The Bentway is pleased to announce the Toronto premiere of Rosana Cade’s tender participatory performance in May 2024, presented in partnership with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Walking:Holding is a unique, experiential performance that invites audience members (one at a time) to participate in a guided walk through the neighbourhood, where they will encounter and hold hands with seven different people along the route.
What transpires is a series of unscripted conversations and social connections between strangers.
“Walking:Holding allowed me to feel safe in opening up about my feelings, speaking truly about my vulnerable state, as well as allowing me to show affection and care for others, even though they were ‘strangers’.”
The project invites you to experience your city from someone else’s perspective, illuminating how identity, intimacy, hypervisibility, and vulnerability intersect in public space.
We are looking for a diverse group of local people to take part as performers on May 25 and 26, 2024 – people with a range of different lived experiences of being in the city, people who are different ages, genders, sexualities, ethnicities, religions, cultural backgrounds, and people with different occupations.
“It was one of the greatest experiences in my whole life. To feel and be in the gap between private and public, strange and familiar, close and distant.”
Requirements
- No previous performance experience is required, just an interest in the project.
- Please note that we will be able to cater for a range of access needs and you don’t need to be able to walk to participate.
Compensation
- Participant performers will be paid an honorarium of $500 for their time.
Details
- Selected participants will attend a group workshop where they will get to know the other people involved and learn more about the project, then attend a rehearsal where they’ll be shown exactly what will happen in the performance.
- Participants will take part in the performances where they will be stationed at a specific point in The Bentway neighbourhood and walk with every audience member for about 5 minutes before passing them on to the next participant. Throughout the process there is lots of time for discussion together, and we look after everyone with food and drink every time we meet.
Availability Requirements
- Participant Performers must be available for all of the the following dates and times:
- Saturday May 11, 2024: Group Workshop
- Sunday May 19, 2024: Group Rehearsal (Head’s up – this is the May Long Weekend!)
- Saturday May 25, 2024 and Sunday May 26, 2024: Performances
“The experience was one of empowerment, both physically and emotionally… I felt a kind of universal love, not so much related to a particular person but manifesting itself as a gratitude to be alive and surrounded by so many other great human beings, all potentially friends.”
Find more information about the project, please visit Rosana Cade’s website.
If you have any additional questions, please contact hello[at]thebentway.ca and a member of the Programming team will respond.
“All of it felt very intense and charged, but in such a healthy, positive manner… I feel very changed and I think this helped me unlock a bit of myself that I didn’t really know was there and it now gives me so many opportunities for self-exploration.”
