Curator’s Note: Welcome to Incoming

Welcome to our newest festival; we are celebrating year 3 with a move to new fall dates!

Incoming Festival is a festival of premieres: every single show is a premiere; whether it’s a world premiere like Brendan McLeod’s Ten Thousand Things or Kerri Flannigan’s Slow Dive (which was one of the inaugural OUTstages residency projects) or the latest instalment in the ongoing performance series from J McLaughlin, or Victoria premieres from Juno nominated musical comedian Shirley Gnome or celebrated solo show performer Joylyn Secunda.

I am thrilled to share the work of some of the country’s most electrifying artists who are making bold, intriguing, and vital new work, alongside remarkable home-grown work from local artists. Some of the artists you’ll recognize (like Brendan, Shirley and J), and some are making their new work debut, like Cheyenne Scott with her solo-show in development Tackle Box. We also want to celebrate new collaborations, like Bollywood Cabaret and Still With Us – that bring new artists and new artistic partners to the festival.

This year’s festival curation challenge that I put to myself was to find new work that appealed to as many types of audiences as possible – so there is comedy, there is clown, there is traditional storytelling, there is a tribute to Bollywood, and there is multi-disciplinary performance. New work needs you – the audiences, so I hope you find a show (or three) that reaches out from the stage and finds you, in the darkness of the theatre. I hope that it inspires you to think, to feel, to laugh, to reflect on the world around you, or simply to be struck with a moment of wonder.

– Sean Guist, Artistic Director

P.S. If you love wild theatre and wild shoes, join us for a special fundraiser on Thursday November 27 from 6-8:30pm at the Fluevog store on lower Johnson, 50% of the sales made that night are donated to Intrepid. So see a show and grab a new paid of shoes – a perfect combo!