COVIZ_2021, Found Festival 2023. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Surprise! You’re about to be Found.

Yes, the festival of of unexpected encounters with art and artists is back, starting Thursday, for a 12th edition in Old Strathcona. And at Found 2023 you could find yourself following actor/dancers through a memorial chapel as they explore the multi-generational immigrant experience. Or experiencing storytelling the multi-angled TikTok way in a hidden backstage nook at the Rapid Fire Exchange Theatre. You could find yourself partying at a hoedown, or in the secret upstairs at a Masonic hall where ghosts live.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Or maybe you’ll be wondering if you just saw what you thought you saw — big wooden birds at whimsical feeders, in nests, in trees. Are magpies watching you back, following your movements, gradually taking over?

From the start Found has been the home of experiments in shaking up the conventional relationship between artists and their audiences to see what will happen. The lineup assembled by festival director Whittyn Jason puts the multi back in multi-disciplinary, says Found’s managing producer Mac Brock of the Common Ground Arts Society. “We’re leaning hard into that; we’ve broadened the scope,” he says. “We’re trying to bridge as many of the gaps as we can!” Visual art isn’t just visual at Found; it has performance and engagement angles. To be in the audience is, in intriguing ways, to be part of the show.

Take COVIZ_2021, for example. The live motion-capture media installation is the creation of Calgary-based animator Tyler Klein Longmire. He experiments with motion-capture that maps the movements of anyone who walks by, as Brock explains. Your movements are translated into kooky cartoon avatars (Saturday at the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market, Sunday at the Whyte Avenue Art Walk).

The career of up-and-coming sculptor and installation artist Mika Haykowsky is multi-disciplinary through and through; their website archive  includes work in pastels, photography, video, sound, ceramics, and performance that combines many of the above. In their Sky-Rat Home/ Are Birds Real?, “really cool bird sculptures, some mounted in trees,” as Brock describes, unlocks “conspiracy theories and stories. Found will be the only festival in this festival-peppered city that got City permission “to tie a bunch of large wooden birds in trees.”

El Funeral, Found Festival 2023. Photo supplied

El Funeral by Elisa Marina Mair-Sánchez is a bilingual, multi-disciplinary, roving dance/theatre play that takes its audiences through rooms in the South Side Memorial Chapel. Three years in the development (it had a reading at Found 2021), it’s “a kaleidoscopic look at the immigrant experience … through the lens of one family’s funeral,” says Brock of the festival’s biggest show. “It’s a big sensory feast of a show, a large, immersive experience of a show … a dive across time and generations really physical, with a talented dance team.” The cast of seven dancer/performers are led by director Andrés Moreno. “A hot ticket,” says Brock. “I’ll be surprised if it isn’t sold out by opening night (Friday).”

The path of El Funeral to full production (it’s the largest show at this year’s Found) demonstrates the festival’s commitment to seeing pieces through. The “Fresh AiR Artist” residency, for example, is a “multi-year program” these days, which “gives artists the chance to test material with an audience” and rework and expand it, as Brock puts it.

Brick Shithouse, Found Festival 2023, Photo supplied.

This year’s Fresh AiR Artist-in-Residence is Ashleigh Hicks. The festival includes a reading of their new play Brick Shithouse, directed by Sarah J. Culkin Sunday in the Studio Theatre at the ATB Financial Arts Barn. And it will get a full production, in person and online, at Found 2024. As Brock describes it, the characters of the play are young queer adults in a hard-scrabble world of cyclical poverty who “start an underground fight club that people online can bet on.”

“Artistic directors should be looking at Ashleigh!” says Brock of a playwright who works on an unusually large scale. Brick Shithouse, which has a cast of eight or nine, is “a big ambitious show that can fill a big stage,” says Brock.

TikTok Parody Dance Show is, as billed, “exactly what it sounds like.” A duet between its creators Tia Kushniruk and Rizwan Mohiuddin, it has all the surprises and shock comedy, sudden changes of direction and intention of TikTok and platforms like it. “Grotesque and engaging, almost-narrative, really theatrical,” says Brock.

Ghosts Are Everywhere, Found Festival 2023

Ghosts Are Everywhere: Live! is the work of a duo of comedy podcasters from Hamilton, Cecilia O’Grady and Carly Anna Billings, who specialize in real people’s ghost stories. They’re slated for two live recordings of their podcast in the upstairs at Acacia Hall (a venue I didn’t realize existed). “Very Lynch-ian,” declares Brock. And they’ll supplement by hanging at the Found Festival music patio behind the Arts Barn where “you can hear music and tell them your ghost stories.”

And the Found Festival afterparty Hoedown, a popular hit launched last year, is back, this year at Mile Zero Dance’s new venue (9931-78 Ave.). Curated by Salem Zurch, Hoedown, as Brock describes, is “campy, sexy, activated by black queer artists re-claiming … Alberta! And it is so much fun.” Advance tickets are “highly recommended.”

There’s spoken word poetry, there’s a music lineup, and more at Found. Find the full Found Festival lineup, the schedule, and tickets at commongroundarts.ca.

PREVIEW

Found Festival 2023

Common Ground Arts Society

Where: Old Strathcona, various locations including ATB Financial Arts Barn, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: Thursday through Sunday

Tickets: commongroundarts.ca