PuSh Play

PuSh Festival

PuSh Play is a PuSh Festival podcast. Each episode features conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. read less
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Episodes

Ep. 18 - Rock Climbing and Vertical Dance
15-01-2024
Ep. 18 - Rock Climbing and Vertical Dance
Inbal Ben Haim (Episode 3) and Julia Taffe of Vancouver’s Aeriosa Dance Society chat about the intersection of rock climbing and aerial/vertical dance. This episode is sponsored by the French Consulate in Vancouver as part of Paris 2024. Sport climbing is one of the new disciplines of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin discusses a number of questions with Inbal and Julia, including:  How to deal with the unknown and reframe failure? How do dance/circus and rock climbing intertwine? How failure and perfection in dance means something very different in climbing How are climbing and dance both about problem-solving? Where does the sport end and the artistic discipline begin? How does self-discovery of one’s physicality affect the work today? How does it take place of being competitive, replacing the need to be first? What is the importance of doing the work beforehand (building systems, locations, etc.)? Is there a spiritual dimension to climbing and/or aerial and vertical dance? About Inbal Born in Jerusalem in 1990, Inbal Ben Haim grew up in the Israeli countryside. After studying visual arts, she discovered the circus in 2004 at the Free Dome Project then the Shabazi Circus. The call of heights and creating with her body led her to specialize first in the static trapeze, then the rich minimalism of the aerial rope.In 2011 she left her homeland to follow her artistic path in France, furthering her research through important artistic encounters and training: first at the Centre Régional des Arts du Cirque PACA – Piste d’Azur, then the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in Châlons-en-Champagne, from which she graduated in December 2017 (29th graduating class). In Summer 2018, she premiered Racine(s) (Root(s)), which developed from her meeting the musician, composer, and arranger David Amar and the director Jean Jacques Minazio. At the same time, she developed a teaching method for therapeutic circus and worked in various contexts in Israel and France. By blending circus, dance, theatre, improvisation, and visual arts, Ben Haim has created her own form of poetic expression. Largely inspired by the human bond made possible by the stage, the ring, and the street, she aims to create strong connections between the audience and the artist, the intimate and the spectacular, the earth and air, and the here and there. About Julia Choreographer Julia Taffe combines art, environment and adventure, making dances for buildings, mountains, neighbourhoods, theatres and trees, finding new movement perspectives in the realm of suspension. Julia is the artistic director of Aeriosa, a Vancouver-based vertical dance company. She has choreographed over 25 works on location including: Stawamus Chief Mountain in Squamish BC, Taipei City Hall, Cirque du Soleil Headquarters, Vancouver Library Square, Banff Centre, Scotiabank Dance Centre and Toronto’s 58-storey L Tower. Prior to founding Aeriosa, Julia performed across Canada with Ruth Cansfield, and around the world with Bandaloop. Julia attained ACMG Rock Guide certification in 1997. She has worked as a co-producer, choreographer, cast member, stunt performer, mountain safety rigger and creative movement consultant on various film and television productions in Canada and abroad. Land Acknowledgement Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Inbal joins the podcast from Paris, France. Julia joins from Ucluelet, which is a Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) word most known as ‘People of the Safe Harbour.’ More accurately Ucluelet People, lit. ‘Dwellers of the Protected Place Inside’. The Ucluth peninsula has been inhabited by the Yuu-tluth-aht Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ people as far back as 4,300+ years ago. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 17 - NOMADA: art as ecological practice
11-01-2024
Ep. 17 - NOMADA: art as ecological practice
Diana Lopez Soto discusses how ecology and land can connect to art. See NOMADA at the 2024 PuSh Festival from Feb 1-3. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin discusses the upcoming PuSh co-commission, NOMADA, with creator Diana Lopez Soto. Gabrielle and Diana discuss how aerial dance contributes to NOMADA’s dramaturgy, the research and development process behind this piece, how ecology and land can connect to art, and more, including:  Why aerial dance and what does it contribute to the dramaturgy of Nomada? How did research fit into the development of the piece? What methods were used? How did you choose the right collaborators for this project and for the inherent knowledge exchange? How do NOMADA’s theme relate to Diana’s wider practice? What is a conversation between art and ecology? How are artists involved in sustainability? How does this influence the work and art process? How do we connect to the land, and the larger communities to involve them in this process? About Diana Diana is an award-winning multidisciplinary Mexican/Canadian artist, mother and land caretaker. She has presented and exhibited her work nationally and internationally in France, Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, the USA and Canada. She creates, co-creates and performs site-specific work, vertical dance, art installations and experimental film.  