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Aluna Theatre

Intercultural and interdisciplinary theatre company, founded in 2001 in Toronto, Ontario by Beatriz Pizano to address the misrepresentation and under-representation of cultural diversity on Canadian stages. Aluna Theatre attempts to bring social justice, equality and human rights to the forefront of all its productions (website). It presents new collaborative productions, works in translation, and international co-creations. Pizano, an actor and dancer who immigrated to Canada from Columbia, was motivated by a 1998 return visit to more specifically address social issues in her work.

In 2008, Pizano wrote and directed Madre (Theatre Passe Muraille) in which a daughter struggles with her mother's Alzheimer’s in a worn-torn country. Also in 2008, Aluna produced a collective creation entitled defenestration (project: entrada), a co-production with the Corporacion Colombiana de Teatro, Theatre Revolve, and Tridha Arts. It was created in Toronto and Bogota with a team of ten Canadian and fourteen Colombian artists, under the direction of Patricia Ariza.

In 2010, Aluna Theatre developed and produced La Comunión (Buddies in Bad Times). After six years of fighting, a child soldier escapes to Toronto under an assumed identity, where she struggles to adjust to life as a civilian.

Nohayquiensepa (meaning “no one knows”) was produced in 2011. It exposes the human rights abuses committed by American, Canadian, and British mining companies along the Magdalena River in Columbia, and elsewhere in Latin America. With her actors and director, Trevor Schwellnus, Pizano worked through dance, music, improvisation and collective creation, building on her experience with theatre companies in Bogota.

For Sale (The Theatre Centre 2013) is a dream-documentary for the women struggling to cope with fifty years of armed insurgency in Colombia.

In May 2014, Aluna produced the collective creation, The Refuge of Freidel (el refugio de freidel) by Liliana Suarez Henao and Beatriz Pizano. Suarez examines her own experience as a Colombian refugee, using the words of the controversial Colombian theatre-maker, Freidel, who was brutally assassinated in Medellin in the early 90’s.

In 2014, Aluna Theatre’s creative team, Beatrix Pizano, Lyon Smith, and Trevor Schwellnus produced What I Learned from a Decade of Fear, about the paranoia that results from an obsession with security. It was developed through a residency at The Theatre Centre, and was presented in New York City (La MaMa ETC), Bogotá (Festival Alternativo), and Montreal (The Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro) before its Toronto premiere at Aluna Theatre.

The 2015, the Aluna/Modern Times Stage Company co-production of Lorca's Blood Wedding won six Dora Mavor Moore Awards in the independent theatre division for outstanding production, outstanding direction (Soheil Parsa), outstanding performance--female (Beatriz Pizano), and scenic, costume and lighting design. In April, 2022, the Company again partnered with Modern Times to produce The House of Bernarda Alba, also directed by Parsa.

In November 2018, Pizano performed her autobiographical solo show about her divided experience in two countries: Colombia, where she was born, and Canada, where she immigrated in 1979. Dividing Lines/Lineas Divisorias examines the differences in terms of her relationship to her mother, dying in a Columbian hospital, and the cultural attitudes to death. Pizano's performance is a conversation with the audience about dying.

The Artistic Director if Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano.

Website: www.alunatheatre.ca

Last updated 2022-04-06