Intern Red Hauser contributes to Rhubarb Festival book with their piece 'Anxiety in Ink'
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As the longest-running festival of new-works in Canada, The Rhubarb Festival (external link) is an annual landmark in the Toronto performance community. Operated through Buddies and Bad Times Theatre (external link) , the festival is known for fostering experimental creation “where artists explore new possibilities in theatre, dance, music, and performance art" (Rhubarb's website). In this way, the 2021 Rhubarb Festival is no different - continuing to push boundaries, this year the Rhubarb Festival took place as a book.
“Over 20 artists respond to the prompt to bring performances to the page, with some projects published in the festival publication itself, and other interventions performed on the book after printing. Contributions range from colouring pages to a fever-dream drag performance; from a meal to music inspired by the turning of a page; and from choreographic scores to unearthed histories, real or imagined.”
“One of the things I like about the book format is that I typically don’t get to see a lot of a theatre, since I am busy working on other theatre” shares Red Hauser, highlighting the accessibility of this presentation.
Red is one of the 25 artists who worked on the project, a recent alum of our Production + Design Program, and a current intern supporting the school’s operations and virtual performance season. Red’s contributions to the Rhubarb Festival came after the books were printed and bound, adding physical alterations to a number of the copies.
Their work is titled Anxiety in Ink. Red describes this project as “taking invisible feelings and making them visible”... sort of. Using UV reacting invisible ink, they hand-wrote unique combinations of original poetry and prose into the 80 copies they were given to doctor. The books that Red has added to come with a small UV light, for “festival goers” to comb through the book, looking for the writing, which primarily focuses on the topic of anxiety.
As someone who has lived with anxiety for most of their life, Red hopes that people will experience their work and say ‘yeah, that is what having anxiety is like’. It’s about helping others feel seen, something that was very important to Red as they navigated their own diagnosis. The increase in conversation around topics of mental health has been an important one for Red - this project continues to add to that conversation.
In many ways working on this project was a 'full circle' moment for Red, who first learned about Buddies in Bad Times when doing a grade 12 drama class project on the company. Shortly after, they had a piece presented as part of the Paprika Festival (external link) . This contribution to the Rhubarb festival marks Red’s first time being financially compensated for their original artistic content.
Beyond their time as an intern at the school, Red looks forward to doing more playwriting, and creating site-specific, conceptual and installation art. Despite the many uncertainties for the live performance industry, Red looks to the future with hope “The kindness and compassion in the theatre industry, and our school is never ending. Right now when we need that help, it’s really beautiful to see and I am very grateful.”
The 888 copies of the Rhubarb Festival book are now sold out, however you can learn more about the project and the artist contributors at Rhubarb's website (external link) .