Her interest in sustainable practices informs the direction of her collaborations and offerings. Some of her latest achievements are her participation at the Guapamacataro Art and Ecology residency, the Vancouver International Vertical Dance Summit and the ‘Ritual de las Aguadoras’ with the Tirindikua family from the Barrio de Santo Santiago Michoacan. Diana is the co-creator of Land Embodiment Lab with Coman Poon, an artist associate of Vanguardia Dance Projects and collaborates with Hercinia Arts, Femme du Feu, Look Up Theatre and Victoria Mata. Land Acknowledgement Diana joins the podcast from Peterborough, Ontario, in Treaty 20 territory: the traditional home of the Chippewa and Mississauga First Nations. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 16 - The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes: generative disaster
08-01-2024
Ep. 16 - The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes: generative disaster
Bruce Gladwin discusses how a disastrous first showing influenced the show’s creation. See The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes at the 2024 PuSh Festival from Feb 1-3 at the York Theatre. Co-Presented with Neworld Theatre and The Cultch. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Bruce Gladwin, director and co-author of The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes. Gabrielle and Bruce discuss the show’s source and evolution, the need to place obstacles in front of actors, how a disastrous first showing of the piece led to the show it is today, and more, including: What is the source for this particular piece, and how has it evolved since then? Why is it sometimes the director’s job to place obstacles in front of actors instead of just giving them free rein? How did a disastrous first showing of the piece lead to the show it is today? Why is it just not that simple to say what you think and be heard? And how does this work explore that? How do you perceive societal change with regards to the assumptions we hold about others? What is unusual about this piece for Back to Back Theatre? About Back to Back Theatre Based in the Victorian regional centre of Geelong, Back to Back Theatre is widely recognised as an Australian theatre company of national and international significance. The company is driven by an ensemble of actors who are perceived to have intellectual disabilities and is considered one of Australia’s most important cultural exporters. We contend our operation as a theatre company is beyond expectation of possibility: an affirmation for human potential. The company’s existence contributes to the richness and diversity of Australian life and palpably projects Geelong, Victoria and Australia to the world as innovative, sophisticated and dynamic. The company has undertaken presentations and screenings at the world’s pre-eminent contemporary arts festivals and venues such as the Edinburgh International Festival, London’s V&A Museum and the Barbican, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival and Theater der Welt, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Public Theater in New York, Festival Tokyo, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires International Festival. Back to Back Theatre has received 21 national and international awards including the International Ibsen Award, a Helpmann Award for Best Australian Work, an Edinburgh International Festival Herald Angel Critics’ Award, two Age Critics’ Awards, a New York Bessie and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Group Award for our long-standing contribution to the development of Australian theatre. In 2015, Bruce Gladwin received the Australia Council for the Arts’ Inaugural Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre. The ensemble were awarded the ‘Best Ensemble’ in the 2019 Green Room Awards. Land Acknowledgement Bruce joins the podcast from the land of the Wadawurrung, now colonially known as the state of Victoria in Australia. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 15 - DARKMATTER: post-humanism
04-01-2024
Ep. 15 - DARKMATTER: post-humanism
