PTC has worked with some of Vancouver’s most risk-taking theatre makers.
Our Company Collaborations begin with a conversation with the lead artist, and culminate in the larger conversations with audiences. From early research through remounts, our dramaturgs Kathleen Flaherty and Heidi Taylor are key collaborators, developing new practices to support new theatrical visions.
Inspired by events surrounding the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Yellow Objects weaves together lifetimes of inter-generational trauma, historical helplessness, and persistent defiance. This play is a collection of what was, what has been, what is, and what could be. This play is a rally for the ones who are still risking their lives out there. This play is written in remembrance of those who cannot be there anymore. This play is a lament of families broken and loves lost. This play is a warning for anyone who would listen, and for those who would not. Or, maybe, this play is just a feeble protest in face of inevitability. Whatever it is, I hope this play is not too late. Yesterday seems so long ago, and yet tomorrow is farther away still. GFHK, SDGM.
deep co-creation, slow process & social handcraft
Mermaid Spring is a new work of interdisciplinary music theatre by Public Swoon, loosely inspired by Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida – a real-life natural attraction where since 1947, women have donned mermaid tails to perform underwater shows. Set between Weeki Wachee and a Gulf Island in the Coast Salish sea, the story follows professional mermaids and tourism workers hustling to hold on to their dream jobs in natural landscapes that are threatened by development.
Equal parts pleasure and panic, investigating Florida helps us ask: how is our enjoyment of a place complicit in its destruction?
Premiere: In view of the global pandemic, the ‘final’ show has been delayed until spring/summer 2022. In the meantime, Public Swoon is focusing on Social Handcraft and curating a series of short artist responses to their project, with a wide community of collaborators. Here’s a taste of what they’ve made so far.
Volunteer crafters working in our network and beyond are using crochet to create abstract, fantastic vegetation inspired by Weeki Wachee, Florida and our own bioregion – Pacific Northwest/Cascadia/Coast Salish territory. Whatever is shared will be used to create part of the stage environment of Mermaid Spring.
As much as a working and crafting collective, Public Swoon imagines Social Handcraft as a listening, reading and observation group, a place for people to find companionship and social connection – thought and feeling. They are using thrifted and salvaged yarn, and working with excellent sponsors like Baaad Anna’s to gather donations of second-hand yarn to share.
Right now, they want to offer crochet as a stress-relieving activity to keep us connected during distanced times. Their bigger vision is to respond to the global climate crisis by looking for alternative ways to produce creative projects. They want to help create solidarity between human labour and the labour of the environment. They see sustainability as a shared cause between art workers and land.
More about Social Handcraft here.
Get Involved at thepublicswoon.org
Resources Page
Yarn Matchmaking Quiz
PTC and rice & beans theatre have declared a company collaboration for 2018-19 or more as Derek Chan and Pedro Chamale develop their newest projects. Derek and Pedro will continue to work with each other dramaturgically in addition to each writing his own work. Heidi and Kathleen will provide dramaturgical and process design consultation and assistance in developing a structured company creation practice for rice & beans.
Where does our food come from? Who grows it? Who is nourished by it?
Where does our food come from? Who grows it? Who is nourished by it? Made in Canada: an agricultural operetta is an exploration through text and song of just who it is that works the farms that supply our markets, their journeys getting here, what awaits them once they get here, and what it takes for them to stay. The play brings temporary foreign farm workers centre stage – the unseen people who plant, tend, and harvest Canada’s produce. Using their words, news articles, and exploring the legal text surrounding the Seasonal Workers Agricultural Program, Made in Canada weaves together a play that reveals some of the hidden links in Canada’s agricultural sector. It may be local and farm-to-table, but do you really know who picks your produce?
Made in Canada: an agricultural operetta is a new work written by Pedro Chamale with music by Mishelle Cuttler.
A rice & beans theatre production
In collaboration with Playwrights Theatre Centre
Presented in partnership with Boca del Lupo at Performance Works
Made in Canada had a reading at the Heart of the City Festival at DTES Neighbourhood House on November 3, 2018
The premiere of Made in Canada, originally scheduled for May 8 -23, 2020, has been postponed due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19.
