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The Festival of Live Digital Art – FOLDA was founded before anyone ever heard or thought of a pandemic. In 2018, recognizing the need for this structural and artistic change, a Spiderweb Performance Company founded the Festival of Live Digital Arts – FOLDA in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The festival, born outside of major centers such as Toronto or Montreal, is a meeting point between in-real-life and digital worlds.
Spiderweb Performance Company is run by three artistic leaders in rotation, Sarah Garton Stanley, Adriene Wong, and Michael Wheeler.
It is “a new structure with one AD but a triangle of consensus-based leadership shared amongst Adrienne, Sarah, and myself”, as Michael Wheeler recently explained in an interview with The Theatre Times.
Ever evolving, FOLDA has come a long way since 2018. The organizers had seen a need for development in the theatre world outside the bounds of traditional venues. The Covid19 pandemic now further highlighted the need to expand into other realms and spaces.
As the New York Times put it, “This Canadian festival might have been considered outer limits when it was created in 2018, but our understanding of digital theatre has grown exponentially in the past year. Now, the event is downright mainstream.”
“FOLDA exists to support artists creating theatre in a digital age. Digital culture and its impact on other art forms moves quickly.
From year-to-year, FOLDA presents dynamic and changing answers to the question: Who are the professional artists creating live digital performance today and what are they up to?
This year’s festival was held from June 9th to 13th. To see the innovative 2021 programme, have a look on FOLDA’s homepage.
On their website the FOLDA founders also describe their unique underlying structure to engage with the works presented in the festival.
ALPHA: Performances in their earliest stages, ready for internal testing, but require audience feedback to spark the next stage of development.
BETA: Performances ready for public testing to refine the audience experience.
GO: Performances ready for production release. Audience input contributes to improvements and bug fixes just like your favourite app.
“Works in ALPHA one year, can return to FOLDA as a GO the following year. Works in BETA can be picked up by other presenters to be GO at other festivals.”
“We aim to be an exciting incubator for an emerging art form where audience feedback plays a key role throughout the creative process.”
“This approach makes FOLDA unique by providing artists with creative opportunities that support work in various stages of development, matching the demands of how digitally-engaged performance is created.”
“It allows presenters the opportunity to engage with and track work throughout their development process, offering more organic and informed partnerships to develop works beyond the festival.”
Examples of past work in the incubation stream can be found here.
FOLDA 2021 Trailer
More Links:
Spiderweb Performance Company Official Website
The Festival of Live Digital Arts – FOLDA Official Website
The Theatre Times article on FOLDA, 24 Sept 2021
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Liam Klenk was born in Central Europe and has since lived on four continents. Liam has always been engaged in creative pursuits, ranging from photography and graphic design, to writing short stories and poetry, to working in theatre and shows. In 2016, Liam published his first book and memoir, 'Paralian'.
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