Cherish Menzo discusses her work’s consideration of the Black body in the context of post-humanism. See DARKMATTER at the 2024 PuSH Festival Jan 29-31. Co-Presented with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin discusses DARKMATTER with co-creator and choreographer Cherish Menzo. The show will be presented at the 2024 PuSh Festival from January 29-31 at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Gabrielle and Cherish discuss the “chopped and screwed” remix technique, the Black body in the context of post-humanism, the equal roles of the beauty and the grotesque in the context of this work, and more, including.  What is the purpose of distortion, the use of time, and its effect on meaning of images? What is the “chopped and screwed” remix technique? How can an audience experience of the texture of sound? How can we encounter the black body in the context of post-humanism? How and why does the piece place beauty and the grotesque on an equal footing? Cherish’s Inspirations Cherish mentioned a few points of inspiration for her work today: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva Wangechi Mutu, visual artist  Death Grips, band Philip Butler, Black post-humanist writer ​​​​Bayo Akomolafe, philosopher About Cherish Menzo Cherish Menzo (Brussels/Amsterdam) is one of the four artistic leaders of the dance organization GRIP, together with Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens and Steven Michel. As a dancer/performer, Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens, Nicole Beutler, Eszter Salamon, Benjamin Kahn, Akram Khan and others.  As a choreographer, her powerful movement language comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally. Cherish seeks out forms of movement and being, while placing beauty and the grotesque on an equal footing. She consciously seeks out an alienating effect to guide both the viewer and herself away from the known. Away from the familiar that we sometimes too easily equate with ‘the (only) truth’. She floats between the nostalgia of 90s and 00s hip-hop and the realms of industrial hip-hop, rap lyrics, manga and speculative fiction. She created JEZEBEL (’19) and DARKMATTER (‘22) with GRIP and Frascati Producties, both productions were selected for both the Theaterfestival in Flanders and its Dutch counterpart.  GRIP was founded in 2014 by choreographer and dancer Jan Martens and manager Klaartje Oerlemans. From 2023 on, GRIP choreographers Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens, Cherish Menzo, and Steven Michel act together as artistic directors. They do so in close dialogue with Klaartje Oerlemans and Rudi Meulemans, who coordinates and facilitates the dialogue between the four makers in his role of artistic coordinator. Land Acknowledgement Cherish joins the podcast from Brussels, Belgium. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 14 - Deciphers: language and identity
28-12-2023
Ep. 14 - Deciphers: language and identity
Jean Abreu and Naishi Wang discuss how language shapes and reflects identity. See Deciphers at the 2024 PuSh Festival from Jan 24-26 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Co-Presented with New Works. Show Notes Gabrielle, Naishi and Jean dive into the development of this piece and how it was influenced by language and digital technology. They also discuss how their work tackles loneliness, the migrant experience, the transforming nature of human identity, and other questions including: How does this piece expose the underlying motivations of the body’s movements? What are creative and digital technology’s influence? What does it mean to be in and out of the work? How can internal processes translate to external performance? How is developing a piece like this about learning how to share with others and with oneself? How would you describe each other’s bodily-linguistic identities and how have these changed throughout the project? How can precise language sometimes hold art back? How does this work tackle loneliness, the migrant experience, and the transforming nature of human identity? How are these themes present in the wider bodies of the artists’ work? How do we highlight “nonsense” in order to discover and translate not knowing into something else? About Naishi Wang Based in culturally diverse Toronto, and born in Changchun, China mixed with Chinese, North Korean and Mongolian ancestry. Naishi Wang observes and studies the underlying motivations of the body’s movements and the emotions it conveys. Renowned for his exceptional improvisations, which he turns into incarnations of bodily meaning, Wang is also a practicing visual artist. His drawings, which take the form of dances on paper, echo his work in dance.  Part of the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) program in February 2019 and also presented in Halifax and Hamburg, Germany. His solo Taking Breath demonstrated his interest in intimate forms of bodily communication, a subject he takes up again in the duet Face to Face which focused on our new modes of virtual communication and the factors that act in concert to convey our intentions in even the simplest exchanges. Naishi is currently collaborating with UK-based artist Jean Abreu entitled Deciphers and a trio named Eyes, Wide Open. He is an artist in residency at the Citadel, Harbourfront Centre and TO Live and has been awarded Les Respirations du FTA (2021), Small Scale Creation Fund from CanDance (2021) and Chalmers Arts Fellowship from Ontario Arts Council (2022). About Jean Abreu Born in Brazil, Jean Abreu moved to London in 1996 after receiving a scholarship to study at Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance. Jean Abreu received the Jerwood Choreography Award in 2003 following the creation of his first choreography, Hibrido. Since then his work has toured throughout the UK, Europe, Brazil and China including performances for Dance Umbrella, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Royal Opera House and Southbank Centre in London. Jean Abreu’s movement practice comes from his ongoing interest in utilizing the body as a powerful tool to articulate arresting emotional and complex ideas through dance.  