Electric Company Theatre
It’s 2020 at the US/Mexico border in Trump’s America.
In 1979, a family drives back towards Chile from Canada. With past, present, and future encircling their journey, this profoundly poetic story is about the universal quest for home – in whatever form that takes.
A spellbinding blend of dark comedy and magical realism, Anywhere But Here is a vibrant celebration of Latinx theatre, with music and raps by Shad, that chronicles the many paths, real and imagined, we take to discover the truth — the truth about who we are, and where we may be headed.
Telling an engrossing story that intersects multiple timelines and spaces, Anywhere But Here introduces us to a host of fantastical characters who have experienced the pull of home, the ache of displacement, and the harsh realities of the border as they attempt to cross, guard, or survive it.
World Premiere: February 4 – 15, 2020
Vancouver Playhouse – 600 Hamilton Street
Kuroko is a dark comedy about an agoraphobic daughter’s quest to find out the truth about her family.
Maya is hikikomori—an extreme recluse—who has spent the last six years in her bedroom exploring Virtual Reality.
Until one day, she meets a mysterious player online who challenges her to the ultimate quest: saving her own father’s life. How? By visiting the scariest place IRL, Suicide Forest.
A world premiere from Tetsuro Shigematsu, the acclaimed creator behind Empire of the Son and 1 Hour Photo, and directed by Amiel Gladstone, creator of the smash hit musical Onegin.
Kuroko premieres at The Cultch Historic Theatre – November 6 to 17, 2019
PTC and rice & beans theatre have declared a company collaboration for 2018-19 or more as Derek Chan and Pedro Chamale develop their newest projects. Derek and Pedro will continue to work with each other dramaturgically in addition to each writing his own work. Heidi and Kathleen will provide dramaturgical and process design consultation and assistance in developing a structured company creation practice for rice & beans.
Why, indeed, did the chicken cross the road? Chicken Girl’s titular character embarks on a surreal adventure to uncover the mystery surrounding the disappearance of her Uncle Chan. A homesick intergalactic rock star struggles to reconcile with their estranged family. An anxiety-ridden submariner recruits an anthropomorphic cat to settle an old score. Intertwining multilingual dialogue, flamboyant rock numbers, and idiosyncratic marine trivia, three magical worlds collide in front of our eyes as we contemplate the ideas of home, cultural identity, and existence.
Chicken Girl premiered May 24 – June 7, 2019 at the Annex in Vancouver.
This full-length performance will take place around and inside the tabletop fish tank. A single performer (Robert) assembles a landscape within the tank. At one point water slowly starts filling it and the rest of the performance is a play of cause and effect as various materials react to the rising water level and the performer continues the task of building the scene in the face of the precarious circumstances. Some objects float, others sink, some dissolve and disappear, there may be a chain reaction, or maybe something’s trapped. It is an epic record of civilizations and historic events masquerading as a cheap party trick. The work will be scary, humorous, and a precise choreography. Lighting and sound both focus and expand the scenes. The materials that are chosen, text, and the larger reference sources are to be discovered. Robert is interested in exploring themes of transparency, submergence, inevitability, and human hubris when it comes to our interactions with our environment.
PTC is engaged in helping Robert and his collaborators shape a narrative with or without words that will tell a story yet to be determined. For us, it’s an opportunity to work with an artist whose non-linear imagistic approach to theatre-making demands a new vocabulary from Dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty. The first stage is to find out what happens to a lot of different objects and materials when you subject them to a watery environment. And what happens to the water?
Macromatter takes things seriously, but not too. Under this moniker, multidisciplinary maker and insatiable tinkerer Robert Leveroos creates scenographically driven work incorporating live art, animation, and handmade objects. Macromatter aims to strike imaginations and skew perceptions by exploring worlds where weight is given to the minute, the understated, and overlooked to uncover something recognizably human. With a flexible collective of interdisciplinary artists, Macromatter creates original performances and collaborates in processes that encourage curiosity, discovery, and play.
