they set out together on an urgent quest to save themselves and their species. It arrives as part of Harbourfront Centre's Fresh Ground new works commissioning program which champions the creation of exciting new interdisciplinary work.
Using multiple overhead projectors, costumes and puppets to bring Boyle's artwork to life, and an original score by Fellows performed on xylophone, timpani, wurlitzer, ukulele, cello, trumpet, percussion and voice, Everything Under the Moon touches on loss, environmental threat, adaptation and the restorative powers of friendship and community as it champions the collaborative spirit as a means of survival.
Harbourfront Centre World Stage, in association with The Power Plant, presents
Everything Under the Moon
created and performed by Shary Boyle and Christine Fellows
February 18-23, 2012 at Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay W.
Suitable for family audiences. A spellbinding performance that will enchant theatre-goers 5 to adult.
Performance times
(through Family Day weekend and beyond):
Sat February 18, 2012 - 7 pm (opening night reception to follow)
Sun February 19, 2012 - 2 pm
Mon February 20, 2012 - 2 pm
Wed February 22, 2012 - 10am
Thurs February 23, 2012 - 7 pm (artist talk Q&A hosted by Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery to follow)
Performance length: 60 minutes
Tickets: Adults $15; Children $10 (5-12 years old)
Box Office: Call the Harbourfront Centre box office at 416-973-4000 or visit www.shadowsongs.me
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Shary Boyle:
"Boyle is a master conjuror, evoking worlds of great beauty, terror and strangeness, and peopling them with characters who are deeply human in their vulnerability, but have been granted an otherworldy power by the simple fact that Boyle has (quite literally) shone a light on them" - Stacey DeWolfe, Montreal Mirror, January 2011
Shary Boyle is a visual artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture and performance. Based in Toronto, Boyle's work is exhibited and collected internationally, with pieces in the National Gallery of Canada, Museé d'art contemporain de Montreal and the Paisley Museum in Scotland. Her solo exhibition Flesh and Blood premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario in September 2010, and traveled nationally throughout 2011. Boyle has performed with musical collaborators throughout the world, from the Olympia Theatre in Paris to the Hammer Museum in L.A. and the Brooklyn Academy Of Music in New York.
Shary Boyle is the 2009 recipient of the Art Gallery of Ontario's Iskowitz Award and the 2010 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award for her outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada. She was awarded the 2012 commission for the BMO Project Room in Toronto. Her sculpture installation, Canadian Artist, will open January 18, 2012 and run through November 30, 2012.
Christine Fellows:
"Fellows' poetic songs for piano and strings are homey, prize endurance, and are inclined to draw things together, no matter how disparate they may seemŠFellows' san-serif voice has a direct, natural sound that suits the questing nature of her songs. She's not afraid, as a songwriter, to lead it though unusual melodic shapesŠa beautifully recorded CDŠ" - Robert Everett-Green, Globe and Mail Disc of the Week, February 2011
Winnipeg singer/songwriter Christine Fellows has released five critically acclaimed solo albums to date, most recently Femmes de chez nous (CD) and Reliquary/Reliquaire (DVD), a bilingual studio album and award-winning performance film (Six Shooter Records, 2011). An avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Fellows often works with visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and musicians from all disciplines to create performance works, scores and spectacles.
Fellows was Composer-in-Residence at Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers (2007-08), Artist-in-Residence at Le Musée de Saint-Boniface Museum in Winnipeg (2009), Dawson City Music Festival Songwriter-in-Residence (2011), and she co-founded the Correction Line Ensemble, a six-piece ensemble that bridges classical and contemporary music. In 2011, she was awarded a Manitoba Arts Council Major Arts Grant award to create a new work of experimental music theatre, which will premiere in 2013.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Websites:
Everything Under the Moon website: www.shadowsongs.me
Videos