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Performance

MONOMYTHS: Stage 5

Stage 5: Belly of the Whale

Thoroughbred
By Jefferson Pinder

February 7, 2016
4:00pm


The Theatre Centre
1115 Queen Street West, Toronto

Presented by FADO Performance as a part of Progress

Stage 5: Belly of the Whale
Jefferson Pinder (USA)
Jasmyn Fyffe (Toronto)
Danièle Dennis (Toronto)
Chy Ryan Spain (Toronto)
Ravyn/Jelani Ade-Lam Wngz (Toronto)

Thoroughbred
Jefferson Pinder

Eventbrite - MONOMYTHS: Jefferson Pinder (Stage 5)

In Jefferson Pinder’s Thoroughbred, four performers work themselves to exhaustion running on treadmills that are remote controlled by the artist who sits at a single controller.

Pinder “skillfully exhumes a corpse of black captivity and subjugation of black bodies in America that started four hundred years ago and brings it into the foreground into our present day experience.” (Fo Wilson, The Evidence of Things Not Seen)

American artist Jefferson Pinder works in video, installation, and performance. His work explores the tangle of representations and misrepresentations, visual tropes, and myths–often referencing historical events and invoking cultural symbolism. His work portrays the black body both frenetically and through drudgery in order to convey relevant cultural experiences. 

POST PERFORMANCE join us for in the Theatre Centre café for a reception where audience is invited to meet and speak with the artist and performers of Thoroughbred, and to celebrate the last performance in MONOMYTHS and the closing of Progress.

ADMISSION: The events in the MONOMYTHS series are offered by donation. Please note that there is limited seating for each performance. Reservations through the individual eventbrite pages is suggested.

Facebook event: www.facebook.com/events/1646923705569076

ACCESSIBILITY AT PROGRESS/THEATRE CENTRE
The Theatre Centre is an accessible facility, with barrier-free washrooms and an accessibility lift to facilitate movement between floors. If you are planning a trip to The Theatre Centre and have any questions about accessibility or would like to make any special arrangements, please call our box office at 416-538-0988.  We will be happy to make any arrangements to help facilitate an enjoyable visit to The Theatre Centre.

The Theatre Centre sits on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat peoples.

ABOUT PROGRESS
SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna TheatreDancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, SummerworksThe Theatre Centreand Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress: an International Festival of Performance and Ideas, January 14–February 7, 2016. www.thisisprogress.ca
 
 

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons–both inner and outer–in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.  

Joseph Campbell’s influential book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) prescribes a common pattern to all of the world’s mythic narratives. According to this fundamental structure, the archetypal hero is challenged to embark on a monumental quest. Over the course of the hero’s journey, trials and obstacles must be overcome until a victory is won and the hero returns home with new knowledge about himself and the world. Campbell’s concept of the monomyth (‘one myth’) is a recognizable motif in both ancient mythology and contemporary culture, including film, music, literature, sports, and advertising. A current trend in popular visual culture replaces the male character with a female one, in spite of the fact that our heroine–from the get-go–would make different choices if the conditions, and conditioning, allowed. While each MONOMYTHS stage stands alone, the work of each presenting artist is interdependent and connected. These independent visions, when stitched together through the audience’s collective presence, form an exquisite corpse of a larger experimental narrative. 

The year-long MONOMYTHS project is presented in three sections starting in February 2016 and concluding in February 2017. The series is conceived and curated Jess Dobkin and Shannon Cochrane.

Part 1 (February 3–7, 2016)
Stage 1: The Ordinary World/Call to Adventure
Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
Stage 3: Meeting of the Mentor
Stage 4: Crossing the Threshold
Stage 5: Belly of the Whale

Part 2 (May 2016–January 2017)
Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies
Stage 7: Ordeals
Stage 8: Atonement with the Father/State
Stage 9: Apotheosis/Journey to the Inmost Cave

Part 3 (February 15–19, 2017)
Stage 10: The Road Back
Stage 11: Refusal of the Return
Stage 12: Mistress of Two Worlds
Stage 13: Freedom to Live
Stage 14: The Return Home

[ MONOMYTHS ]

+ IMAGE GALLERY: Stage 5
+ VIDEO GALLERY: Stage 5
+ PORTRAIT GALLERY: MONOMYTHS
+ Notes on Myth-Making by Alison Cooley and Daniella E. Sanader (C Magazine)
+ MONOMYTHS Limited Edition Perpetual Calendar