adelheid believes performance is both about what is understood and what is felt, about both meaning and the human potential to experience. We make work that speaks to the ‘realness’ of where we are and who we are – how we are affected by the world around us. Our work focuses on human contact, interaction, and the environment we find ourselves within.
adelheid formed in 2008 after a series of collaborations between Heidi Strauss and Jeremy Mimnagh, and since then has garnered several Dora Awards and toured across the country. The company’s work underwent significant periods of growth during residencies at the Factory Theatre (2008-2012), the Theatre Centre (2013-16), and Harbourfront Centre (2018-19). While creation is our focus, we support our community through a number of programming initiatives.
adelheid formed in 2008 after a series of collaborations between Heidi Strauss and Jeremy Mimnagh, and since then has garnered several Dora Awards and toured across the country. The company’s work underwent significant periods of growth during residencies at the Factory Theatre (2008-2012), the Theatre Centre (2013-16), and Harbourfront Centre (2018-19). While creation is our focus, we support our community through a number of programming initiatives.
"In creation and performance, the feeling of being caught between is always there: being caught between people, within spaces, between belief systems, generations and traditions, or simply caught in time between what was and is - and what lies ahead. The moving body is home to this in-between-ness. The human body's remarkably interwoven physical and emotional capacities enable it to translate what will never be articulated coherently in words.
With this sense of non-arrival, of indefinite endings, come questions without definitive answers: is mutual understanding really possible? what is real inclusivity? how do we leave things in a better place? Even without answers, we persist in asking these questions.
In 2020, as we continue to move through a world deeply altered by COVID-19, where human behaviour, our relationship to relative space, the economy and the environment all have registered change, we have a chance to ask what else can be different. How might we experience performance differently in the days, months, years ahead? This is the question we ask ourselves now, as we continue creating work that inhabits found spaces (real and virtual) - work that echoes the fragility of our experience, and what we are caught between."
In thinking about where we are, we are grateful for the land on which we work, land that is traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. We extend our deepest respects to all First Nations people, their ancestors past and present, and future.