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.
Imagine that you, your parents or grandparents, who have worked a lifetime to save for retirement and buy a home, suddenly lose it all.
A trusted friend or family member or someone in your religious community had talked you into investing your life savings.
But it was all a lie.
Former notary public Rashida Samji drew family, friends and community members into a vast web of deceit between 2003 and 2012. Over 200 people in BC were ripped off in a Ponzi scheme of over $110 million. Most of the victims are retirees and a high proportion are members of the Surrey South Asian community.
Theatre Conspiracy’s new documentary show Victim Impact looks at the fallout for those affected as they got sucked into the vortex of civil and criminal trials.
Conspiracy AD Tim Carlson leads the project in association with PTC’s Kathleen Flaherty, visuals designer Milton Lim and sound designer David Mesiha who all worked together on the hit show Foreign Radical. They look forward to collaborating with director Jiv Parasram, outreach coordinator Gavan Cheema, performers Nimet Kanji, Risha Nanda, Jenn Griffin, Allan Morgan and Munish Sharma.
The show premieres at The Cultch in Vancouver June 8-17, 2018.
June 8: Preview (by donation). June 9: Opening.
PTC and rice & beans theatre have declared a company collaboration for the next year 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 focusing on creating effective workshops for specific explorations and developing a structured company creation practice for rice & beans.
Chicken Girl and the Sunny Sky, by Derek Chan, follows the fantastical story of Abigail Chew, a Chinese restaurant cook whose life has taken a wild turn into the extraordinary. A regular customer of hers is kidnapped by the Queen of Forgotten Objects, and the universe’s equilibrium has been disrupted: chickens begin raining from the sky, and everybody has forgotten about the concept of Tuesday. Through a series of bizarre encounters, Abigail is recruited by a mysterious woman and her foul-mouthed cat prodigy. Abigail begins the most important journey of her ordinary life into the Land of the Forgotten in an attempt to restore the balance between the mundane and magical. Inspired by the works of Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sacks, and Daniel Gilbert, this project stems from an interest in how the brain perceives happiness (or the lack of), and how we rely on inaccurate memories to evaluate our pasts and imagine our futures. Adapted from interviews and personal experiences about happiness, contentment, anxiety, and depression, Chicken Girl and the Sunny Sky weaves a bridge connecting the quotidian and the magical.
Made in Canada, by Pedro Chamale, is in early development. At its heart (with luck) will be verbatim interviews with temporary foreign workers. With songs woven into the mix. The song lyrics will be sourced from non-musical text sources: the Temporary Foreign Worker program, The Metcalf report on migrant workers, legal text and news articles about migrant workers. The piece will investigate who farms the produce that gets to our tables, the journeys that bring them to Canada and what it takes for them to stay. Music and food are a large part of Latinx culture – Pedro is exploring a way to join the two on stage.
Robert’s current description of High Water starts with this:
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.
Written and performed by Tetsuro Shigematsu, this is the story of Mas Yamamoto, whose life was swept up by the currents of the 20th century. From growing up in a village on the Fraser, to being imprisoned at a World War II Japanese Canadian internment camp, to guarding the Canadian Arctic against Soviets during the Cold War, 1 Hour Photo is a moving portrait saturated with the colours of our times.
Premiere: Oct 3 – 15, 2017 at The Cultch, Vancouver, BC.
