In a sometime somewhere devoid of nature, clownish ‘workers’ enter an empty space and assemble a series of artificial landscapes, striving to recreate the natural world from memory. But are we seeing the deep past? Or some genetically modified future?
The world premiere of Last Landscape employs Bad New Days’ signature brand of physical theatre, offering a playful meditation on extinction, ecological grief and interspecies care, where colossal puppets of prehistoric megafauna roam free.
On the brink of environmental collapse, it offers brave new possibilities for how we might share this big green miracle/marble.
Conceived and Directed by Adam Paolozza
Creative Producer Victor Pokinko
Last Landscape is produced in partnership with Common Boots Theatre
and is the recipient of the Ray Ferris Sustainability and Innovation Grant
Awarded by TAPA, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts
Promo Art Direction/Photography: Fran Chudnoff
Photography Assistants: @kristanewey + @b.cair
Makeup: @rahsthetics
Styling: @garconnnne + @cursed_shawty
Thanks to our funders and development partners:
The Kick & Push Festival Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada Ontario Arts Council - Conseil des arts de l'Ontario Toronto Arts Council National Arts Centre / Centre national des Arts TAPA Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts Common Boots Theatre
NEWS 2023
Italian Mime Suicide wins FIVE DORA AWARDS!!!!
We're very honoured to announce that our play Italian Mime Suicide, which played at The Theatre Centre in April, has won five Dora Mavor Moore Awards:
Outstanding Production - Italian Mime Suicide
Outstanding New Play - The Company
Outstanding Direction - Kari Pederson and Adam Paolozza
Outstanding Lighting Design - Andre Du Toit
Outstanding Costume Design - Allie Marshall and Evgenia Mikhaylova
Thank you to the whole team, our beloved audience, Tapa for organizing the Dora awards and to all the Dora sponsors. We'd also like to thank The Canada Council for the Arts, for the funding that makes this all possible.
NEWS 2022
Bad New Days brings ITALIAN MIME SUICIDE to The Theatre Centre after a critically acclaimed, smash-hit run in Montreal at Théâtre Aux Écuries, earning a “Top Ten Shows of 2021” by the Montreal Gazette.
With an imagistic aesthetic reminiscent of the kitsch iconography of clowns, mimes and world-weary circus acrobats, ITALIAN MIME SUICIDE sensitively explores the levity within tragedy, creating a funny, poetic meditation on melancholy, the acceptance of failure and the usefulness of art in troubled times.
ITALIAN MIME SUICIDE marks Bad New Days’ return to Toronto stages to ask why do we make art, why is it important, and why now?
“Italian Mime Suicide features four marvellous mimes accompanied by a turntable musician who fuses jazz, electro and traditional polyphonic singing. Through different vignettes, always funny, sad and touching at the same time, the characters depict what could have caused the despair of this mime and pushed him to end his life. […] isn’t that precisely the magic of mime? To offer only poetry and beauty, even if it is a question of interpreting the greatest tragedies…?” –Sophie Jama, pieuvre.ca
COMING SOON to The Theatre Centre
@thetheatrecentre
April 21st - May 1st
All Tickets are on a Pay What You Can Afford sliding scale, available at:
https://theatrecentre.org/event/italian-mime-suicide/
For More Info:
poster photo by Omar David Rivero
background photo by Najim Chaoui
teaser by Sandrick Mathurin
NEWS 2021
Quebecois Premier of Italian Mime Suicide
Makes Montreal Gazette's Top 10 of 2021 List
Based loosely on the true story of an Italian mime who jumped off a building claiming no one appreciated his art, Italian Mime Suicide is a (mostly) silent play about Mime.
Using a lyrical, physical, comedic style - imagine Robert Wilson meets Cirque du Soleil - and a visual aesthetic indebted to Picasso’s paintings and the kitsch iconography of world-weary mimes, clowns, and acrobats, Italian Mime Suicide is a poetic, philosophical meditation on themes of mental health, dignity in failure, and the usefulness of art in troubled times.
Italian Mime Suicide returns to Toronto this April at The Theatre Centre, stay tuned for more information!
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