Description
Vibrant and boundary-pushing, the Prismatic Arts Festival showcases leading Indigenous and culturally diverse artists from across Canada. It features theatre, dance, music, spoken word, visual arts, film and media arts. Prismatic takes place across Ottawa from September 12 to 22 at multiple venues, including GCTC.
NOTE: to waive the online fee, simply enter “prismatic” at checkout.
* This festival is not part of the subscription series.
Quick Links
Prismatic Film Screenings
Talk Series
Festival Passes
*Note: if you are a presenter please contact maggie@prismaticfestival.com or the GCTC box office for the link to purchase your pass.
Cliff Cardinal
CBC Special
You’re listening to the radio in your kitchen. The program moves from the host to the story, the story to the song. An evening of words and music with internationally-lauded writer and performer Cliff Cardinal as he performs original, dark and catchy folk songs; miraculous stories of familial resilience; legends of Turtle Island survival; and new contributions to the ongoing mythology of the Canadian experience.
Venue
GCTC - Studio
Showtimes
September 15th at 7pm
September 16th at 5:30pm
September 17th at 8pm
September 18th at 8:30pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Rah-Eleh
Oreo
Oreo, is a performance for the camera and YouTube tutorial parody which was completed as part of Artslant’s Georgia Fee Residency in Paris. YouTube tutorials have become a common way to disseminate and obtain information about many things including beauty. Rah uses this model to address racism and white privilege by strategically using humour and the tutorial approach to seduce the viewer as a communicative tool.
Venue
GCTC - Fritzi Gallery
Showtimes
September 12-22
Artist talk: September 17 at 5:30pm
Ticket Prices
By donation.
Stephanie Yee
Broken English Karaoke
Returning to the Prismatic Arts Festival for its sixth year, Broken English Karaoke is a crowd favourite. Festival-goers are invited to end the night with us either on the stage or in the audience of this interactive performance installation. All within the length of a song, each performance challenges the participant to navigate the boundaries between the familiar and unfamiliar.
Venue
GCTC - Lobby*
Arts Court Theatre - Studio^
Showtimes
September 15th at 10pm*
September 16th at 10pm^
September 17th at 10pm^
September 18th at 10pm^
September 19th at 10pm^
September 21st at 10pm*
Ticket Prices
By donation at door
Kaha:wi Dance Theatre
Blood Water Earth / Zoey Roy
An embodied incantation Blood, Water, Earth traverses sacred alignment from cosmos to womb to earth, in a symbolic ritual renewal. Weaving performance, video and music, the performance channels the ancestral, elemental and the dream world. Highly cinematic, the imagery and energies span the wide range of what is woman: warrior, leader, mother, and huntress.
The show is opened by Zoey Roy’s spoken word. Her Cree-Dene Métis roots and career as an artist give her a unique insight into working with Indigenous and Canadian youth in pursuit of relationship-building and reconciliation. She is passionate about ensuring young people have what they need to ‘find their voice’ and reach their potential.
Venue
GCTC - Mainstage
Showtimes
September 15th at 8pm (artist talk back)
September 16th at 7pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Nyata Nyata
Mozongi
At Prismatic 2019, Compagnie Dance Nyata Nyata is performing Mozongi - a piece about time, and more precisely, about the physics of time. The step is weight and weight is time. Not repetition, but persistence.
The structure of Mozongi unfolds through the contrasts of movement and of immobility, of the one and of the many, in order to give shape to a primordial conflict – that of time which consumes space.
Venue
Gladstone Theatre
Showtimes
September 15th at 7pm (artist talk back)
September 16th at 8pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Paul Wong
Paul Wong is an award winning artist and curator based in Vancouver. He is presenting a video screening and artist talk focusing on his new and recent public art projects that will include Occupying Chinatown, a one year City of Vancouver artists residency.
Venue
Saw Gallery
Showtimes
September 16th at 6:30pm
Ticket Prices
Free event
Sina Bathaie / Jacques Mindreau
His latest album Ray of Hope was released on Windcatcher Records in October 2017 with his World fusion ensemble. Ray of Hope was nominated for Independent Music Awards’ 2018 Best World Beat Album of the Year. His first album Sound of Silence was recorded and produced in Montreal in 2012 and has been acclaimed by music critics. Sina has also been active in the movie industry and composed original music for the movies such as The Horse Latitudes and Un royaume déménage (Once Upon a Kingdom).
