Chapter 15 - RUTAS | ROUTES

Summary

This chapter’s analysis of Aluna Theatre’s RUTAS and CAMINOS festivals in Toronto, Canada, examines the ways in which these grassroots festivals harness the power of an interactional, mass gathering to generate a ‘theatrical commons’ grounded in a heterogeneous, intercultural Americas. Since their inauguration in 2012, the festivals feature and foster co-productions with Latin American, Latinx, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbean artists from across the Americas as a way of generating alternative producing structures to foster hemispheric work and, in turn, alternative genealogies of Canadian performance history. The ‘theatrical commons’ generated by the alternating biennials of RUTAS and CAMINOS produces new social relations grounded in interculturalization rather than internationalization, offering a model of how festivals might advance forms of interculturalization as an ‘inter-epistemology’ with the potential to unravel colonial thinking and domination. These festivals play a critical role in reshaping the Canadian performance landscape and demonstrating how festivals can redirect transnational flows of knowledge and artistic production towards more inclusive practices.