About Kenneth G. Mills Foundation
The Kenneth G. Mills Foundation was created in 1980 to support and sustain the highest level of attainment in the realms of art and education. The Foundation also preserves and promotes the words and works of Kenneth G. Mills. Currently, it raises and allocates funds for specific arts and education projects, including scholarships to applicants for continuing education.
The Kenneth G. Mills Summer Symposium 2010
The Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Toronto Distillery District
Friday, July 23 – Sunday, July 25
All meals, theatre tickets, and study materials are included.
Why do we create? What are the disciplines that sustain us in the creative journey? Symposium participants will engage with accomplished artists to explore these questions in workshops, panel discussions, and over meals together, and will take in a Soulpepper play. You will discover that the impulse to create is not just the purview of artists; it is at the root of how we approach the very art of living.
The launching pad for the Symposium will be the philosophical and artistic premise of the late founder of the sponsoring foundation, Dr. Kenneth G. Mills. Dr. Mills conceived of a symposium that would “offer in capsulated form the basic ingredients for a thrust out of process and into instantaneous change and accelerated creativity.” This symposium is a result of his original vision.
In today’s world where people seldom convene for the purpose of finding meaning in their lives, this symposium offers a place for reconnecting with the inherent creative spirit and its unlimited possibilities.
Friday, July 23, 2010
8:00 p.m.
Introduction to the Symposium
Screening of a short film by Barbara Willis Sweete of Rhombus Media, The Rapture of Being: Three Days with Kenneth George Mills
Interview with Barbara Willis Sweete by Judith Macdonell, theatre director, teacher and consultant at Upper Canada College
Saturday, July 24, 2010
10:00 a.m.
The Performing Artist’s Impulse
Dr. Barry Brodie, Chair of Arts and Religion at Assumption University, actor, director, and co-founder of the Earth-Stage Actors, shares his considerations and a live performance of Love Me, Never Leave Me, based on provocative Eastern and Western poetry.
12:00 noon
Lunch (included) and a walk through the Distillery District
1:30 p.m.
The Actor
Andrew Musselman, a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts who has returned to Canada after performing throughout England, offers a tapestry of his one-man show Catalpa by Donal O’Kelly, a short workshop, and his ideas on the impulse behind creativity from the perspective of an accomplished actor.
3:30 p.m.
The Director
Hungarian master Laszlo Marton, director of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, sets the context for the evening performance of this work, which features the talents of the Soulpepper Theatre Company.
5:30 p.m.
Dinner (included) in the Distillery District (details to come)
8:00 p.m.
The Production
Soulpepper Theatre Company presents Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, adapted by Susan Coyne. Laszlo Marton returns to Soulpepper to direct one of the masterpieces of Russian literature, a richly textured, love-filled comedy where the magic of a summer holiday turns hearts upside down.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
10:00 am to 12:00 noon
The Recapitulation: Where does the impulse to create come from? What does this mean for you?
Panel discussion by the Symposium artists, moderated by Lucille Joseph, Chair of the National Ballet of Canada and Vice-Chair of the Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity
Recap of Symposium highlights, and closing presentation.
Kenneth G. Mills life unfolded through a deep interest in music, the arts, philosophy, and education. The boundless energy, innovations, and love that characterized his multi-faceted creative expression brought new meaning to the term that many have used to describe him – a true Renaissance man.