Cathy Gordon

Background

About Cathy Gordon

Cathy Gordon is an arts programmer and multidisciplinary artist currently working for Luminato Festival Toronto. 2025 will mark her seventh festival while working full-time with Luminato, and she's been in the role of Senior Programmer since September 2023. As a contract producer and then staff member, she has produced and facilitated dozens of shows for Luminato including Ronnie Burkett's "Forget Me Not", Nassim Soleimanpour's "Nassim", Hannah Hurtzig's Copycat Academy, as well as conceiving and directing "Art In Transit"(on 7 separate Go Trains), co-curating the Late Night Cabaret (2022), and developing the robust Access Program, including Radio LUMI in conjunction with Luminato's Access Advisory and teams. 2007-2016 (Artistic Practice) Cathy's last artistic project was her solo performance HAMMER: The History of Cathy Gordon's Anger - Six Strategies for Sublimation which has had residencies at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland) & Sto Union (Wakefield, QC), but it all began at Playwrights Workshop Montreal. The piece has been shown at Experimentica!(Cardiff, Wales), The Theatre Centre (Toronto), Mark Morris Studios (Brooklyn, USA). Cathy spearheaded several community collaborations. She was invited to Orleans, France to the Culture O Centre's conference on participatory arts to share the work she collaboratively developed at the Junction Festival in Ireland. This project, THE SEARCH FOR BELONGING(S), was created with Isolde Donahue and a group of teenagers (Junction Jets) in Clonmel (Ireland). Her seminal piece, ON MY KNEES – a public divorce ceremony marked her departure from experimental theatre/dance performance and her foray into durational performance and community collaboration. Specialties: making things happen. 2005 - 2016 (Leadership) During this period, Cathy was a co-director of the artist-run dance centre hub14 (5 years). She was the co-curator for The Theatre Centre's national Free Fall festival in partnership with Harbourfront Centre's World Stage (2 years). As Managing Director for The Theatre Centre, Cathy created and produced the annual art party: Block In One Spot (4 years). She was the curator for SummerWork's Live Art Series continuing to produce the festival's offsite and special presentations after the reformatting of the festival (4 years). Images above: A "deconstructed panel talk" presented in Montreal, ACAQ Symposium 2014 organized by Dena Davida and Jane Gabriels A performance still of me in BLOODSPURT directed by Hillar Liitoja, DNA theatre, 1997