About the piece:
CarePlay mixes art forms to reveal and revel in the routines of care that shape our lives, from childhood to elder years.
CarePlay invites you to enter a whimsical zone, embodying and bringing awareness to the artfulness of care and the care-fulness of artmaking.
CarePlay springs from my own experiences and experiments and thoughts on the under-acknowledged and inevitable extent to which life is about caring for – and being cared for by – others: how we are or aren’t prepared for these roles, and do or don’t find purpose and joy in them, for cultural, gendered, historical and individual reasons.
CarePlay is a multi-year arts project, exploring routines of care throughout our lives. The project originates in a 2018 Banff Centre workshop, ‘Choreography Across Disciplines’, in which I participated immediately following a hospital episode for my then-90-year-old mother. I staged a mini surreal hospital scenario, with paper beds, trolleys, bowls and spoons, tiny patients, shadows, in-bed-dancers, and musical sound-track. This short work stayed with me through subsequent experiences and reflections on the often-unacknowledged and inevitable extent to which life is about caring for and being cared for by others: through playing with dolls, raising children, elder care, various bedside vigils, and musing on how we humans are or aren’t prepared for these roles through cultural, gendered, historical, individual, innate or socialized ingredients. I created a portable, interdisciplinary work: installation, gentle performance, free play and public engagement, loosely drawing on the notion of a ‘doll’s hospital’: an imaginary zone of caring with objects and actions to be inhabited and witnessed whimsically and seriously.
– Ruth Howard
Ruth Howard thanks the following:
- Ontario Arts Council for supporting the research & development phase
- Canada Council for the Arts for supporting past and upcoming phases
- Cedar Ridge Creative Centre and City of Toronto for residency hosting
- Jumblies, Arts4All, Community Arts Guild & Theatre Direct for partnership support
- All the other artists, friends, partners & participants who contributed
About the artist:
Ruth Howard is an interdisciplinary artist and the founding Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre + Arts: a Toronto-based company with a Canada-wide reach, that makes art with, for and about people, and places and the, sometimes hidden, stories they hold. With Jumblies for 20+ years, Ruth has created multi-year residencies in Toronto neighbourhoods, each involving dozens of artists and hundreds of community participants, producing large-scale performances (Twisted Metal & Mermaids Tears, Once A Shoreline, Bridge of One Hair, Like An Old Tale), and sparking lasting community-based Offshoots (Arts4All, MABELLEarts, Community Arts Guild); produced cross-country tours (Train of Thought and Four Lands), and festivals of new works (Touching Ground Festival); published books (Xaa Sawaa Tiri – And Then She Said, A Treaty Guide for Torontonians); and guided many other collaborative community-engaged projects. Ruth has worked across Canada and in the UK as a theatre designer, taught at many universities, colleges and schools, mentored numerous artists and organizations, and won awards and recognition for her work, most recently a Jayu Foundation Arts for Human Rights Lifelong Achievement Award. Her recent multi-year projects include Grounds for Goodness, exploring the theme of ‘social goodness’, and CarePlay expressing routines of care through our phases of life. As of 2023, Ruth has moved on from artistic direction of Jumblies, retaining a role as Founder & Consultant, while embarking on new creative adventures and collaborations for her senior years, with her new flexible artistic collective, Rockwalker Arts.
