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.
The creation of How to Say Goodbye began in the fall of 2019. Since the pandemic of COVID-19, the themes of absence, the passing of time, memory and the inability to leave a space and/or relationship has taken on a whole new urgency.
During the early summer of 2020, the company decided to conduct their next rehearsal process over 5 weeks via Zoom with support of the City of Vancouver. This led to the creation of a solo series presented by the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, showcasing the work of three haunting solos.
the response. returns to the Shadbolt in spring 2021 to revisit these solos, stringing them together in chronological order as they were originally shown in. In addition, a final section will see all the dancers together in the space, socially distanced, masked and dancing together. This final chapter of the work will also mark the last creation Amber Funk Barton makes for the company as she prepares to step down from her role as Artistic Director. Barton will also perform in The Final Chapter of How to Say Goodbye.
Bittersweet dreams, muscle memory and the continued longing to be together in the same space remain the driving force behind The Final Chapter of How to Say Goodbye.
How to Say Goodbye (The Solo Series) was presented at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts’ Live (Streaming) at the ‘Bolt! Oct 29- Nov. 19, 2020
Choreography and Direction: Amber Funk Barton
Solo #1 (October 29): Isak Enquist
Solo #2 (November 5): Katie Cassady
Solo #3 (November 19): Josh Martin
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
Alice in Glitterland
Alice in Glitterland is an immersive promenade into a dance-theatre wonderland, a nightclub playground with silky vintage score pulsing throughout this free-flow sandbox brought to life by twelve vibrant performers and an extravagant site-specific design. Wander through the labyrinthine halls and backrooms, swim through the ball pit and witness a roaming dance performance that invites you into the heightened reality of Glitterland. All audience members will be given a mask to wear at all times that indicates their preferred level of engagement. Roses of the White court may be welcomed into gentle embrace, or lead away to a private rendezvous. Roses of the Red court shall be given gentle space and left to enjoy in observation. Audience members will journey on a self-lead adventure, at a maximum ratio of 7 audience members per 1 performer, and with all performers offering multiple unique side stories or encounters, everyone will have an individualized experience every night. This show takes inspiration from large-scale immersive productions such as Sleep No More, Then She Fell, and The Grand Paradise. The script was developed to include over 40 interviews with people living with various neurodivergent lived experiences, exploring loving and living with mental illness. This conceptual work informed the narrative pathos needed to develop 93 distinct scenes telling twelve standalone character journeys that are multiplied by intersection and connection. With Alice in Glitterland we hope to create accessible, intimate, experiential theatre that is also a beautiful spectacle from every vantage point.
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.
Dumb Instrument Dance presents Public and Private, a full-length ensemble work that in ways both elegant and raw, is a decidedly feminist inquiry. With intimacy as measure and pace, performers travel within to make selectively public what was previously private.
Public and Private premieres Nov. 13-24, 2018 at Left of Main, Vancouver, BC.
am a explores identity through the lens of Neuroplasticity, a science that examines the brain’s capacity for change. But how do we change our brains? And if we can change, how far can we go? Using personal text, scientific writings, dance, song, and frivolity to explore personal confrontation. am a is a celebration of being human. Of daring to succeed. Of daring to fail.
World Premiere Production: February 21-March 4, 2017 at the Culture Lab at The Cultch, Vancouver, BC.
Back by Popular Demand: October 3-6, 2018 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Burnaby, BC
This full-length performance takes place around and inside a 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.
Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way is an intersection of a fictional story and a series of ceremonies in the container of a play. The writers, Renae Morriseau, Rosemary Georgeson, and Savannah Walling, are creating a template that will be transformed by encounters with First Nations communities on several territories. The first step in the process is visiting these lands to ask permission to work on their territory. In consultation and collaboration with local community members, a local youth will perform in the event, and cultural references will be woven into the story. The content is focused on the intergenerational impact of colonization/ decolonization. Each community collaboration will transform the work, by sharing differences and commonalities in ceremony, bone games, trickster identities and response to colonization. The event in each community will include contributions of other writers, dancers, drummers, and storytellers as well as emerging artists, and cultural consultants. The intention is that there is also room for formal witnessing in the Salish sense – a spoken public response to the piece by cultural consultants. The development process will be over the year between the spring of 2017 and the spring of 2018, with potential input from several different Nations and cultures from across Turtle Island.
Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way premieres in Vancouver May 17-19 and May 24-26, 2018 It then embarks on a national tour that includes Penticton, BC, Toronto, ON, and Winnipeg, MB.
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.
World Premiere: June 8-17, 2018 at The Cultch in Vancouver
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.
Foreign Radical invites thirty participants into an intriguing theatrical game that explores security, profiling, freedom of expression, and privacy in the age of cybersurveillance. Mobile throughout the performance, the participants collaborate, compete, investigate, debate, and spy on each other. Depending on personal and group decisions, they are at times in divided up to witness different perspectives on dramatic scenes and documentary media that influence their views and strategy within the game.
A recipient of a Jessie Award for Critics’ Choice Innovation, Foreign Radical is an interactive, multimedia experience with multilingual elements in Farsi and Arabic. Each performance is unique in that the audience dynamic influences the outcome.
World Premiere Production: April 2o15, Culture Lab at The Cultch in Vancouver, BC. Remount: February 6-11, 2017 at Studio 1398 in Vancouver, BC.
Chosen as one of six national works presented at Canada Hub, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in summer 2017.
Empire of the Son is Tetsuro’s personal story of his relationship with his father. Separated by a generation but connected by blood, Tetsuro and his father speak different languages and possess different values, but what ultimately keeps them apart is their similarities.
Tinkers is an adaptation of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Paul Harding. This new transcendentalist’s work features an intimate and dazzling relationship with the natural world, woven into a story of family karma. The Only Animal’s production is set in an old growth forest on the Sunshine Coast July 25 – August 7, 2016. Led by writer/director Kendra Fanconi, the Tinkers team includes Cornelia Konrads, a conceptual artist from Germany. Tinkers asks us how we collect all the pieces of a relationship that has come apart, and tinker, tinker to bring it together again. Heidi Taylor dons her dramaturgical rubber boots and wades into the depths of the production, working with Kendra to orchestrate the many elements into a cohesive and transcendent audience experience. Expect bird song, puppets, and a visceral connection with the coastal rainforest.
A collective creation based on true stories of shame and forgiveness. This Stays in the Room is courageous, revealing, humorous, and based entirely on the lived experiences of the creative team. Through text, song, photography, video and choreography, This Stays in the Room invited the audience on a very personal journey, to share a uniquely human state that is common to us all. Weaving together seven heart-rending stories – based entirely on the real lives of the creative team – This Stay In The Room brought together several of Vancouver’s finest theatre artists in what is surely one of our most intimate and revealing pieces to date.