 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
RED DRESS PRODUCTIONS A not-for-profit company founded by Artistic Co-Directors Anna Camilleri and Tristan R. Whiston with a core mandate of creating and disseminating innovative theatre and community-based works. RDP Co-Directors: Tristan R. Whiston has worked in Toronto's queer and independent theatre communities for the past 17 years as a director, dramaturge, and writer. Tristan has been the artist-in-residence at Central Toronto Youth Services for the past five years, directing Gender Play, a theatre project working with youth exploring issues and experiences of gender identity. Recent director/writer credits include Never Man’s Land, and Middle C, a two-part radio work which won the 2007 Premios Ondas Award for International Radio and a Silver Medal at the 2007 New York International Radio Programming Festival. He has been commissioned to create Requiem for a Boxer for New Adventures in Sound Art, which will be featured at the Deep Wireless Festival 2008, and on CBC radio 1 Outfront. Anna Camilleri has performed for the last fifteen years in Canada and the US, and was a founding performer with “notorious Taste This” (Xtra), a collaborative performance troupe that toured extensively from 1995 to 2000. Camilleri is the playwright/performer of Sounds Siren Red (Red Dress Productions, 2005), author of critically acclaimed I Am a Red Dress: Incantations on a Grandmother, a Mother and a Daughter (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004), editor of Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005), co-author of Boys Like Her (Press Gang Publishers, 1998), and co-editor of Brazen Femme (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002). Red Dress Productions has gratefully received the support of the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal Foundation, and the Laidlaw Foundation. Contact Red Dress Productions: Red Dress Productions presents It's 2008, and Peter is poised at the edge of a question that must be answered in order to grow up. Is he a man, a woman, or betwixt and between? In the nightmarish Victorian era of James Barrie's Peter Pan, Peter ran away the day he was born in order to remain a boy forever. Never Man's Land is a treacherous place, and it is here that Peter and Peter come face to face with Captain Hook, Wendy, Mrs Darling, and ultimately, each other. The two Peters lock swords—and there's only room for one on the island. Time is running out. director/writer Tristan R. Whiston
Red Dress Productions presents
Sounds Siren Red, written and performed by Anna Camilleri, explores generational violence through a personal lens, and one woman's journey away from, and back to, herself — a journey inspired not by evidence, or proof, but by imagination — a journey guided by the figure of a woman in a red dress evoked from fantasy, and born of necessity. An evocative woven theatrical production of storytelling, performance poetry and monologue. Sounds Siren Red draws from Camilleri's critically acclaimed memoir I Am a Red Dress described as “potent, fresh, and imbued with powerful imagery. This lady in red has an important message to share (Quill and Quire).” Leslie Peters' video art, akin to “abstract colour-field paintings (Globe and Mail),” has screened internationally from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, Poland to Australia. Director Tristan Whiston has created some of the most innovative work on Toronto stages from the Boychoir of Lesbos' version of Lord of the Flies (SQUEAL), to co-directing seven original musicals with Del ARTiE Productions. January 25th to Sunday January 29th, 2006
Sounds Siren Red , written and performed by Anna Camilleri and directed by Tristan R. Whiston, explores generational violence through a personal lens. Toronto , Ontario -- July 28, 2006
GENDER WEAR: IS IT FASHIONABLE TO BE ME YET?
June 14 and 15, 8 pm, 2007 Steelworker's Hall ( Toronto ), After the smash success of last year's Euphoria , and 2005's Binary City, the Gender Play Project is back with an exploration on the limitations and joy of fashion in relation to gender experience. 12 queer, trans, and questioning youth have worked collaboratively over the past six months with lead artist and director Tristan R. Whiston, choreographer Kathleen Rea , writer Anna Camilleri and project coordinator LeeAndra Miller to create GENDERWEAR: Is it fashionable to be me yet? Presented by Central Toronto Youth Services, and supported by the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council. POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY
Is poetry for bored rich people? Is the creation of art a job? If so, should it be recompensed with more than beer and praise? Watch three multi-discipline artists at work, and decide for yourself. Sandra Alland, karen (miranda) augustine, and Anna Camilleri co-create this performance installation about being a working artist. The installation includes visual art, performance poetry, fiction, and the artists themselves. Audience members also peruse bank balances, bills, drafts of writing, e-mails, resumes, to-do lists, rejection letters, payment records, medical bills, perhaps even grocery lists. The three women create and perform their work live, striving to meet difficult deadlines before your eyes. And beneath the facts and figures, you'll uncover an ongoing dialogue about class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability. Can creativity stem from need and a desire for change, rather than a hope for fame? Why do many artists continue when they also have other jobs? Is poetry a luxury? GIRL FRIDAY CRASHES GLASS A cabaret evening that critiques, with humour, notions of work as gendered, and simultaneously notions of gender as “natural.” Is it natural for women to mother; wield a hammer; dance under stage lights; bus a table? The program will feature the work of sharp-tongued and critically acclaimed women artists who will figuratively crash the glass ceiling with their own versions of “girl Friday”. The line-up includes seven member troupe Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble, Trey Anthony of the runaway hit da Kink in my hair, playwright and performer Rose Cullis, performance poet Andrea Thompson, writer/ educator/ activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Junia Mason and Zena Lord of Last Nerve Productions.
STRANGE SISTERS: RED DELICIOUS
Strange Sisters: Red Delicious is a place of possibility where red opens a door that swings freely on well greased hinges. Desire spills forward in its messiness, its blush, and its thirst. Red and delicious, in tandem, is a potent alchemy: sweet, but not saccharine, playful yet piercing.
STRANGE SISTERS: REVENGE OF THE MUDFLAP GIRL Buddies In Bad Times Theatre
Ten years ago I climbed into a car with three strangers, and drove west. Shortly after crossing the border, I saw her. Speeding past in the left hand lane without a sound—a lean, long-legged, large-breasted silhouette- covered in mud, protecting the underbelly of an 18-wheeler. This was my first sighting of the Mudflap Girl. She has intrigued and troubled me since then. Revenge of the Mudflap Girl is a tribute, and a fiery re-dress: If the Mudflap Girl could get up off the flap, and wipe the dirt out of her eyes, what would she say? Buckle up. She's swinging her rig into the passing lane!
All website contents © 2003-2008 Anna Camilleri, unless otherwise noted. |
