Madness and Arts World Festival moves from Toronto to Münster, Germany

TORONTO – April 19, 2006

Madness and Arts World Festival is heading to Germany. The festival, which premiered in Toronto in 2003, is set to take place in Münster, Germany, May 1-8, 2006. The Toronto festival was a great success, spanning 10 days, drawing more than 10 000 visitors and featuring 187 participants from eight countries, 80% of whom have mental illness. Organizers are hoping the German festival will be even more successful.

Madness and Arts World Festival is the brainchild of Lisa Brown, artistic director and founder of the Workman Theatre Project and Toronto’s annual Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival. The festival helped showcase Canada’s excellence, innovation and leadership in the area of the newly emerging field of mental health and the arts.

Madness and Arts World Festival features the work of multidisciplinary artists from around the world whose work explored the themes of mental illness. Through a combination of film, theatrical performances, workshops, lectures, and an art exhibition, the festival will bring issues of mental health out into the open, promote discussion and eliminate the stigma surrounding the mentally ill.

Toronto’s Workman Theatre Project will take part in two symposiums, Art and Madness and The View from Within. They will also stage three performances of Vincent, a one-act play written specifically for Workman Theatre Project by Terry Watada. The play centres on a confrontation between a young man with Schizophrenia and a police officer.  What unfolds is a telling insight into the mindset of the police, the limitations of mental health organizations and difficulties faced within the home situation.

This year’s festival is being run by Paula Artkamp and Manfred Kerklau, of Theatre Sycorax. The idea to stage Madness and Arts in Germany came about after Brown declared her wish to see the festival move around the world. Artkamp and Kerklau immediately volunteered to undertake staging the festival in Münster.

Through their participation in Madness and Arts World Festival II, Workman Theatre Project will build on and enhance the wealth of experience, ideas, and artistic approaches brought to the festival by Canada and other participating countries.

Workman Theatre Project is a not-for-profit professional arts company, which promotes a greater understanding of mental health and addiction issues through various artistic media. They support people who receive mental health and addictions services in their artistic pursuit through its various programmes and services. Workman Theatre Project works in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and other arts and mental health organizations.

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Available for interviews, Lisa Brown, Terry Watada, Manfred Klerkau 

For more information, please visit:

www.madnessandarts.com (Canada)

For media information or to set up interviews, please contact:

Kevin Pennant
kp@pennantmediagroup.com