Are you festival-ed out yet? After Panamania, the Fringe Festival, Luminato, giant music extravaganzas like WayHome and Field Trip, and smaller festivals popping up all the time - could we possibly be seeing Peak Festival?

NO WAY! Because the 25th annual SummerWorks festival is coming up, running from August 6 to 16, and there’s always more time in the day for SummerWorks. Lots of Acting Up Stage’s friends and colleagues have played in the SummerWorks pool of new and boundary-pushing work - and this year is no different. Here are a few of the more musical offerings at SummerWorks 2015 that we can’t wait to catch.

Stupidhead: (A Mucisal Cmoedy)

This new one-woman show by Katherine Cullen sounds hilarious and absolutely cringe-worthy yet wonderfully hopeful. Cullen uses her own experience with dyslexia and social awkwardness as a kid, along with original songs by herself and (one of this year’s Acting Up Stage artist-in-residence and NoteWorthy grad) Britta Johnson, as the inspiration for Stupidhead! (A Mucisal Cmoedy), a show about the humiliation that comes with being a human person. We completely understand these feelings and can’t wait to hear them explored through song.

Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace
16 Ryerson Avenue

Performance Dates

Mapleman: Canuck Crusader

The Sears Ontario Drama Festival, an annual theatre festival for high school students and productions, has a pretty unique partnership with the SummerWorks festival. These shows are usually quite ambitious for such young performers, and Mapleman gets us pretty excited about the musical theatre stars of tomorrow. Performed by grade 7-12 students from The Woodlands School in Mississauga, Mapleman is a new musical about a Canadian superhero trying to protect his citizens from the lures of consumerism and greed.

Factory Theatre Mainspace
125 Bathurst Street

Performance Dates

MacArthur Park Suite: A Disco Ballet

Two words: Donna Summer. Her disco classics form the soundtrack of this double-header of dance that blew up at the Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre recently. MacArthur Park Suite was created and choreographed (along with Nicole Rose Bond) by Ryan G. Hinds, who is just following up his hit Fringe Festival one-man cabaret Starry Notions, so our hopes are high he’ll keep riding his own wave of success.

Factory Theatre Mainspace
125 Bathurst Street

Performance Dates

An Evening in July

There’s not a whole lots of music in The Templeton Philharmonic’s An Evening in July, but there is one heck of a dance number. We loved it when it premiered at the 2014 Toronto Fringe Festival, and bet that it has only gotten funnier and sadder in the past year. Comedy duo Gwynne Phillips and Briana Templeton find their character inspirations in the 1970’s documentary Grey Gardens (we’re fans) and Helene de Rothschild’s 1972 Surrealist Ball, so they’re equal parts charming, glamorous, and eerily odd.

St. George the Martyr Anglican Church
197 John Street

Performance Dates

Let’s Not Beat Each Other to Death

Actor and musician Stewart Legere and theatre director Christian Barry join forces for this “part monologue, part concert” performance in tribute to members of the LGBTQ community that have experienced violence. Knowing that the show changes depending on the cities it visits and the stories learned there, as well as featuring two well-known theatre makers of the east coast, we’re sure this is going to be a solid bet.

Small World Music Centre
180 Shaw Street, Studio 101

Performance Dates