SHU Performance is delighted to present LESS + MORE by Secret Theatre at the Performance Lab.
A performance created using individual pieces of past audience feedback collected over the last decade of Secret Theatre.
*** FREE PUBLIC EVENT ***
Dustin has been thinking about his life, about all the audiences he has stood in front of, danced with, looked into the eyes of and walked through the streets of the city with. He has written the audience a letter, part love-letter part breakup note, and over the course of an hour or so, he will read and reread this letter over and over again, and each time his performance of it will be transformed by following the advice of his former audience members. The performance will contain less eyes closed parts, less clothes, and less endings. There will be more beer, more dancing, more confetti. If that sounds like a mashup, that’s because it is. It is also an attempt at the impossible, at achieving perfection, or at least a shared moment of grace together.
“Secret Theatre and Dustin Harvey’s work represent a unique and integral voice in the Canadian performance ecology. Their work is incredibly imaginative, boundary-pushing and rigorous; the experiences they create are unique in our approach to content and form, and unforgettable for audiences that witness or participate in them.” Laura Nanni, SummerWorks in Toronto
DRAMATURG’S STATEMENT
As long as I have known him, Dustin’s work has had a kind of fearlessness to it. Unafraid to be different, to take risks, to be nakedly sentimental, defiantly hopeful, to exist literally and figuratively at the very edge of Canada’s theatre establishment. Less + More is all those things. It is a show that only Dustin could have made - courageously honest, wildly innovative, sad and silly and beautiful all at the same time. It is an attempt to consider the biggest possible questions about our lives and how we choose to live them in a way so charming and playful it could be the set-up for a party game, rather than the premise for an hour of theatre.
Created by Dustin Harvey | Dramaturgy Andy Field (London, UK) | Project Mentor Dr. Tom Payne, Doppelgangster (Sheffield, UK) | Residency Support Iceland Academy for the Arts in Reykjavik | Funded by ArtsNS, City of Halifax, and The Canada Council For The Arts
Photography: Millefore Clarkes
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