The Undercurrent Festival has been showcasing Ottawa theatrical talent for 13 years
Since 2011, the Undercurrents Festival has been an annual celebration of contemporary theatre in Ottawa. This year the festival will run from Feb. 7-17, showcasing 10 theatre productions at four locations: Arts Court Theatre, Atelier Theatre, De La Salle Public High School, and the Ottawa Dance Directive. The festival is bilingual, featuring both French productions and English productions with French captioning.
U of O students should not be deterred by potentially expensive tickets. The festival organizers have priced each performance ticket according to what an individual is able to pay, with a scale beginning at $10 and ending at $75. This pay scale grants access to an art form whose prices have been historically exclusive.
Students can also look forward to a lineup of performances that feature marginalized voices, and stories that cover a diverse range of lived experiences.
Chasse au Trésor follows a young Congolese immigrant who has newly arrived to Canada and struggles to find his identity.
Blood Offering explores the aftermath of grief and bitterness following an American school shooting that leaves a student dead.
I Don’t Miss You is a solo play about a non-binary computer program who wakes up one day to find that the rest of the human population has disappeared, leaving them to ponder on the meaning of gender without perception.
KEEP MARS RED tackles climate anxiety and postcolonial rage through the eyes of a protagonist desperately trying to contact Mars to warn its inhabitants of the destruction that will follow when Earthlings land.
Kimiko is a poetic circus show that combines traditional Japanese art forms such as storytelling, balancing objects, dancing, and sword swallowing with a modern exploration of Japanese-Canadian identity.
Terminally Ill follows a doctor trying to solve the mystery of who sabotaged the elaborate magical act of a famous escape artist.
Le Concierge is a modern take on The Odyssey, following a school janitor as he makes an endless, dream-like journey through empty classrooms and corridors.
L’hippocampe is a theatrical foray into the science of dreaming, with onstage experiments aimed to educate a childhood audience.
Through My Lens is written and acted by an artist who lives with visual impairment and takes photographs around her city.
Malunderstood is the French translation of a play that uses puppeteering and movement to tell the story of how its protagonist was raised by a wild beaver.
The Undercurrents Festival promises shows filled with experimental art, masterful storytelling, and words from the heart. For the price of $10 (or a generous $75), students can watch it all unfold.
