CarePlay is a project led by Ruth Howard, involving many other artists and participants, which reveals and revels in routines of care that shape our lives—from childhood and child-rearing to elder years and other occasions for giving and receiving care. The project invites us to muse on how we, as humans, are or aren't prepared for these roles through cultural, gendered, historical, personal, innate, or socialised ingredients.

Sparked by a 2018 Banff Centre workshop called Choreography Across Disciplines, and loosely inspired by the notion of a “doll’s hospital,” CarePlay is a portable project that combines stories, miniature worlds, free play, and public engagement to create a zone of caring to be inhabited and witnessed both whimsically and seriously.

CarePlay travelled to Thunder Bay for a developmental workshop with Thunder Bay artists, hosted by Betty Carpick, and to North Bay for a weekend interactive installation at the North Bay Fringe, and an afternoon workshop with Aanmitaagzi artists and summer youth troupe. 

CarePlay found a kindred project in Theatre Direct’s Balancing Act, dedicated to building better awareness and working conditions for parents and care-givers in the performing arts. Ruth was invited to join a Balancing Act workshop series for care-giving artists and those for whom there were caring (in her case her mother), to create short mini puppet shows (in a form known as Lambe Lambe) to be performed for one witness at a time. Ruth’s show, entitled “Doll’s Hospital” was premiered, alongside the other Lambe Lambe shows, in Earl’s Court Park as part of Theatre Direct’s Halloween Hullabaloo, and then became part of her touring CarePlay repertoire.

CarePlay’s final event (so far) was a 3-week residency at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre, Scarborough, in partnership with the Community Arts Guild and Toronto Culture, featuring creation and display of care routine cards, a free play zone, pop-up participatory care routine performances with miniature objects, scheduled workshops with community groups, public drop-in times, and a culminating performance of multiple simultaneous care routines/cards with performance ‘shifts’ and improvised live and looped music. 

Artists involved in CarePlay included Betty Carpick, Jesse Wagegijig, Tijana Spasic, Catherine Moeller, Aine Schryer-O’Gorman, Martin van de Ven, Arie Verheul van de Ven, Leike van der Voorst, Nicole Joy Fraser, Shifra Cooper, Beth Helmers and many others.