It’s with huge joy, caution, and a lot of elbow grease that Found Festival is proud to announce its return to live performance July 8–11. We’re able to get back to things we’ve had to put on pause, including sharing space and seeing live performances.
Common Ground Arts Society takes the comfort and safety of our community seriously — always, but especially now. Although restrictions are lifting, we are committed to creating an environment that hopefully welcomes back even our most vulnerable community members. This means we’re holding on to some protocols for now. We’ve got some recommendations and we’ve got some rules. This is to best protect our community — that means you!
Most importantly:
Stay home if you’re sick — no sniffles on site, pals!
Wear a mask when close to folks from outside your household.
Wash/Sanitize your hands. Often.
Distance! Keep that distance.
We’ll be collecting contact info should we need to support tracing.
Masks at Found 2021
Our team will be wearing masks at all events, indoors and outdoors, and we would love for you to join us! Indoors, masks are mandatory for audience unless you have a medical exemption. No exceptions!
Okay, let’s get to some art.
We have an incredible lineup of brand new works and artists who’ve been waiting in the wings to hit the Found stage for over a year. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of fast and furious work going on behind the scenes to make this year’s possible, so there are a few things we aren’t ready to share quite yet — but we want to give you a sneak peek!
Check out the Found Festival 2021 Lineup! All audiences will have reduced capacity to allow for distancing between households, and all indoor performances will require masks at all times.
Found Festival Music Series – Curated by Mustafa Rafiq
We can’t wait to welcome you back to the Found Grounds behind the Backstage Theatre at the ATB Financial Arts Barns for tunes, pals, and a patio thanks to the dream team at the Fringe Grounds Cafe! This year, Fringe Grounds Cafe is slinging drinks and eats for us (trust us — the food is delish!). The great beer garden space and Found Festival Music Series is the place to meet, learn about the fest, grab a ticket, and venture out to find a show. Stay tuned for a full artist lineup.
This year’s Found Grounds beer garden will have a 40% capacity, QR Code ordering, and more measures in place to keep you safe while hanging with your pals in some sweet sunshine.
Snap If You Can Hear Me – A Found Festival Poetry Showcase Curated by Dwennimmen
Audience finger snaps are the tell for appreciation and enjoyment for spoken word poets, another way of saying “I understand and appreciate your words.” Re-orientation to our local streetscapes is the theme of this event. Snap If You Can Hear Me is about finding the audiences we love, and have missed, once again. Four poets will speak their truths, share perspectives and help us to mark the re-emergence of local arts with poignant verses delivered at each of the four sites we visit on our journey into poetic reacquaintance with one another.
Stay tuned for poet lineup at Snap If You Can Hear Me.
Puppet Pub Crawl – Even Gilchrist
Join us on a wild walk in Old Strathcona. Hold the pints — we’re looking for seven tales told by puppets, along the hidden corners of Edmonton’s most mythical neighbourhood. Like any unforgettable night out, it’s all about the friends you make along the way.
The Puppet Pub Crawl is presented as the 2021 Fresh AiR Artist-in-Residency with Even Gilchrist.
Directed by Rory Turner. Featuring Rebecca Cypher, Frances Girard, Skye Grinde, Abby McDougall, Andrés Moreno, Dill Prusko, and Aaron Refugio. Mentorship from Brendan James Boyd, and stage management by Steven Sobolewski.
This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear – David Gagnon Walker
This is a play we all read together out loud, with scripts and parts for everyone. This is a fable about how to live with the slowly unfolding emergencies we’ve inflicted on our world. This is worry and wonder, loneliness and community. This is the story of the Child Ruled by Fear.
Written and performed by David Gagnon Walker. Directed by Christian Barry and Judy Wensel. Multimedia design by Tori Morrison. Physical design by Morgan Melenka. Halifax production management and design assistance by Patricia Vinluan. Produced by Strange Victory Performance.
Running Live – Richard Lee
A combination of live, Zoom-based performance integrated with pre-recorded dance on film, Running Live is a vlogcast/river valley dream-sequence/digital hallucination. Dancers Richard Lee and Deviani Andrea share the views from their respective balconies through hi-fi dance-on-film and live interactive dance. Responsive to the sites of Edmonton’s river valley splendour and undulating waves of Zoom fatigue, Running Live navigates the space between hyper-kinetic wonder and immobilizing fear.
Choreography and text by Richard Lee in collaboration with Deviani Andrea. Performed by Richard Lee and Deviani Andrea. Music by Sebastien Bolessa. Videography by Marc Chalifoux and Ian Jackson.
Letter to Audiences – Natércia Napoleão and April MacDonald Killins
Letter to Audiences, brought to you by artists Natércia Napoleão and April MacDonald Killins, is an equity in theatre themed project that consists of a three-part journey with the Found Fest community. This project brings together academic research, lived experience, and action-oriented community engagement in a podcast that audiences will experience for the first time as a roaming auditory experience in Old Strathcona during Found Fest 2021. Our goal is to forge a conversation with amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) arts patrons, showing where they have agency and power to profoundly shift the theatre industry.
Letter to Audiences will include a YEG Theatre Patron Perspectives on Equity Survey, a Letter to Audiences podcast episode hosted by Natércia Napoleão and April MacDonald Killins, and a series of distanced, outdoor, in-person community conversations.
Check back here for further details on all these important opportunities taking place throughout the Festival soon.
The Funeral – Staged Reading from playwright Marina Mair-Sanchez
What would you say, what would you ask, if you were able to reunite with all of those you’ve lost? The Funeral is a bilingual, multidisciplinary show which celebrates life, and the memories and stories we all have to tell. It is an exploration of what it means to be away from those you love, and how people stay together against unimaginable odds kilometres away from everything they know.
Written and created by Marina Mair-Sánchez, choreography by Deviani Andrea, sound design by pseudo-antigone, performed by Tatiana Duque and Andrés Moreno.
Civil Blood – Staged Reading from playwright Josh Languedoc
Tensions are high. The fur trade is collapsing, settlers are encroaching into the territories of the First Nations, and the newly founded Canadian government is attempting to define itself through law and order. Tribes are suffering from scarcity of food, destroyed hunting grounds, starvation, and the ever-burdensome whiskey. CIVIL BLOOD: A Treaty Story, explores the complex tensions between First Nation Tribes and the European Settlers at the end of the fur trade. Among tension and treaties, two star-crossed lovers, two young people; a Nehiyaw huntress and a scholarly French boy discover a passion for one another. Through the mounting unrest that surrounds them, they seek their own bountiful unity.
Full company list coming soon.
PLUS, stay tuned for more details about additional installations from Salem Clarke with D’orjay the Singing Shaman and our incredible friends at iHuman Youth Society.
Tickets and a programming schedule for Found 2021 will be available soon. In the meantime, we’re going to keep working our tails off to bring you a safe, exhilarating, and all-too-needed art party this summer. Questions? Reach out at admin@commongroundarts.ca!
