TOMBOY (CHŁOPCZYCA)

by Anais West

In Development

Staged Reading June 6th, 2024

The Pumphouse Theatre, 2140 Pumphouse Ave SW, Calgary

Presented by Sage Theatre's IGNITE! Festival & Major Matt Mason Collective

Winner of the 2023 Wildfire National Playwriting Competition

Developed through Odd Meridian Dance's CONJURE Residency at MORROW Studio

Development supported by Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, Playwrights Theatre Center, the frank theatre company, Odd Meridian Dance' and the Federation of Russian Canadians of BC.

Tomboy (Chłopczyca) is a dance-theatre performance using contemporary movement and Polish folklore to investigate gender and memory. By reclaiming cultural beliefs and practices (including folk dance), Tomboy interrogates the violent legacy of patriarchy, then imagines new, trans masculinities.

A non-binary historian learns that a boy from their Polish immigrant community committed a disturbing act of violence. This revelation forces them to re-examine their shared adolescence in an insular and tradition-bound culture. But with each remembering, the sequence of events becomes more ambiguous, the choreography of memory more complex, unravelling the narrative they’ve constructed of themself, their gender and the boy's culpability. Were his actions his own, or was he cursed by a monstrous and mythic inheritance? By reimaging folk traditions, Tomboy seeks to be both an unflinching autopsy of masculinity, as well as a vision of queer metamorphosis.

Development Workshops Creative Team:

Playwright: Anais West

Co-Producers: Anais West & Kimberly Ho
Choreographer: Oh Augustine
Theatrical Director: Fay Nass
Performers: Joylyn Secunda, Calder White, Kira Radosevic, Rae Takei, Franki Reed-Schuyler and Emily Jane King
Dramaturg: Joanna Garfinkel
Sound Designers: Roxanne Nesbitt & Sasha J. Langford
Intimacy Director: Lisa Goebel
Stage Managers: Alexa Fraser & Jasmin Sandhu
Technical Director: Fil Wiatrak
Accessibility Consultant: Veronique West

Cultural & Linguistic Consultants: Piotr Wieczorek, Karo Hanula and Julia Siedlanowska.

Previous Residency Collaborators:

Co-Choreographer: Tanya Marquardt

Photography: Kimberly Ho