What is The Tale of a Town? The Tale of a Town is a transmedia storytelling initiative that celebrates people and places through the gathering, mapping and theatrical presentation of our living memories. In 2014, The Tale of a Town will set out on a journey across the country in our storymobile gathering neighbourhood tales through interviews with local heros, business owners and residents. These site-specific stories will populate our online interactive story map and together they will form our country s collective community memory and inspire the creation of a multi-media performance The Tale of a Town Canada, slated to tour from coast to coast in 2017 celebrating Canada s 150 th Anniversary. This story gathering initiative will provide tremendous opportunity to engage with Canada s public through direct in the field interaction with a national reach across multiple platforms including digital story mapping, podcasting and live performance. Why should you bring The Tale of a Town to your community? IT S CUTTING EDGE The Tale of a Town is a vehicle for public engagement and audience development connecting people with their stories through our innovative approach to creation and performance that has received critical acclaim for its high artistic merit and social relevance. IT S SUPPORTED The Tale of a Town has been recognized by industry professionals, civic, provincial and federal governments and leaders in community development as a significant and valuable piece of cultural preservation. The Tale of a Town is an effective tool to connect with all of the stakeholders within a community, helping to facilitate new conversations and create new partnerships. IT S TIME SENSITIVE Across Canada, countless communities, along with the stories they hold, are in the midst of disappearance as old gives way to new, local gives way to global, diversity gives way to uniformity, and life gives way to death. One neighbourhood at a time, The Tale of a Town will save the almost lost stories that reveal our past and inspire our future.
Past Projects The Tale of a Town Ontario Tour This past summer FIXT POINT hit the road in our very own storymobile! We stopped in seven Ontario locales, trading ice cream for main street stories. The lucky towns were: Huntsville, London, Markdale, Ingersoll, Little Current, Sudbury & Killarney. Along the way, we mapped the gathered stories online, created a site-specific performance for Nuit Blanche North, and recorded a series of seven podcasts for our partners at The Walrus, entitled A Walk Down Main Street. You can listen to the podcasts we created on Sound Cloud -> HERE Along with The Walrus, our partners for this project included Chapman s Ice Cream, The Hive Strategic Marketing, The Ontario Arts Council, Downtown London and The Huntsville Festival for the Arts. We look forward to getting back on the road soon to gather main street stories in downtowns across Canada! The Tale of a Town Queen West Presented by Theatre Passe Muraille, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and The Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils, this legendary spectacle led the audience through streets and alleyways and into a re-designed commercial space on Queen West resonating with live music originating from this renowned neighbourhood. Playing to SOLD OUT audiences, this critically acclaimed production landed the front page of The Toronto Star and was hailed for its social innovation in the Globe & Mail and The National Post and featured segments on CBC Radio One.
The Tale of a Town Parkdale The first ever version of The Tale of a Town took place in our studio storefront in Toronto thanks to seed support from the Toronto Arts Council. Accented by a rotating band of local musicians, this show highlighted local independent entrepreneurs through video interviews integrated into the performance. Featured on CBC s Here & Now and Inside Toronto, the overwhelming and exciting public response to this show inspired us to DREAM BIG about what this The Tale of a Town project could become. The Tale of a Town St. Catharines Presented as part of In The Soil Festival Niagara and in partnership with Suitcase in Point Theatre Company, this installation performance took place in a foreclosed gallery space that we named THE LIVING ARCHIVE. Following an extensive interview marathon, we created a map of downtown and invited the public into the gallery to add to the archive by filling a balloon with stories about their most memorable locales. Our gathered interview material was edited into a series of audio pieces displayed inside the gallery and featured on CFBU FM Radio and Souncloud.com. In April, these gathered stories will be turned into a live site-specific performance to premier at In The Soil 2013! The Tale of CORKtown Presented by Canadian Stage for the Festival of Ideas and Creation, this theatrical walk was inspired by Jane Jacobs text and took the crowd on a trip along Toronto s Esplanade, through the Canadian Opera Company, into the Performing Arts Lodge - a housing development for retired performers, and finally onto the balcony of the St. Lawrence Market where audience members were given a map and asked to find their own way back to the theatre for a community dinner and celebration!
