DNA Theatre

Hillar Liitoja and DNA Theatre, founded in 1982, are primarily synonymous names. His dramatic style sought to push the boundaries of theatrical creation. The artistic team used a "unique polyphonic style of simultaneously intertwined texts, startling imagery and poems directly addressed to audience-members" ("History"). Creating performances was not done the traditional way of rehearsing from a script, rather the shows were choreographed and Liitoja's graduation from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Music in Performance degree in 1977 influenced his approach to theatre: Write a score not a script.

The company's productions included works inspired by Ezra Pound's poetry: "Pound for Pound" (1982), "Pound-O-Rama" (1985); a performance drawing on an Ontario youth's murder of two classmates: "This is What Happens in Orangeville" (1987); and the classical Shakespeare play "Hamlet" (1989). He created a series of HIV/AIDs work in the early 1990s: "The Panel" was performed at the Rhubarb Festival (1990), "Sick" (1991), and "The Last Supper" (1993).

During the mid to late 1990s, Liitoja turned to Antonin Artaud's theories of the stage otherwise known as "theatre of cruelty"; however, further study of Artaud convinced him that DNA had already been working under many of the same principles, so Liitoja pushed the boundaries again. According to DNA Theatre's website, "DNA developed a new style of text-free theatre which incorporated ritualized movement, environmental space design, 'symphonic' lights and street performance, all of which foreshadowed Liitoja’s subsequent work as a choreographer and his explorations into theatrical installation." Productions following this new style included "Remnants" (2000) and "The Observation" (2002).

And then DNA Theatre turned to ballet, staging "I Know and Feel That Fate is Harsh but I Am So Loath To Accept This" (2004), "I of the Beholder" (2006), and "Red Light Green Light" (2014).

In between his ballets, Liitoja composed "She Alone" (2007), which generated considerable discussion over its presentation since audience members had to watch the entire performance of "a woman in distress" through various holes in the walls forcing audience members to take the position of voyeurs. Liitoja again pushed boundaries with "Wit in Love" (2009) adapted for performance from Sky Gilbert's novella about philosopher Lugwig Wittengenstein.

In the early 2010s funding for his style of theatre became problematic, and he reluctantly moved to other forms of art including writing about his own philosophies and life and podcasting but neither of these media fully satisfied his aesthetic desires. He published his book "The Oulipo Challenge" in 2019 about the small literary group called "OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature)" that embraced innovation and creativity by taking as "the starting point for each endeavour ... the use or invention of a set of formal rules, called restrictions or constraints, which are then scrupulously adhered to in order to arrive at texts previously inconceivable or unimaginable."

As controversial a playwright/composer/choreographer/director as he was, he received many prestigious awards: one Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1994 for "The Last Supper"; four Dora Mavor Moore Awards, one each in Outstanding Direction for "Hamlet" (1989) and "Sick" (1991), and both the Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Production, Small Theatre Division (1994) for "The Last Supper." In 2017 he was one of the inaugural winners of the Acker Awards Toronto, a Canadian branch of the American Acker Awards named after Kathy Acker which aims to " [honour] artists who are pioneers in their endeavours, artists who broke boundaries and blazed the way for others to follow. Recipients of the award are artists of every discipline whom we recognize for their groundbreaking, unconventional, cutting edge, nonconforming, risk-taking, and community/culture-oriented accomplishments" ("The Acker Awards Toronto").

Sources
Contents of the fonds.

Dupuis, Chris. "Director Hillar Liitoja was ‘pathologically uncompromising’ in his pursuit of great art." The Intermission Magazine." September 23, 2023. Accessed on November 13, 2024. Available at https://www.intermissionmagazine.ca/features/hillar-liitoja/.

"History." DNA Theatre website. Accessed November 13, 2024. Available at http://dnatheatre.com/history.html.

"Liitoja, Hillar. Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia. Accessed on November 13, 2024. Available at https://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=Liitoja%2C%20Hillar.

Liitoja, Hillar. The Oulipo Challenge. [Draft copy?] Accessed on November 13, 2024. Available at http://dnatheatre.com/writing/oulipo.pdf.

"The Acker Awards Toronto" [website]. Accessed on November 13, 2024. Available at https://info77014.wixsite.com/ackerawardstoronto/about.