Pareidolia
The Prismatic Arts Festival is underway right now until October 4th, 2026 at a number of different venues throughout the municipality- Neptune Theatre, Dalhousie Arts Centre and Art Gallery, the Bus Stop Theatre, Halifax Central Library, Alderney Landing Theatre, Treaty Space Gallery, and Halifax Dance. I had a great conversation with Raeesa Lalani, the festival’s Executive and Artistic Director, via Zoom, earlier this week where she gave me an overview of all the exciting programming happening over the next week.
Lalani says that it was important to her to go back to the reason why Prismatic Arts Festival exists here in the first place, which she says is “centring artists’ voices, getting to know the artists, building relationships with artists, and being very artist-forward.” This year she says that the programming, which is always multidisciplinary, is geared more toward the theatre, and that she has been intentional about building relationships with other local presenters- 2b Theatre, Neptune Theatre, Eastern Front Theatre, Live Art Dance, and the Dalhousie Art Gallery. “[These] are all relationships we’ve been building with the concept of sustainability in mind because the arts sector is so precarious here,” she says, citing the funding cuts from the budget last winter that really have rocked the entire sector. She says that it’s been important to find partners that “have common shared values, common goals” and that they can pool their resources “so the artists get the treatment that they deserve.” Prismatic has also developed many relationships outside of Canada, and this year they have brought La Llave Maestra’s Pareidolia from Chile to Halifax.
“We actually blocked that with another festival called Rutas Festival by Aluna Theatre in Toronto, so Bea Pizano, the Artistic Director there, and I went to Chile on behalf of CAPACOA (Canadian Association for the Performing Arts) and the Canada Council to build some relationships with a lot of different communities and artists in Chile, and from that came this beautiful show we found.” She says that since the Rutas Festival is around the same time of year as Prismatic it made sense for her to work with Pizano to bring the Chilean show here. “We’re seeing a lot of relationship building across the sector,” she says.
An example of the benefits of creating these lasting inter-provincial and international relationships is the way that Lalani first heard of Frances Končan’s play Women of the Fur Trade, which is on stage at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Studio until October 11th. “Joelle Peters, who is one of the performers of the cast of Women of the Fur Trade, her and I have known each other for a long time. She was running Native Earth Performing Arts, she came and performed at a previous Prismatic, and we were talking about this show that she was doing, and then [asking], ‘Okay, how do we bring that to life and bring it here?’”
Lalani has also been exploring the idea of what Prismatic could look like outside of the HRM, and so today, September 26th, the Industry Series is at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in Canning. “It was timely because Mocean Dance and shalan joudry and Sarah Prosper have been working on this show called Re-membering Kmitkinu, and we’re going to be premiering it at Prismatic in 2027, but this is their last iteration of workshops and rehearsals, and they’re doing it as a residency down at Ross Creek, so for us, it was really important to support that this year in the festival, with the intention of premiering it next year with Live Art Dance.” She says that she and Liliona Quarmyne have been talking about the concept of “slow touring,” to make sure that new work continues to have a life beyond its premiere. “Liliona and I are both very connected to the APA, the Atlantic Presenters Association, which does bring a lot of presenters from all of the four provinces together in the Atlantic region, and so we wanted to not only present [the show], but actually help facilitate and steward what [a tour] looks like, and how can we help support [the artists] to tour it.” She says that this idea is also rooted in the creation process of artists like joudry and Prosper who are asking questions like, “how do you connect to the land?” Lalani and Quarmyne are now asking ‘how do they connect to the communities, to Indigenous elders on the land, and not just have a transactional relationship where you come in, you present a show, and then you leave.’ She says the conversation about this concept of slow touring is ongoing with folks from across the region.
La Llave Maestra’s Pareidolia is object theatre, which means that there’s no words- the storytelling “comes from movement, action, and puppetry, and the actors and the performers are telling a story through these beautiful, elaborate costumes, and transforming into different characters.” Lalani says that that this is a very family-friendly show. “I think the show would be very intriguing for young families and for kids to experience a new concept of how theatre can be presented.”
Metamorphosis, presented with 2b Theatre, opens on September 29th and is starring Walter Borden and co-directed by Jacob Sampson and Christian Barry, playing at the Bus Stop Theatre. “It’s his retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but it’s so exciting because it’s his personal story, his personal life, with the theme of Metamorphosis behind it. That’s going to be another revolutionary theatre show with animatronics, and really high tech in the show, along with the concept of very basic human, beautiful solo storytelling.”