Broadcast Extensions A Walk Down Main Street - 7-part podcast series created on our 2012 X-Ontario Summer Tour - Created and produced by FIXT POINT for The Walrus Online Dream Big, start small... - Weekly column focusing on local businesses, developed from interviews gathered during the creation of The Tale of a Town - Queen West - Created and produced by FIXT POINT for CBC s Here and Now, to coincide with our live theatre production Art s Diner - 6 audio documentaries celebrating local luminaries created for Phase 1 of The Tale of a Town - St. Catharines - Created and produced by FIXT POINT for CFBU Radio and CBC s Ontario Today
About FIXT POINT Founded in 2006, and incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 2011, FIXT POINT is a professional theatre and media company led by artistic director Lisa Marie DiLiberto and Managing Director Charles Ketchabaw. Our goal is to engage with the community through the combination of site-specific performance, audio art, and digital story mapping in order to tell tales across multiple platforms that serve to preserve and promote local heritage and neighbourhood culture HIGHLIGHTS: In summer of 2012, FIXT POINT took their acclaimed project The Tale of a Town across Ontario, trading Chapman s ice cream for main street stories. To read all about this tour and other featured Tale of a Town projects, check out our website thetaleofaotown.com. During our tour, we engaged with hundreds of community members throughout the province, created a site specific audio map with the gathered stories, and released seven editions of a podcast for presented by the Walrus Magazine entitled A Walk Down Main Street. Beyond our current Tale of a Town series, FIXT POINT has also produced widely acclaimed tours of original work, taking us to the Edinburgh Festival, to the Prague International Festival, across Canada, to the UK and Austria. FIXT POINT also produces professional workshops in Bouffon and Clown across North America facilitated by French Master Philippe Gaulier. This fall, FIXT POINT presented The Four Corners, a live site-specific radio play exploring the differing socio-economic class structures found in cities. This sold out live recording took place on location at the corners of Queen and Bathurst in Toronto, and was created for the Theatre Passe Muraille s 2012 Fall Season. FIXT POINT was selected by The Tribecca Film Institute, in collaboration with online platform ZEEGA to participate in a hackathon project at the MIT Open Documentary Lab in December in Cambridge Massachusetts. Upcoming, FIXT POINT is developing The Markham Tales, a commission from Diaspora Dialogues, and this spring we will dive into phase two of The Tale of St. Catharines, to be presented at the 2013 In The Soil Festival. And this just in... FIXT POINT has been awarded a Fresh Ground Commission for The Tale of Harbourfront Centre, which premiers as part of World Stage in 2014! LISA MARIE DILIBERTO (Co-Creator): Lisa Marie is the Artistic Director of FIXT POINT, Creator of The Tale of a Town series, Playwright-in-Residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, Associate Artist at Jumblies Theatre, former Audience Development and Education Coordinator at Canadian Stage, graduate of Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris France, and nominee for the 2011 Premier s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Lisa Marie s special skills include kart wheels, making plays, writing grants and dressing up in ridiculous costumes. CHARLES KETCHABAW (Co-Creator): In addition to being Managing Director of FIXT POINT Charles Ketchabaw is an accomplished independent producer. Most recently his production company Ready, Set Panic was awarded the Bell Media Independent Production Fund for their acclaimed web series Bill and Sons Towing starring Canadian comedy award winners The Imponderables. He has also produced and edited numerous series and specials for CBC Radio such as Out of Their Minds. Charles recently created and produced his first feature documentary To The Hunt: Deer Hunting in Tomahawk Wisconsin. FIXT POINT. DREAM BIG, start small...
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www.thetaleofatown.com BOOKING NOW FOR 2014-2017 contact: Charles Ketchabaw 416.895.7825 charles@6ixtpoint.com