Support SAMCA coming to Toronto September 2024!

Spindle Collective and Riot King are bringing our award-winning outdoor, dark folklore production, SAMCA, to Toronto this fall!

Thanks to generous funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, we are so close to our budget goal! This grant is what made it possible to produce our production, and it covers the cost of 10 actors being paid fair wage for 3 weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of performances, wages for a creative team of 7 members, and rental costs for the perfect outdoor venue at Black Creek Pioneer Village!

We submitted grants for the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council that were sadly unsuccessful, and so to meet our budget while keeping ticket prices low, we’re hosting this fundraiser - and we need your help!

We are renting a completely outdoor venue with no access to electricity, and so we need to build our own theatre space outdoors. In order to present a uniquely immersive world from the ground-up, we need to provide our own lights, generators, grid, chairs … basically anything you see in a black box, we need to provide ourselves! Your donations help to fund this, and to hire a production manager and crew to oversee the install, the operation, and tear-down of our outdoor theatre.

We believe in financial transparency, and the full budget for our production can be viewed upon request. Our expenses are budgeted at $66,479.89. We need to fundraise $3000 more to reach our goal!

THE PROJECT :

SAMCA follows two sisters, Miha and Prava, as they come to terms with their sexuality, and the impact this has on their lives growing up in rural Romania in the late 1800’s. When the younger sister becomes pregnant following a sexual assault, the two are left to grapple with how this new-found motherhood changes their relationship. SAMCA explores how being a mother defines womanhood, and what happens when motherhood is thrust upon someone who does not want it. The audience is guided through the forest by the Zâne, spirits of the forest, to encounter different elements of the story climaxing in a horrifying, sensory nightmare... with a twist!

PRODUCTION HISTORY:

SAMCA was first conceived in a late-night conversation between Natalia and Kathleen about the titular Romanian mythological creature. It was difficult to find tales and myths surrounding Samca through research, so Natalia proposed that we create our own! A short while later, Natalia and Brendan were walking through Warden Woods in Victoria Park, and Brendan began envisioning the show in a forest. They were brought on as Director… and then we went to work!

SAMCA was presented at the Hamilton Fringe in 2022 after winning the New Play Contest and securing a spot in the festival. A short film based on the theatrical play was featured at the Springworks ‘tapashta’ Festival in Stratford that same year and was chosen as an official selection at the Hamilton Fringe Film Festival. A sold-out, immersive roaming production of SAMCA was produced as a special event at the 2023 In the Soil Festival in Burgoyne Woods in St. Catharines. SAMCA has has three development workshops that were supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council as recommended by Nightswimming and WhyNot Theatre, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Now, we’re ready to share what we’ve conceived with the Toronto community, and we couldn’t be more excited!

PRODUCTION CAST AND CREW:

SAMCA’s cast and production team consists entirely of female and non-binary creators of different cultural identities, with the majority of the team belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. The cast is composed of actors, musicians, and dancers of different cultural backgrounds and identities, the diversity of which has enriched the story and creation process. The majority of our team has been working on the project collaboratively since our first workshop, which makes the sharing of this work all the more special.

SAMCA is written by Natalia Bushnik, a physical-theatre performer and award-winning playwright and Kathleen Welch, a writer, composer, and actor living in Hamilton, and directed by Brendan Kinnon, a non-binary performer and producer and the Creative Director of Riot King. Our choreographer, Skye Rogers, is a multidisciplinary performing artist and leader based in Hamilton, Ontario. After working with Skye on our Movement Workshop in January 2024, we cannot wait to share her gorgeous work with you all. We are also so lucky to have performer, stage manager, producer Alex Verge as our stage manager extraordinaire!

The cast includes; Andra Zlatescu, a non-binary Romani/Romanian musician and artist who has also provided script translations and additional music composition; Elif Coskun, a multilingual dancer and pianist born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey; Beatrice Kwan, a dancer, teacher and choreographer; Sydney Nicholson, a queer musical theatre performer; Camila Farah, a queer Brazilian-Canadian musical theatre performer and costume designer; Jenna Geen, a queer non-binary interdisciplinary artist, composer and sound designer for theatre and film; Madeline Kennedy, a Niagara-raised artist with training in Suzuki, Viewpoints and site specific devising; and Fae Alexander, a singer, songwriter and actor from Robinson Superior Treaty (Thunder Bay).

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Wednesday to Sunday, September 25th to September 29th at 7:30PM

Wednesday to Saturday, October 2nd to October 5th at 7:30PM

Black Creek Pioneer Village North Property

Entrance off of Jane Street north of Steeles Avenue

Subway to or park at Highway 407 TTC Station

THANK YOU!

Every dollar and share is massively appreciated! Please share wide and far, and help our little spooky show that could premiere this Halloween season!!