Tania El Khoury, a Lebanese live artist who is based in New York, was in Halifax doing masterclasses with NSCAD, and she did a public lecture as well. “She talks about live art because she doesn’t love the boxes and the parameters of what her art has to be. For her every single piece of the show is curated very intentionally.” There are two of these live art shows at the Treaty Space Gallery. One is called As Far As My Fingertips Take Me with Basel Zaraa, and one is called Camp Pause. “Camp Pause is a video installation about Palestinian refugees that’s going to be playing on a loop nonstop at the gallery. Then, alongside that, in the same space there is As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, which is an artist from the UK, Basel, who’s going to be coming and performing. It’s a one on one performance. You don’t see each other. It’s through a wall. And he tells a story, which of course is scripted, but he tells a story and your arm is [placed] through a hole in the wall, and he’s drawing on your arm while telling you the story. So, at the end you have this drawing of the story. So, you’re the canvas. It’s a lot of different senses. It’s hearing, it’s feeling, and then visually there’ll be something at the end there. This performance is free, but you can sign up to reserve your time slot. “Her artistic practice comes very much from her political views and standpoints, and shedding light to a lot of situations in the Middle East that people don’t necessarily know about… she’s taking all these stories and all these realities and she’s presenting it to people through art, which I think is really beautiful.”
A Night With Prismatic is on October 1st and it features a mixture of multidisciplinary arts. Roger Mooking’s SoundBites is a multidisciplinary exhibit on display at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, along with francesca ekwuyasi’s exhibition called Burnt Sugar Blue, which brings together four contemporary artists Stina Baudin, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Bushra Junaid, and Christina Leslie. “We really wanted to bring people into this [art gallery] space to view the [exhibits] intentionally during a specific time, [so] we’re going to do a live performance to kind of activate the space,” says Lalani. Valmy, a Newfoundland based singer-songwriter is going to do an acoustic set, and ekwuyasi, who wrote the acclaimed novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (2020), will be doing spoken word poetry. “So you get four shows in one,” she says.
Paratopias is Prismatic’s co-presentation with Live Art Dance. “Bageshree Vaze, who is an incredible choreographer and dancer [is] bringing the worlds of contemporary dance and classical Indian dance, so Bharatha Natam, which is the style, and putting it all together [asking] what does that look like when you have that Indian identity and Canadian identity, and bringing those worlds together through movement,” says Lalani. Her husband, Vineet Vyas, is going to be performing music on stage as well, “live tabla, classical Indian music,” she adds.
There is a Sensory Accessible Concert at the Halifax Central Library in partnership with Cecilia Concerts where Dee Hernandez will be performing an acoustic set. “They have built a stunning framework of sensory accessible concerts and we are always very cognizant of how we are supporting various intersectional communities, and making sure that they’re able to come to the festival. The beauty of those concerts is there’s music therapists, and facilitators, spaces for children to play, there’s this whole structure that’s been built to support people to come into this space that’s very acoustic, without many lights, and that’s another [show where] we love seeing children and youth, and younger families and newcomer families- it takes away the traditional ways of viewing performance, and really creates a space where it’s your own space to experience this how you want… it’s another way to really highlight local musicians.”
Tara Taylor’s animated film Amara and Her Glow is going to play at each venue before all the shows. Daramfon Morgan’s visual art exhibition We Wear Our Stories will be on display at the Bus Stop Theatre until December 19th.
Lalani says that Prismatic aims to introduce the artists in their lineup to new audiences, and that she hopes that folks will come out to see the work of those artists whose work may be unfamiliar to them. “We’re there to kind of break the norm of what everyone knows,” she says of the festival, saying that bringing professional, high quality art that may not be in the mainstream, but still has the power to wow the audience is what Prismatic exists to do. She says she hopes that audience members will bring their “open minds and hearts” to experience something new this week.
After all her hard work planning, organizing, connecting with artists, problem solving, and curating the festival Lalani says, “I’m so excited because all I want to do is just be at Prismatic.” She says that as an annual festival that has been in Halifax since 2008 folks can take having it for granted but that “the better way to look at it is to understand what a privilege it is to have Prismatic exist.” After the year we’ve just had, it’s a good reminder to support the artists who live here, and those who bring their work here for us to experience as much as we possibly can, and to not take anything in the arts sector for granted at all.
“The Prismatic Arts Festival is a national, multidisciplinary arts festival that showcases and celebrates innovative work by Indigenous artists and artists of colour from across Canada. Based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Prismatic has been bringing audiences vibrant, boundary-pushing new works in theatre, dance, music, film, visual arts, media arts, and spoken word since 2008.” It runs until October 4th in venues around the city. For more information about the full lineup of programming please visit this website.
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