At the 2019 IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists, Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre’s Provocation Series invites artists to push creative boundaries, and ask bold questions about art and society.
For Love Sake stems from Sarah's memory and PTSD of some childhood trauma and abuse that she experienced; her acknowledgement of them; and the road to healing from them. She explores their effect on her psyche and her perception of reality, along with the evolving relationship with her family from the beginning to this point in her life.
Part play, part memoir, part workshop and part experimental group therapy, Nobody tells the story of one woman’s journey through life and her longing to be seen, heard and loved by those around her.
Around 100 years ago, Nellie McClung joined other Manitoban Women in a Mock Parliament asking the question “should men vote?" Most Albertans and other Canadians know Nellie McClung from after she moved to Alberta and became one of the “famous 5”, the women who challenged the idea that women were not considered persons under the law. Having experienced a different side of this legacy, a young Manitoban questions the common narrative and wonders why the rights of so many marginalized women are still sacrificed in order to promote it.
Ghost: Return to Mourning is an experimental exploration of death, balancing autobiographical sentiment with external pressures regarding the healing that often needs to takes place. It encourages viewers to ruminate on past memories and divulge hidden truths to help us face darkness within ourselves when it comes to overcoming inauthenticity and accessing vulnerability.
In 2017, Swallow-a-Bicycle ran a performance incubator called Discomfort Lab, as a way of testing our company's mandate of supporting work which engages in 'productive discomfort'. We gave artists space, money, and time. We endeavoured to hold space for uncomfortable conversations. The overwhelming feedback we got from Calgary's performance community was: YES TO THIS. MORE DISCOMFORT PLEASE.
An X-rated narrative that is part storytelling, part photo-essay, part rope bondage demonstration, How to Self-Suspend is an interactive performance about how trauma shapes the choices we make, and how the choices we make reflect (and can perpetuate) trauma.
Winners and Losers is one part game, one part conversation that leans into our universally flawed human logic, and the desire to win at all costs.
Digital Folk is a video game + costume party + music and dance performance + installation built around the desire to revisit how communities gather to play music, dance and tell stories.
As darkness falls, cSPACE King Edward – a century-old school building – will light up with ten provocative performance and art happenings, transforming into a vibrating hive mind of floating bodies, rigorous discomforts and fearless ideas.
It's been an intense - and, in some ways, disheartening - few months for Calgary's theatre scene. Let's take a breath, take a step back, and talk about it. Calgary Theatre in Flux: a forum about our future is an attempt to zoom out and look at our current situation in context.
A house is built every day outside of the Pumphouse Theatre, and a myriad of homebodies host and entertain inside its walls. Though friendly and chipper, things aren't always smiles and polite talks. Cracked mirrors, scratched-out photos, and other little secrets hide in the cracks of this makeshift sanctuary.