Jacques Mindreau is a violinist, vocalist and composer; he creates music for film, dance, and now theatre. Jacques studied the violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. As well as playing the violin for more than 25 years, Jacques Mindreau sings in an operatic voice that is enriched with a language of the imagination
Venue
Arts Court Theatre - Studio
Showtimes
September 16th at 9pm
Ticket Prices
General: $18
Seniors + Students: $16
Ensemble Kamaan / Digging Roots
Ensemble Kamaan offers a world of epic journeys - free from borders - with pieces that broaden the fields of musical traditions. Four musicians create a unique fusion that combines the refinement of traditional Persian classical music with the rigor of folk melodies in a contemporary and creative approach.
Digging Roots utilize traditional and contemporary artistic practices, themes, traditions, forms, and are committed to and influenced by, the broad and diverse music community and creative culture that we live in. They pursue their art as a means of survival personally and culturally, as a way to know their own truth, as a way of connecting with community, as a means of resistance, as a tool of positive change, as an instrument of joy, as a way to keep tradition alive, and as a way to move forward.
Venue
Arts Court Theatre - Studio
Showtimes
September 17 at 9pm
Ticket Prices
General: $18
Seniors + Students: $16
Battle of Santiago / Greyson Gritt
Juno-nominated, Toronto-based group Battle of Santiago combines classic Afro-Cuban rhythms and vocals with a distinctly Canadian post-rock spirit and sensibility.
Juno award-winning artist Greyson Gritt was born on the Canadian Shield, raised on a dirt road, and lives as a trans, queer, non-binary folk-blues musician in Sudbury, ON. With a mouthful of soul and a truckload of blues, this Anishinaabe-Métis songster and producer is releasing their first full length studio album in early 2020. You may recognize Greyson as a creative force of Quantum Tangle, the 2017 Juno award-winners for Indigenous Album of the year.
Venue
Arts Court Theatre - Studio
Showtimes
September 18 at 9pm
Ticket Prices
General: $18
Seniors + Students: $16
In this original musical program, the oriental instruments of Constantinople (sétar, kanun, oud and percussion) mix with the sounds of the Ensemble Caprice (recorders and viols) as well as with the voices of the soprano Rebecca Dowd and Persian singer Kiya Tabassian in a dialogue that blends European and Oriental medieval colours.
Venue
Allsaints Event Space
Showtimes
September 19th at 7:30pm
Ticket Prices
General: $30
Students: $15
Diyet & The Love Soldiers / NAMU
Diyet is Alternative Folk, Roots, Country and Traditional Aboriginal, with melodies and stories deeply rooted in her Indigenous world view and northern life. Her songs are an interpretation of a northern reality: hard, raw and will break you if it can, but at the same time, always beautiful, gentle, strange and intensely alive.
NAMU is a Korean traditional music ensemble that made its official debut in 2015. Before this, NAMU members, each an outstanding soloist, collaborated with various artists and crossed over many genres with a wide range of projects such as jazz, classical, and electronic music.
Venue
Arts Court Theatre - Studio
Showtimes
September 19th at 9pm
Ticket Prices
General: $18
Seniors + Students: $16
The Tashme Project: The Living Archives
The Tashme Project: The Living Archives is a one-act verbatim theatre piece that traces the history and common experience of the Nisei through childhood, WWII internment and post-war resettlement east of the Rockies. Nisei (2nd generation) is a Japanese term for a person born in the Americas whose parents were immigrants from Japan.
Venue
GCTC - Mainstage
Showtimes
September 18th at 6pm
September 19th at 6pm
September 20th at 7pm
September 21st at 8pm
September 22nd at 4pm
*Artist talk back immediately after every show
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Hong Kong Exile
Foxconn Frequency (no.3)
Performed by three visibly Chinese performers, Foxconn Frequency (no.3), is a work of "algorithmic theatre" that incorporates real-time game mechanics, piano pedagogy, 3D-printing, and the poetry of former Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi (许立志).
Venue
Gladstone Theatre
Showtimes
September 18th 9pm
September 19th 9pm
September 20th 9pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Esie Mensah Creations
Zayo
In ZAYO, Ouhna arrives in the world of Nxi and has one directive: get to their destiny. Through a series of tests that will measure her mental, physical, and emotional strength, she must do what it takes to complete her quest, or the journey will consume her.
Venue
Nouvelle Scene - Studio A
Showtimes
September 17th at 8:30pm
September 18th at 7pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Onelight Theatre
Asheq
Asheq: Ritual Music to Cure a Lover is set on the shores of the Persian Gulf in southern Iran where East African and Persian traditions have blended over time to produce unique cultural practices. The play explores how cultures and communities change over time: how traditions can be sustained from generation to generation and also how there can be sudden, overnight cultural change.
Venue
Nouvelle Scene - Studio B
Showtimes
September 16th at 6pm
September 17th at 7pm
September 18th at 7:45pm
September 19th at 8pm
Ticket Prices
General: $23
Seniors + Students: $19
Purchase Passes for Prismatic