Aluna Theatre is proud to announce the second edition of panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas: an International Festival of Performing Arts taking place betweenFebruary 27 and March 9, 2014, at the newly opened Daniels Spectrum. This prestigious theatre event will bring Canadian, Indigenous and Latin American artists from across the Americas including Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Programming includes main stage performances, gallery exhibits, installations, concerts, and master classes with international artists and an engaging four-day conference on performance and human rights where artists, academics and activists meet with the public to discuss how art can mobilize social change.
“Since our first festival in 2012 we’ve traveled around the Americas to find some of the most fascinating and controversial performers,” says festival director Beatriz Pizano. “These artists have incredibly strong messages and are not afraid to shatter the status quo.”
Also new this year is Aluna Theatre’s festival partnership with the oldest and most important Indigenous theatre company in Canada, Native Earth Performing Arts.

Individual tickets are on sale now at www.nativeearth.ca

For more information on panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas, the festival line-up, or the company, please visit www.alunatheatre.ca
Aluna Theatre is an artistically driven company that makes theatre in an environment of cultural diversity – with a focus on Latin-Canadian and women artists. Aluna brings human rights concerns into their practice through creation of original works that form a new and distinct language of theatrical (re)presentation. Founded in 2001, Aluna was created in response to the misrepresentation and under representation of cultural diversity on our stages.

International Shows

Witness to the Ruins
When: 8:30pm March 6, 7 & 8
Price:  $25 | Genre: Video Performance
Company: Mapa Teatro- Laboratory of Artists
Country: Colombia | Director: Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden
Duration: 70 minutes | Language:in English and Spanish (Spanish texts are read “live” in English by actors)

A multi-media piece documenting the disappearance of one of the oldest and most dangerous “barrios” in downtown Bogotá, El Cartucho, as it was redeveloped into a modern city park.  Witness to the Ruins is the result of five years the company spent with the residents of El Cartucho before, during, and after its razing.
Mapa Teatro is one of the foremost artistic companies in Colombia, and one of the favorites on the world stages in Europe and Latin America. This work is a co-production with the Wienerfestwochen and the Zuercher Theaterspektakel, Zurich.  Since its first presentation in Vienna in 2005, it has traveled to festivals in Berlin, Geneva, Prague, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Yale and Columbia Universities, and many others.

NK603: Action for Performer and e-máiz
When: 9:30pm February 28 & 8:30pm March 1
Price: $15 | Genre: Performance
Company: Violeta Luna | Country: Mexico / USA
Duration: 45 minutes | Language: English

Renowned Performance Artist Violeta Luna returns to the panamerican ROUTES Festival with a provocative confrontation between capitalist science and ancient ways of life. Máiz plays a symbolic role in ritual, and is a key traditional food source from the American Southwest to Patagonia. NK 603 is the name of one of the many genetically modified corn seeds available in the market.
Violeta is a recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission award, is a member of La Pocha Nostra, and has toured extensively with her performance pieces throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the USA.

Antigona
When:7:30pm February 27 & 7pm February 28
Price:$25 | Genre:Theatre
Company:Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani | Country:Peru
Duration:60 minutes | Language:in Spanish with English sub-titles

Beautifully performed by one of Peru’s greatest actresses, Teresa Ralli, this one-woman show is an astounding retelling of the classic Greek tragedy, set in Peru after 20 years of bloodshed surrounding the internal conflict of the 80’s and 90s in that country.  This version was developed through interviews with families of the “disappeared” by Peruvian poet José Watanabe, based on both on Sophocles’ original text and on a contemporary understanding of the trauma.
Yuyachkani is a Quechua word which means “I’m thinking / I’m remembering”.  The group is recognized worldwide as one of the greatest exponents of Peruvian and Latin American Theatre.  They were awarded Peru’s National Honors for Human Rights in 1999 and worked with Peru’s Truth Commission investigating crimes against humanity committed during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Diego y Ulises
When:9pm February 27 & 8:30pm February 28
Price:$15 | Genre:Dance Theatre
Company:Diego y Ulises Cia | Country:Argentina
Duration:40 minutes | Language:no language spoken

Inspired by the world of cult filmmaker Gus Van Sant, this Argentine love story fuses theatre and dance to thrilling effect. Two young men wait for the day to go by. They laugh. They fight. They drink Coca Cola. Imperceptibly, everyday actions take on a profound poignancy. Wordless, completely modern and athletically danced, this is beautifully crafted theatre dance.
Winner of the Igualdad Cultural Prize in Argentina, the work has toured extensively in Europe and Latin America.

