Hosted at the Ottawa Children’s Festival from 2015 – 2019, The 100 Watt Earth Stage offered a space for youth up to age 20 to perform for audiences of all ages. All of the work was linked by a curiosity for the planet, and how humans of all ages can seek a flourishing balance of needs. Along with workshops, this mini-kingdom of arts offered theatre, music, poetry, visual arts and dance. There were free activities all day as well as workshops, a visual arts station, exhibits of art by youth, and storytelling.
Each 100 Watt Earth Stage was united by a theme, including:
2019 theme: “100 Ways to Tell a Story”. How many ways can a story be told? Received?
2018 theme: “Home.” What is home? Is it a place? A feeling? A colour? An object? A story? For Nature, what about habitat? How about a culture?
2017 theme: “Wonder”. What do you wonder? No matter what age, keep your wonder alive. Throughout the festival, ages added their wonders to the ‘Wonder Wall’.
2016 theme: “Stories, Stories, Stories”. Children, teens, adults — all shared their stories. Schools around Ottawa sent in stories & paintings that tell their stories.
2015 theme: “Where Imagination Rules”. Theatre as a the place to stretch reality into what we dream of and hope for.
Check out the photo archives below:
With thanks to the creativity and artistic skills of Drea Flyne for their collaboration on the 100 Earth Stage for years. Thanks for Michelle Richardson of Connaught Public School for allowing me to work with her classes. Additional thanks for Murph Hickey for her work in 2019. And great gratitude to Catherine O’Grady and Joni Hamlin of the Children’s Festival for giving me the space to create this mini-festival within the festival.
100 Watt 