Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Volcano Theatre
Independent, innovative theatre company, founded in 1992, and based in Toronto Ontario. It creates work that is accessible and entertaining, and which explores identity, politics, and history in an international context by synthesizing styles and skills from across art forms, genres, and geographic boundaries. Volcano Theatre brings together diverse artists from Canada and abroad. It operates in partnership with Volcano Theatre in Philadelphia USA.
Recent productions include: Infinity (2015) by Hannah Moscovitch in a co-production with Tarragon Theatre; and Century Song, is a live performance hybrid--part classical song, part dance, part visual art, and part experimental filmmaking, featuring Canadian soprano Neema Bickersteth. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Alice Walker’s In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens, the show imagines a different way to negotiate history through the eyes and voice of a black female protagonist (website).
In summer, 2012, Volcano presented a site-specific event entitled A Synonym for Love in the halls, staircase, and rooms of Toronto’s historic Gladstone Hotel.
In White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour, a young Iranian trapped inside his repressive country (with Necessary Angel, Summerworks and Edinburgh Fringe 2011).
Another Africa examines Africa’s relationship with the West through two works: German playwright, Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God, and Kenyan playwright Binyavanga Wainaina’s Shine Your Eye, juxtaposing a wide range of styles, including hip-hop, and video (Canadian Stage 2011).
The Four Horsemen Project created by Kate Alton and Ross Manson, with animator Bruce Alcock is “A heady concoction of poetry, dance and computer graphics… a hyperactive ballet” (Eye Weekly), which enacts the poetry of a quartet of avant-garde Canadian poets from the 1970s.
Goodness by Michael Redhill is an exploration of genocide, guilt and responsibility. The play asks why good people do bad thing, and how they are changed as a consequence. Following its premiere at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space in 2005, it toured across Canada and internationally for seven years, including the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, New York, and Rwanda in 2009. A film of the the Rwanda tour was screened at the Reelworld Film Festival in Toronto in 2013.
Other works include; Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Judith Thompson; The Arabian Night by Roland Schimmelpfennig; Variete, a vaudeville based on the music of Mauricio Kagel, with text by Heather McHugh; Weather by Rebecca Hope Terry; Two Words for Snow by Richard Sanger (Artword Theatre 2003). Mortality was co-written by Carol Shields, Tomson Highway, Paul Quarrington, and Stephen Dobyns.
Earlier work includes: Building Jerusalem by Michael Redhill; Cherry Docs by David Gow (Factory Theatre 1998); Lambton Kent by Andre Alexis; and The Third Land by Suzanne Fritz.
Volcano productions have been presented at the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), PS 122 (New York), Magnetic North Theatre Festival, LiteraturFest (Berlin), the Dublin International Fringe, Festival Arts Azimuts (Rwanda), PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, The Theatre Centre (Toronto), Factory Theatre.
The Company has received thirty-three Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations, and eleven Dora Awards, two Governor General’s Award nominations, the Carol Tambor Foundation "Best of Edinburgh" award, a Scotsman Fringe First Award (Edinburgh), the Amnesty International Freedom of Speech Award shortlist (Edinburgh), the NOW People’s Choice Award (Toronto), The Dublin International Fringe Best Design award, and a Chalmers Award.
The Volcano Conservatory offers Master classes in movement, acting, and voice.
Founding and current Artistic Director is Ross Manson.
Web site: www.volcano.ca
Last updated 2020-07-17
Since October 2002, Athabasca University has hosted the web site, with an editorial board of theatre scholars from across Canada.
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The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia web site was originally conceived and developed in 1996 by Gaetan Charlebois—theatre critic, playwright, and actor.
