HATCH: emerging performance projects, 2010 Season Announced

Realizing Ideas, Revealing Potential: Harbourfront Centre's Unique Residency and Mentorship Programme Returns with Five Contemporary Performance Projects

TORONTO, ON (Nov. 5, 2009) ’Äì Harbourfront Centre is thrilled to announce five works for the seventh season of HATCH: emerging performance projects, January through April, 2010. One of the city's most unique development opportunities, HATCH offers promising local talent professional support during the cultivation of their work from proposal to realization, culminating in a one-week residency and public presentation at Harbourfront Centre's Studio Theatre. The mentorship from Harbourfront Centre is available to HATCH artists from September 2009 through May 2010.

Five projects were selected from 56 submitted proposals to participate in HATCH for 2010, demonstrating the crucial role the programme plays for Toronto's ever-burgeoning performance community. HATCH is an excellent opportunity for both nascent artists and those who have presented works previously to develop a project through its crucial stages. Audiences have the opportunity to be the first to view these works in their initial stages and to be a part of the continuing development of the project, and the artists involved, through their participation and feedback.

Tickets for all HATCH performances are on sale Dec. 15 through the Harbourfront Centre box office. Prices are $12 or $10 for Students/Seniors/Arts Workers. Tickets are available by phone at 416-973-4000 or through www.harbourfrontcentre.com/hatch

2010 Season Schedule ’Äì HATCH: emerging performance projects
*PLEASE NOTE: All performances take place in Harbourfront Centre's Studio Theatre

Everything I've Got
Jess Dobkin
January 31, 4 p.m.
Jess Dobkin offers her newest performance art piece in progress ’Äì a raw and intimate examination of creativity and mortality where the artist offers up the entirety of her collection of artistic ideas. NOW Magazine's Best Performance Artist of 2006, Dobkin is well known for her previous performances Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar and Fee For Service.

Body Cartography
Cara Spooner and Alicia Grant
February 25 & 27, 8 p.m.
Created in collaboration with visual artist Simon Rabyniuk, as well as urban theorist Alex Marques, Body Cartography emphasizes and distorts the idea of a city within a city. A performance that mixes disparate details of balancing on rooftops, walking home alone at night, raiding secret swimming pools and feeling too close to strangers ’Äì employing installation, dance and question and answer periods.

Section 98
Praxis Theatre
March 13, 8 p.m.
The award-winning indie theatre company behind Stranger, Dyad, Steel and The Master and Margarita presents an open-sourced, interactive, work-in-progress that uses performance and technology to explore and debate individual and civil rights in Canada. The production invites the audience to participate in the production with their cell phone or PDA during the presentation, and online before or afterwards.

The Physical Ramifications of Attempted Global Domination
Birdtown and Swanville
April 17, 8 p.m. & April 18, 2:30 p.m.
This play explores the mysterious and bountiful medical ailments suffered by many of history's most aggressive dictators. With animal balloons, clogged intestinal tracts, and power hungry autocrats, this investigation uses debate, dance and melodrama to understand the consequences that the perpetration of mass violence creates. The group recently made waves with their 2009 Fringe hit, 36 Little Plays About Hopeless Girls.

Red Machine: Under the Knife
The Room
April 24, 8 p.m. & April 25, 4 p.m.
From this newly formed theatre company that NOW Magazine called the "indie theatre version of Broken Social Scene" comes Red Machine: Under the Knife ’Äì the latest phase of their continuing work-in-progress. A theatrical journey into the meat of the human mind, The Room presents four abstractions of a single event as interpreted by four distinct physical areas of the brain. Be prepared for a virtual dissection, revealing how movement, sight, sound, and ecstasy can each have their own story to tell.

ABOUT HATCH: emerging performance projects at Harbourfront Centre

Entering its seventh year, HATCH is a key initiative in Harbourfront Centre's mission to develop local artists and their unique practices. The HATCH mentorship provides resources and professional assistance to a new generation of engaging and innovative contemporary artists to reach the next career stage with a comprehensive understanding of process and challenges that artists must embrace.

The HATCH residency package includes one week rent-free in the Studio Theatre, technical and production assistance, box office backing and administrative assistance, marketing and media relations support and workshops, and professional development assistance.