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Urban Planner: August 5, 2010
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to [email protected].
The Hidden Cameras play tonight and tomorrow as part of this year’s SummerWorks Festival. Photo courtesy of Canvas Media.
Tonight, SummerWorks kicks off its festivities, Misha Glouberman makes some noise, Architecture for Humanity holds a Haiti fundraiser, and The Hidden Cameras bring their gay church folk tunes back to Toronto.
FESTIVAL: Along with Luminato and Fringe, SummerWorks rounds out the great triumvirate of Toronto summer arts and culture festivals. The ten-day music and theatre extravaganza, running from today until August 15, focuses on plays and artists that think outside the box. Tonight’s opening-night events include performances of Ride the Cyclone (a musical sequel to Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell‘s hit Legoland), Biographies of the Dead & Dying (a ghost story by Andrew Templeton), and Countries Shaped Like Stars (a love story that develops through a tin-can phone, by Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano). Also at this year’s SummerWorks is The Playground, a brand new permanent interactive installation of toys—including a candy bar, capture the flag, scavenger hunt, and more—at the Lower Ossington Theatre. For a show schedule and venue information, visit the festival’s website. Various venues, various times, $10 per performance.
SOUND: Misha Glouberman, organizer of the popular Trampoline Hall lecture series, is also the architect of Terrible Noises for Beautiful People, a series of events in which audience members participate to create a variety of sounds in different configurations. This fall, Glouberman will be conducting a Terrible Noises event at California’s eighty-foot Sound Tower, and to prepare, he’ll be hosting a try-out event tonight at the Parkdale Library. Tonight’s event will be fully participatory with no spectators, and will see all participants led through a series of sound and movement improv exercises. No previous experience required, but pre-registration is (which you can do here). Parkdale Library (1303 Queen Street West), 7 p.m., FREE.
FUNDRAISER: It has been almost eight months since that disastrous earthquake hit Haiti, and although (thankfully) the charity singles have stopped rolling out, it’s great to see that people are still making the effort to raise money for the island nation’s reconstruction. One group, Architecture for Humanity, is in the process of planning a long-term ground-level rebuilding initiative, with projects currently set up on Port-au-Prince. Tonight, the organization will hold a fundraiser for its reconstruction efforts, with musical performances and a talk by Architecture for Humanity volunteer Tamsin Ford, who will speak about her time as a volunteer in Haiti over the past several months. The Great Hall (1087 Queen Street West), 7:30 p.m., $30.
MUSIC: As part of SummerWorks’ festivities, Toronto “gay church folk” superstars The Hidden Cameras will perform two of their trademark high-energy spectaculars tonight and tomorrow. Led by mastermind Joel Gibb, the band consists of a rotating door of members, and its music has been known to incorporate heavy orchestration and choral sounds, as well as go-go dancers at their live performances. Their fifth album, Origin:Orphan, was released in May 2009, and sees the band deviate from its trademark upbeat pop songs towards some slightly darker, more dramatic melodies and moods. Lower Ossington Theatre (100A Ossington Avenue), 10 p.m., $10.