National Shows

What I learned from a decade of fear
When: 6:30pm February 28 & 2:30pmMarch 1
Price:$20 | Genre: Interdisciplinary Theatre
Company: Aluna Theatre | City:Toronto
Duration:80 minutes | Language: English

A Karmic Accounting / Interrogation Ritual to atone for a decade of repression, war and paranoia. The Dora-winning team behind Nohayquiensepa (No one knows) eulogizes the human costs of our collective safety through the medium of security technology.  This premiere will go on to run in NYC at LaMama ETC.  Aluna’s critically acclaimed work has garnered 17 Dora nominations and 5 awards.

El Refugio de Freidel / The Refuge of Freidel
When: 4pm March 8 & 4pm March 9
Price: $15 | Genre: Theatre
Company: The Freidel Collective and Aluna Theatre | City: Toronto
Duration:40 minutes | Language: in Spanish with English sub-titles

Inspired by the plays of one of Colombia’s most controversial playwright /directors, José Manuel Freidel, this compelling one-woman show is a poetic biographical account of the forced exile and refugee experience of a Colombian actor now living in Canada. A brilliantly performed piece presented at the Impact Festival, Harbourfront Centre’s Ritmo y Color, and the And Social Justice For All Conference in Montreal.

Alicuanta
When: 7:30pm March 5 | 7:30pm March 6
Price: $20 | Genre: Song Cycle
Company: Gitanjali Jain Serrano & David Ryshpan | City: Montreal
Duration: 60 minutes | Language: English and Spanish, with English sub-titles.

The legacy of General Francisco Roque Serrano (1889-1927), an influential yet mysterious figure of the Revolutionary era who was assassinated by his opponent in the midst of a presidential campaign, is told by his great-granddaughter, Gitanjali. Song and story draw forth an ancestor in an attempt to make peace with the tumultuous history of 1920’s Mexico.  An hour-long suite for voice, piano, drums, cajón, and string quartet.

In Spirit
When: 11am March 4  & 7:30pm March 7 & 7:30pm March 8 & 2:30pm March 9
Price: $20 | Genre:  Theatre
Company: Native Earth Performing Arts | City: Toronto
Duration: 60 minutes | Language: English with Spanish surtitles

Spring, 1979. A young girl is mere days away from celebrating her  birthday. Her dad can’t keep the secret of her gift any longer, so proudly presents her with a new bike. Sharing in his excitement, birthday girl and bike make their debut trip along the nearest paved road. Failing to return for dinner, a makeshift search party finds only the bike, tossed to the roadside. Told from the missing girl’s perspective, this is a journey into love and loss. Directed and written by former Artistic Director Tara Beagan, designed by Andy Moro and starring Sera Lys-McArthur, In Spirit is a fiercely haunting work inspired by all too many true stories.
Native Earth Performing Arts is the oldest professional Indigenous performing arts company in Canada. They have been central in the development of a community of theatre artists, and have contributed to the creation of several plays that have become canonical in Canadian theatre.  NEPA has been awarded 7 Dora Mavor Moore Awards and 27 nominations.

