Electric Company Theatre's Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge. (Tim Matheson/Canadian Stage) Canadian Stage Company has added a spotlight series to the Toronto theatre season that will focus in the first year on theatre and dance from Italy.

Spotlight.Italy, a two-week festival that will run in March 2011, will feature contemporary Italian writer Spiro Scimone, actor-turned-director Carolo Cecci and choreographer Virgilio Sieni.

The Spotlight festival will focus on a different country each year, artistic director Matthew Jocelyn said Tuesday, in announcing the Canadian Stage season. The festival with its mix of theatre and dance, reflects a new direction for all Canadian Stage.

Jocelyn, a Canadian who has spent the last 10 years running a multidisciplinary arts centre in Colmar, France, applied that multidisciplinary approach liberally in the first season to bear his stamp.

"Some of the most exciting ventures, the new vocabularies in theatre today have long stopped thinking in terms of theatre, dance or whatever specific discipline and create their work with the liberty and diversity of a Toronto potluck dinner," Jocelyn said.

The other distinct difference from former artistic director Martin Bragg is a season that is considerably more international — with works from Scotland, Poland and Germany, as well as Italy.

"Canadian means to be part of the world. We live in a city in which more than half of the inhabitants were not born in this country. That means the very fact of being Canadian means to be international and that's really what we're trying to celebrate now," Jocelyn said.

Dancers perform Edouard Lock's seminal work La La La Human Dancesteps, which will be reimagined for its 30th anniversary. (Canadian Stage)The season includes a Vancouver theatre event featuring the choreography of Crystal Pite, a new adaptation of a Michel Tremblay as a Greek tragedy, and Robert Lepage's The Andersen Project, previously announced, which combines multimedia with theatre.

There is also an emphasis on partnerships, not just at the intimate Berkeley Theatre where Canstage has traditionally worked with smaller companies, but also at the larger Bluma Appel Theatre.

Québécois playwright Tremblay's Saint Carmen of The Main is a co-production with the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and its newly created permanent theatre company. The new anglophone adaptation by Linda Gabouriau is to be directed by NAC artistic director Peter Hinton.

The play, set in 1970s Montreal, is about a woman who creates songs about the city she loves — and her passionate soundtrack is backed by a Greek chorus.

Also in the Bluma Appel season:

• La La La Human Steps in an updated version by Quebec choreographer Édouard Lock.
• Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge by Electric Company Theatre of Vancouver.
• The cosmonaut's last message to the woman he once loved in the former Soviet Union, by Scottish playwright David Greig.
• Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter: An Attempt at the Truth, by German playwright Tankred Dorst.
• The Andersen Project by Lepage's Ex Machina production company.

Jocelyn himself has adapted and is to direct the German play, Fernando Krapp, about a bizarre love triangle in which a man encourages his wife to have an affair so she can discover how much she loves him.

Jennifer Tarver, a Canadian talent who directed Krapp's Last Tape at Stratford, helms The Cosmonaut's Last Message, which made its debut in Edinburgh.

The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge, the story of an early cinematographer haunted by a killing in his past, was acclaimed in its Calgary and Vancouver productions last year and is to be directed by Kim Collier.

The Berkeley season features collaborations with small Toronto theatre companies:

• The List, by Jennifer Tremblay, with Nightwood Theatre.
• The Middle Place, by Andrew Kushnir, with Theatre Pass Muraille.
• Our Class, by Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek, with Studio 180 Theatre.

The Middle Place, developed based on interviews by residents of a part of north Toronto known for its crime and poverty, is also a collaboration with Project: Humanity, a group of artists who work with troubled youth.

Jocelyn, who spoke in French as well as English during the official presentation, said Canadian Stage is also developing new plays and trying to develop opportunities to tour Canada in coming years.