Big Bang
Artists’ Laboratory
An Artists' Laboratory to Support Experimentation & Innovation in Storytelling.
In our ongoing desire to support creators in their artistic process, Infinithéâtre is introducing our third edition of the Big Bang Artists' Laboratory. Projects in development will be given extended time in a rehearsal hall to explore and experiment, bringing together writers, directors, designers, and performers as they together find exciting and innovative ways of telling live stories.
Projects in Development
Whalefall
On May 30th 2020, Montrealers woke to an improbable and magical sight. Between the iconic clock tower and île Sainte-Hélène, a fluke broke the waters of the St-Lawrence, announcing the arrival of a young humpback whale that had traveled over 400 km upriver. Her arrival uplifted the city in a time of isolation. Part documentary theatre, part puppet show, Whalefall examines the complexities of culture, community, and the bonds that unite us. This original creation in development is being co-written by Ashe Lang and Riley Wilson, and will be directed by Zach Fraser.
Past Projects in Development
Extra / Beautiful / U
by Michaela Di Cesare
The winner of Infinithéâtre's 2017 Write-on-Q playwriting competition, Extra/Beautiful/U blends traditional theatre with recorded material in its depiction of a story for now that addresses identity, obsession with social media, and a host of other themes related to cultural values and secondary trauma.
The play tells the story of Lara, a young woman who found fame and fortune on a reality dating show, before a serious accident took it all away. The project is leaning toward a multi-media piece that will blend the live theatre experience with digital capture in a variety of ways.
“These mediatized elements are integral to my piece because I wanted to explore questions of filters, perspective, and curation of selfhood, or the performance of identity.”
Michaela Di Cesare is a playwright and performer with a Master’s Degree in Drama from the University of Toronto. Upon graduation, Michaela received the University’s Launchpad award for her solo show 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived. 8 Ways was presented in Toronto, Montréal, New York City, Ottawa, Hudson, Winnipeg, and Stratford. Michaela wrote and performed in In Search of Mrs. Pirandello in the 2016 WildSide Festival (Centaur Theatre Company). Michaela’s relationship with Centaur continued with a MainStage production of her play Successions in the 2017/2018 season (Outstanding New Text, METAs 2018). Her play Extra/Beautiful/U won first place (Pam Dunn Award) in the 2017 Write-on-Q competition presented by Infinithéâtre. Her latest play, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) premiered with Geordie Productions in September 2019 (Outstanding New Text Nomination, METAs 2020). She was in residence at Centaur Theatre for the 2019/2020 season writing Terroni or Once Upon a Time in the South. Screenwriting credits include the web series Sex & Ethnicity and the short film The Carcass.
Caitlin Murphy is a writer, director and dramaturg based in Montreal. She has previously directed A Doll’s House, Part 2 and Small Mouth Sounds, both at the Segal Centre, the latter for which she won the Montreal English Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction. She also previously served as Dramaturg-in-Residence and Artistic Associate at the Segal Centre. In addition to her work in theatre, Caitlin has written and directed short films, including Flushing Lacan and TOAST, which both won the Jury Award at the Montreal ACTRA Short Film Festival.
She has also performed in one-woman shows, stand-up and sketch comedy, and a web-series she created called Mothers Try. She is currently working on a book of essays about mothering called Rational Tantrums.
Dominoes at the Crossroads
by Kaie Kellough
“Somewhere in this story is a break, a portal, a black hole. It may only be the size of a small pothole on Crémazie Boulevard, or the size of a period between sentences, a semicolon, a semicolony, a sixteenth note’s round head or an island that looks like ink spilled onto a blue map. In 1972 a young woman fell through such an ink spill, one called Ayiti, and a young man reached for her hand and was pulled in after her. They were my grandparents. As they tumbled, they pulled their children in with them. They planned to land somewhere, but couldn’t guess that their imagined somewhere was just another cypher to plunge through.”
Dominoes at the Crossroads represents a vital, poignant voice from the Montréal landscape. Kaie’s writing resonates widely in a world where so many people straddle between cultures and have not one, but multiple roots and homes. We are all, so many of us, displaced and continually searching for our place in the world, literally and figuratively. Dominoes is a poetic ode to this epic and universal search for home and identity, gently anchored into port here in our eclectic city that is Montréal.
Kaie Kellough is a novelist, poet, and sound performer based in Montréal. Since 2000, he has toured internationally, written, taught, and collaborated in multi-disciplinary contexts that bridge literature with performance, improvised music, and electronic sound. Kaie’s work draws upon his Afro-Caribbean ancestry to explore migration, belonging, and the suspension of arrival.
Kaie has published 3 collections of poetry, 1 novel, 1 collection of short stories, and 2 sound recordings. His most recent collection of poems, Magnetic Equator (Penguin/McClelland and Stewart), won the 2020 Griffin Trust Prize for Poetry. Kaie was Writer in Residence at Queen’s University in 2020/21.
Zach Fraser will adapt and direct the work for the stage in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team of artists. “From the first pages of Kaie Kellough’s Dominoes at the Crossroads, I knew I was plunging into a unique and magical tale. Kaie’s collection of loosely connected stories weave together vividly detailed moments in time and space. We voyage across countries and continents, local neighbourhoods, and faraway villages. Themes of departure and return run deep. Part history lesson, part journal, part dream: the reader momentarily escapes through the narrator’s memories, drifting through time.” This will be Zach’s fourth stage adaptation of a literary work.