Conference
To connect the shows with the current issues that energize them, panamerican ROUTES | RUTAS panamericanas will host a four-day conference with panels of artists, academics and social innovators from across the Americas, including a keynote by award-winning author, Diana Taylor. Academic production partners include the University of Toronto, York University and Glendon College, Brock University, Ryerson University.

conversatorio 1: keynote: diana taylor
February 28, 2014, 10am-12pm
The genesis of our “conversatorio” lies in a shared desire among the proponents to query Canada’s place within the hemisphere and examine the ways in which performance draws on cultural heritages and practices as a mode of agency, strength, and resistance among populations that have been displaced and dispossessed in the Americas. Building on the successes of its inaugural festival-conference in 2012, which drew over 3,000 participants to Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille, the 2014 event draws on an exciting partnership between Aluna Theatre and Native Earth Performing Arts with the aim of building strategic alliances among communities whose populations share histories of colonial and neo-colonial invasion. All conference sessions will be held at the stunning Daniels Spectrum cultural hub in Toronto’s Regent Park: http://regentparkarts.ca/visit/

conversatorio 2: truth and reconciliation: performing interventions
February 28th, 2014, 2pm-5pm Tickets: $5 
This session emerges from the festival performances of Antigona by the internationally acclaimed Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), an adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy based on the company’s work with Indigenous women in rural areas as part of Peru’s recently formed Truth Commission. This session queries truth and reconciliation commissions in Peru and Canada inviting a comparative examination of histories of state violence, the fraught process of reconciliation through testimony, and the ways in which performance serves as an act of redress.

conversatorio 3: re-staging treaty: embodied memories, written records, living archives
March 1st, 2014, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
This panel session will begin with a verbatim theatre piece created by Aluna Theatre based on the transcriptions discovered in Daniel MacMartin’s 1905 diary of the making of Treaty no. 9 in what is now northern Ontario. Following the performance, the panel will examine the tensions between the act of treaty as oral performative, the agreements that are sustained through embodied memory and oral traditions, and the written record.

conversatorio 4: maiz(e) in the americas: tradition, big agriculture, and resistance
March 1st, 2014, 2-5pm | Tickets: $5 
In response to festival performances of NK 603: Action for Performer & e-Maiz by Violeta Luna (Mexico-US) and photography exhibit Mujer, Maiz, y Resistencia [Women, Corn, and Resistance] by Julio Pantoja (Argentina), this conversation focuses on the Indigenous women involved in protests against the corporate control of corn production and genetically modified crops that are displacing traditional farming practices. The discussion moves from a consideration of the sacred place of maize in the mythologies of Indigenous populations in the Americas to the pervasive forces of genetic engineering and Big Agriculture.

conversatorio 5: the displacement and migration of youth in the americas
March 7th, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
This panel session on the displacement and migration of youth in the Americas begins with a reading of La Maleta, a story about a ten-year-old refugee’s journey to Canada and her uncertain future. Following the performance, the panel discussion will consider the barriers undocumented youth face in Canada, the experiences of youth detained in Canada’s refugee holdings cells, and strategic aims for immigration reform.

conversatorio 6: urban displacement and renewal from regent park to el cartucho
March 7th, 2-5pm | Tickets: $5 
This session is inspired by the festival performance of Witness to the Ruins by the internationally acclaimed company Mapa Teatro (Colombia), a “performance-lecture” about the process of disappearance of the El Cartucho neighbourhood in Bogotá, Colombia. It begins with a performative ‘Urban Intervention’ by displaced youth and members of Aluna’s youth training program. This session examines the fraught process of urban displacement and “renewal” inviting a comparative discussion that telescopes on El Cartucho and the festival site of Toronto’s Regent Park.

conversatorio 7: femicide in the americas
March 8th, 10am-1pm | Tickets: $5 
Our final conversatorio is a response to playwright Tara Beagan’s new play Quilchena, to be premiered at the festival, about the 500 Aboriginal women who have been murdered in Canada, and Colombian-Quebecois performance artist Claudia Bernal’s Monument to Ciudad Juárez about the femicide occurring in Chihuahua, Mexico. The panel marks International Women’s Day by inviting a comparative analysis of these sites of femicide in order to unearth the systemic violence that accounts for both the continuation and disavowal of femicide in the Americas.

closing keynote
March 8th, 2-5pm
A closing keynote address, to be announced.

For more details on workshops and master classes please visit www.alunatheatre.ca