Help us throw some colour on our blank canvas!

“…sprinting down the street chasing after a breath that always feels too shallow…”

It’s spring… and talent is busting out all over. The Toronto Fringe Festival is here, and we are delighted to be part of it!

 

Can you help support our artists and our production with a small donation?

 

We, the Élan Collective, are raising money toward our show budget for Of A Blank Canvas (or the distance between the bridge and the water) by Michael Manning. We need your help, because, as recent theatre students, we don’t have a lot of cash on hand… as they say. Your donation (no matter how small) can help us realize our goal and make sure everyone involved receives fair compensation for all of their hard work.

In a whimsical new script by rising playwright Michael Manning, a disillusioned artist is swept on a perilous journey of self-discovery, guided by gods and snakes, muses, ignorance, innocence, and a pigeon.

Using playful and capricious storytelling techniques, Of A Blank Canvas (or the distance between the bridge and the water) touches on issues of emotional and mental fragility, identity, self-worth, and, of course, ultimately, love.

 

Actors Sarah Schmidt-McQuillan, Micaela Morey and Misha Sharivker dive with cheeky abandon into the many characters and innovations encountered along the way, and, under the guest direction of Jeannette Lambermont-Morey, the voyage is stage managed by Julia Mitin.

Poster design by Aisha El Shennawy.

The Élan Collective is a tenacious band of newly-minted theatre artists figuring out how to make art in a post-pandemic world, where the wobbly uncertainties of isolation and virtual distancing now have direct impact on their identities as artists in a live-performance medium. The collective lives to create theatre with momentum. Art that drives change and affects hearts and minds. Élan is the going, launch, setting in motion, or momentum. It's that moment when you finally DO launch yourself off the dock and into the cold lake.

In French, from which the word originates, the meaning is deeper. It implies an essential dynamism and vigorous spirit initiating and supporting an effort. Élan vital, in fact, means life force.