Franco Boni named artistic and executive director of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

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      The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival has named Toronto-based Franco Boni as its new artistic and executive director.

      Since 2003, Boni has been artistic director of the Theatre Centre in Toronto, helping turn the historic Carnegie Library at 1115 Queen Street West into a live arts hub. The centre has worked on several shows that came to PuSh, including premiering 2014's Sea Sick, Alanna Mitchell's look at our global oceans, and the 2019 fest's This Is The Point, the show about disability and sex it produced with Ahuri Theatre.

      Meeting with the Straight while in town last week, Boni said the PuSh fest has been a favourite destination event for him. “I’ve been coming for quite a long time, and for me, what I love and what I continue to admire is what Norman [Armour] has created—placing local work in an international context,” he told the Straight at PuSh’s The Post at 750 headquarters downtown. “That’s taken Vancouver companies to a level where they’re being presented internationally, and that's really good. It's built conversations we as artists need to be having. We don’t have that in Toronto: in terms of international presence, Vancouver has so much more.”

      Former PuSh artistic director Norman Armour (who cofounded the interdisciplinary fest with Katrina Dunn in 2003) announced last spring that he was stepping down to become a consultant for the Australia Council for the Arts in May of this year. Since then, PuSh has been guided by interim executive director Roxanne Duncan (who also came to PuSh from the Theatre Centre, and who is leaving the festival in March) and interim artistic director Joyce Rosario.

      Boni adds that his first steps, when he takes his new position formally in June, will be surveying people about PuSh--what it means to them and where they might like to see it go. “I’m mostly going to be doing a lot of question asking,” he says. “I want to talk to people in the city: What are the concerns and questions that are running through the city? And then I want to try to respond to them through art, but also through programs and projects that will allow them to engage. I'm going to have to spend a lot of time listening."

      In general, he's keen to encourage more community partnerships and civic engagement, but also to look at ways to expand the fest: "PuSh is already established as an extremely important stop for artists—and it would be great to give it enough support of infrastructure and funding to grow it."

      Growing organizations and forming partnerships are areas Boni knows well. At the Theatre Centre, he led a $6-million fundraising capital campaign that saw the total redevelopment of the heritage space. “That took us 10 years because we didn't have any money," he tells the Straight. "But it gave us the time to find the people we needed. It was about relationships, not about 'Give me your money.' I didn't know the impact it would have. I couldn't have even imagined. It’s really transformed the city and the community."

      Among its many facets was the integration of a cafe that opens at 8 a.m. and runs till well after shows are done at the venue. "That consistency of us being open allows the audience to engage with us in a different way," he explains. "Most theatres are closed to 7 p.m. We say 'Come in! We're a cafe, a bar, and a theatre, too.'"

      There have been other initiatives to bring the surrounding Queen West community into the space, too. The centre runs an artist-cooked meal program, launched a newcomer project that put one Syrian immigrant working in the cafe and another in the head office, and started a condo outreach to investigate what nearby residents would like to see programmed in the space. 

      The Theatre Centre forges long-term partnerships to support and provide a home for other arts organizations that will be familiar to Vancouver audiences, including Why Not Theatre (whose Prince Hamlet recently showed here at PuSh) and Nova Dance, Nova Bhattacharya’s dance company.  Far more than a presenting venue, the Theatre Centre supports research and development of new work. 

      Programming-wise, it's very much on the same wavelength as PuSh and other contemporary Canadian and international fare you see in Vancouver. A recent presentation was Jacob Boehme's one-man Blood on the Dance Floor for Ilbijerri Theatre Company (recently presented here by DanceHouse). “There’s this great quote about Theatre Centre that the most consistent thing about it is its inconsistency," Boni says with a smile. "I liked that because it’s constantly changing and shifting. It’s just so important for learning, for just not getting stuck in one thing and moving on." Bonie adds he looks forward to continuing to build on the international relationship he's cultivated at the Theatre Centre, "but now having a larger platform".

      One of his strong interests in building international ties is what he calls “cultural diplomacy”: “So much is happening in the world that is confusing and terrifying and artists are really great communicators and great empaths," he says. "I think we don't often get asked to the table for conversations around, say, climate change....For me it has been really important at the Theatre Centre for last four years to say, 'How do we insert artists into that conversation?'"

      Elsewhere in his long arts career in Toronto, Boni has served as festival director of the Rhubarb Festival (Buddies in Bad Times' fest of experimental new work) from 1998 to 2000 and as artistic producer of the SummerWorks Festival (T.O.'s summer theatre fest) from 1999 to 2004. For his efforts, Boni has earned the Rita Davies Cultural Leadership Award.

      Despite all his years ensconced in the Toronto scene, Boni is looking forward to the move West—and not just for the milder weather, during one of the most brutal winters Toronto's experienced in recent history.

      “I feel comfortable here and I’m excited about the challenge; change is so necessary for me," he says. Asked if it's at all daunting to take on leadership of a festival so historically linked to the vision of Armour, he says: “I’d be lying if I said I didn't feel the kind of weight of that. But I've worked with Norman closely over the years and we have a close relationship working on shows together.... I have really seen the evolution of the festival and felt the importance of it nationally, so I’m not coming into it cold." 

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