UPCOMING PROJECTS
CHEW (in development)
As one competitor puts it: “It’s like a standing-still parade. We just happen to be eating food.” Over the course of several years, Montreal playwright Sarah Segal-Lazar interviewed dozens of competitive eaters in Canada and the States to figure out what drives them to stretch their stomachs beyond comprehension. Inspired by London Road and A Chorus Line, co-creators Segal-Lazar, Anika Johnson and Andrew Kushnir have discovered the ideal container for the excesses of the sport: a documentary musical. Whether it’s tucking away tamales in Texas or pulverising pretzels in Providence, CHEW examines how the reasons we do unreasonable things can be most surprising of all.
This project has been co-commissioned by PH and
Crow’s Theatre.
DAYLIGHTING (in development)
Daylighting is the term for the restoration of a stream or waterway which had at some point been diverted below ground. How might displaced streams serve as a metaphor for the hidden capacities that exist in us, our communities and the natural world? Building on his body of work on early African-Canadian life, generational healing, and his own family history, singer-songwriter-storyteller Khari Wendell McClelland is developing a multimedia work using music, sound, interviews, video, and motion graphics to explore our dormant selves and our shared potential.
THE DIVISION (in development)
Over the course of November 2019, Andrew Kushnir retraced his watchmaker grandfather’s journey to Canada from a small Ukrainian village called Bozhekiv. On this trek, Andrew carried a piece of his inheritance: the last railway-grade pocket watch created for North America’s trains, his grandfather’s remarkable contribution to the history of timekeeping. In THE DIVISION, the poetry of this modern-day pilgrimage intersects with the harrowing world war this watchmaker emerged from.
This project is being developed with support from the Shevchenko Foundation’s REACH prize and Tarragon Theatre.
TOWARDS AUDACIOUS CITIZENS (in development)
a sequel to TOWARDS YOUTH: a play on radical hope
The drama classroom can be the ultimate rehearsal hall for youth-led activism. TOWARDS AUDACIOUS CITIZENS localizes this phenomenon around a single emergency: climate justice. As collaborator Dr. Kathleen Gallagher puts it, this project will turn the public to “young people’s creative and artistic practices, their relationships with their respective local and global environments, and their hope for our world.” Starting in 2021, Andrew Kushnir will travel with Dr. Kathleen Gallagher to research sites in Canada, India, Greece, Taiwan, Colombia and England. PH is developing a way to make this project a carbon neutral creation.