Our Main Building and galleries will not be open to the public for Nuit Blanche. Access to “Hopes and Fears Assembly” will be on the northwest side of the Main Building.

December 13–16, 2022

Moby Dick

France, Norway

A Plexus Polaire production co-presented by Harbourfront Centre and Why Not Theatre

Moby Dick

Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage

This event is a Nordic Spotlight, part of Nordic Bridges.

Overview

Seven actors, 50 puppets, video projections, a drowned orchestra and a whale-sized whale equals a visually striking theatrical adaptation of Melville’s magnificent beast of a book from award-winning French-Norwegian puppetry company Plexus Polaire. 

“My grandfather was a sailor. He had a naked woman tattooed on his upper arm, and I remember him as a smell of tar and tobacco. He came from an island on the west-coast of Norway, a tiny harbor filled with foreign ships and languages, fishermen, sailors and children waiting for fathers who never came home from the sea… I like how the sea somehow draws invisible lines between the different corners of the world, how it creates points of connection. How, facing this force of nature, we are all the same. And no one captures the battle between man and nature like Herman Melville in Moby Dick. An ancient white whale, a captain steering his ship into destruction and the inner storms of the human heart. Moby Dick is the tale of a whaling expedition, but also the story of an obsession or an investigation into the unexplained mysteries of life. To quote Melville: ‘It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.’ –  Yngvild Aspeli (Director, Creator and Artistic Director, Plexus Polaire)

About Yngvild Aspeli, Director

Director, actress, puppet-maker and artistic director of Plexus Polaire, Yngvild Aspeli, develops a visual world that brings our most buried feelings to life. Using life-sized puppets as the centre of her work, Aspeli also banks on the actor, music, light and video to communicate the story.  

She studied at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and ESNAM (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette) in Charleville-Mézières. Within her French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire, she has directed four shows: Signals (2011), Opera Opaque (2013), Ashes (2014) and Chambre noire (2017). She is currently working on an adaptation of Moby Dick that will premiere in 2022. 

Access Info

If you require wheelchair or accessible seating, please contact our Box Office ahead of time at tickets@harbourfrontcentre.com or phone (416) 973-4000, Option 1 – Wednesday–Friday from 1-5pm.

Dates & Times

December 13
7:30pm
85 mins

December 15
7:30pm
85 mins

December 16
7:30pm
85 mins

No intermission

Venue

Fleck Dance Theatre in Queen's Quay Terminal

207 Queens Quay West, 3rd Floor
Follow signs and take escalator or elevator

Google Map

Keywords LiteraturePerformanceTheatre