FoLDA Archive

Image of a person staring at a pixelated image.

‘asses.masses’: One FOLDA-goer’s Assessment

  • FoLDA
  • Review

The theatre is dark. A single video game controller sits under a spotlight in front of a projector screen. With no rules, and in no established order, audience members take turns leaving their seats and approaching the stage. One at a time, these brave players take control of asses.masses. Over several hours, a story of revolution, carnage, reincarnation, and collective care unfolds.  Presented by the Festival of Live Digital Arts […]

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Poster for 'Home' On the left, an image of a person facedown on the ground with their hand reaching out. On right an image of only one eye.

Captivating Charisma: ‘Home’

  • FoLDA
  • Review

How would you feel if someone invaded your home—a place meant for comfort and security? Home is a solo performance starring Beau Dixon, performed at the Isabel Bader Centre and was a part of the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA). In Home, Beau Dixon recalls his personal experience of a home invasion and how it changed him. He describes and recreates important moments of his life, but we are […]

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Chisato Minamimura performing 'Scored in Silence'

Where No One Sense Takes Priority: ‘Scored in Silence’

  • FoLDA
  • Review

Imagine being in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped. Now imagine having no way to hear it. Scored in Silence is an excellent solo show, starring Deaf performer, Chisato Minamimura, and was performed as part of the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA) at the Isabel Bader Centre. The performance recounts World War II and the effects of the atomic bomb on Japan, but more specifically how it affected the […]

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In conversation with Clayton Lee and Michael Rubenfeld from ‘Ways of Being’

  • FoLDA
  • Industry
  • Interview
  • Spiderwebshow

Ways of Being was an interactive performance for two different groups of audience, in two different cities simultaneously. Returning to Kingston as a part of FOLDA 2022, the work transformed me into both the performer and audience, spectator and entertainer. And as someone interested in the human condition, Ways of Being gave me the space to explore and understand, “How do we become the people we are at any given moment? […]

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Selfie is Clumsily, Painfully, and Firmly Real

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

Told through the literal lens of digital technology such as phones and computers, the internet and social media play a critical role in communication and evidence.

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Political Agency in the Digital Realm: the Case of VR

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Kingston Theatre Alliance
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

The performance of You Should Have Stayed Home, directed by Michael Wheeler, was a component of the Festival of Live Digital Art (FoLDA) and as a work it explores the tensions and political possibilities inherent in virtual reality.

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Contracts as Dialogue, as Conversation. Contracting as Maybe, Possibly, Ethical.

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Industry
  • Kingston Theatre Alliance
  • News
  • Spiderwebshow

I was once told that a contract is meant to be a conversation, and hopefully, a dialogue. Yet it is rarely treated as such.  In reality, a contract often brings up feelings of fear. Perhaps these anxieties regarding contracts come from a worry that one may misunderstand the legal jargon, or maybe it comes from an understanding of a history of manipulation and deception. Contracts as we know it, and […]

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Practices in care with The Maydee Box

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Kick & Push Festival
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

The Maydee Box, created by Murdoc Schon and Rebecca Cuddy, was presented at this year’s Festival of Live and Digital Art in the Isabel Bader Center’s Art and Media lab. The work is an audio, visual, and tactile piece in the real world, but amplified by augmented reality. Advancing the physical world through a smart device, Schon and Cuddy have used this technology to present the actual performance of the […]

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Of loss and listening – Theatre Passe Muraille’s Speculation at FoLDA

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

Fn (dir. Alex Bulmer and Tristan Whiston) reflects on how Ting comes to terms with her and her mother’s respective urgency to be understood on their own terms, in conversation with the lives and works of composers John Cage and Beethoven.

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Aaron Collier’s Frequencies creates a stunning combination of autobiography and techno music

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

Described as a part-techno concert and part autobiographical, the musical innovatively tells the entertaining and captivating story of Collier’s life, starting at the beginning of the universe.

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Good Things To Do is technological poetry

  • Festival
  • FoLDA
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

Good Things To Do is an immersive virtual experience “blending dreamy sonic landscape, solitary physical environment and an unexpected use of technology” in order to explore the softness within ourselves the world demands we abandon. From its initial workshop implementing digital design into the live installation at foldA in 2018 to its adaptation for COVID-19 today, Good Things To Do’s full embrace of a computerized form is the very thing that potentiates the theatricality of dream logic.

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Virtual Connectedness and Pandemic Dreaming at Cabin Fever PROTOTYPE

  • FoLDA
  • Review
  • Spiderwebshow

In the first few months of the pandemic, virtual activities were beyond popular. From Zoom drinks to Club Quarantine to the rise of TikTok, people around the globe were craving a sense of togetherness that the pandemic was devoid of. Cabin Fever PROTOTYPE seeks to address this phenomenon: can virtual events create a sense of togetherness and unity?

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