TO Live and Luminato Festival are co-presenting Play Dead by Montréal-based People Watching, an eye popping fusion of contemporary circus, dance, movement theatre, and storytelling in a fever dream. Play Dead invites its audience into a world of intimacy, risk, and thrilling physical performance.
The show takes the stage at the Meridian Arts Centre’s Lyric Theatre as part of Luminato Festival’s 20th edition from June 25 to 28, 2026.
Play Dead has played to audiences in Canada and Europe to universal acclaim.
The Show
“People Watching has created with barbaric finesse, with the subtlety of watchmaking precision, a piece of such power that forces the eye not to want to miss a single detail.” – La Verdad; San Javier, Spain
It’s the debut creation of People Watching, a Montréal based collective. People Watching’s six performers are veterans of companies such as The 7 Fingers, Circa, Cirque du Soleil and Broadway. They founded the company in 2020 to explore the ways that their art could be shared with an audience during the seclusion of the pandemic.
In Play Dead, domestic settings reveal the surreal and absurd housed in the familiar. Stories criss-cross each other with a mix of acrobatics, dance, and physical theatre, creating a contemporary circus experience like no other.
The soundtrack includes everything from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to Brenda Lee.
It reveals the beautiful and the laughable, the twisted and the bizarre in our everyday realities, and the frantic search for connection that underlies it all. The mundane isn’t mundane at all in this poetic and vivid performance.
Play Dead is a celebration of life that reflects on youth and chance, desire and mortality, and the ultimate beauty of oh so human imperfections. It urges us to dance fiercely during our brief time in the sun.
The work has been recognized by nominations and an award, including:
- 2024 Finalist — Propulsion Prize by En Piste
- 2023 Winner — Coup de Coeur Award by Festival Quartiers Danses
- 2025 Finalist — CALQ Prize; Emerging Work in Montreal
Show Details
Of note: this event is suitable for audiences 12 and up. There is partial nudity, use of theatrical blood, and themes such as dying and death.
Presented by TO Live and Luminato Festival, Play Dead takes the stage for five performances:
- Thursday June 25, 2026: 8 p.m.
- Friday June 26, 2026: 8 p.m.
- Saturday June 27, 2026: 4 p.m.
- Saturday June 27, 2026: 8 p.m.
- Sunday June 28, 2026: 4 p.m. (audio described performance)
Find tickets and other details [HERE].
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