Creative & digital technology has consistently featured within and challenged Jean’s varied performance work. In 2009 he founded Jean Abreu Dance and has since collaborated with influential artists across multiple art forms including rock band 65daysofstatic for Inside (2010), choreographer Jorge Garcia for Parallel Memories (2011), visual artists Gilbert & George for Blood (2013) and Brazilian sculptor and visual artist Elisa Bracher for A Thread (2016). His work Solo for Two toured across the UK in 2018 with further performances in China and Portugal in 2019.  Jean has taught extensively in the UK and abroad in renowned dance organizations and Universities including London Contemporary Dance School, London Studio Centre, Dance Base (Scotland), International Festival of Morelos (Mexico) Roger Williams University (USA) New York University (USA), Balance Arts Centre (China). He is currently a regular guest artist at Bath Spa University, Portsmouth University, University of Bath, Greenwich Dance and Beijing Dance Academy.  Land Acknowledgement Jean joins the podcast from the east end of London, UK, where he acknowledges both the migrant peoples of the area and the original inhabitants. Naishi joins from Toronto, Ontario, which is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 13 - L’amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie
21-12-2023
Ep. 13 - L’amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie
Guy Régis Jr. sits down with Cory Haas, Artistic Director of Théâtre la Seizième, to talk about L’Amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie, which will be presented as part of the PuSh Festival from February 3-4 at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Co-presented with Théâtre la Seizième and SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs. About the Show With staggering subtlety and lyricism, L’amour telle une cathédrale ensevelie tells the story of exiled Haitian families through opera-theatre. Born into just such a family, author and director Guy Régis Jr uses a chorus to sing of the tumultuous, uprooted nature of migration—the journey and the aftermath—in Creole and French, accompanied by Haitian classical guitarist, Amos Coulanges. A stunning creation that explores exile and dislocation through a portrait of families over sixty years, told in different forms and across different territories. Each fractal in the larger journey evokes those who live in the aftermath of voyages made or lost; each narrative reflects on the social, political and economic realities of a globalized world.  This is a profound work, poetic and political. An interrogation of migration, human rights, social injustice and discrimination, the play is an ode to all those in search of a promised land. About NOUS Théâtre Created in 2001 in Haiti by Guy Régis Jr, NOUS Théâtre began its theatre work in the streets, cemeteries and universities. The approach is to bring theatre to the people. The form is paired down, ritualized, the speech is elevated. The discourse reflects the interrogations and the indignations of the company’s members on the social, political and economic situation in Haiti and the world. The style ‘nous’ (meaning ‘us’) is about radical research and experimentation of theatrical gesture which shook up the Haitian theatre milieu. In 2009, the association NOUS Théâtre is created in France. It produces the works of Guy Régis Jr in France and internationally and works to develop artistic exchanges and encounters between France and Haiti. The company produces artistic projects of various forms, from sound installations to performance and theatre creations, that can involve dance and/or music and/or video. The political speech and social engagement of the work, as well as the poetry of the texts, movements, images, sound and music compositions are all constants in the work of Guy Régis Jr. Themes of migration, human rights, social injustice, racism and discrimination of all kinds are very important to the texts and creations of the company. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 12 - Inheritances: thematic collaboration
18-12-2023
Ep. 12 - Inheritances: thematic collaboration
Adam Tendler discusses the unorthodox inspiration for his collaborative composition. Show Notes David Pay, Artistic Director of PuSh partner Music on Main, chats with Adam Tendler about Inheritances, which will be presented at the 2024 PuSh Festival from January 24-25 at Annex. Co-presented with Music on Main. David and Adam ask the following questions and more: Does this piece honour the past and Adam’s father, or is it about something more? What is the source and story of Adam’s strange inheritance itself? What is grief and mourning when you are numb? Why did Adam ask composers to help him figure out how to grieve, or as a mechanism through which he could grieve? How does the piece explore the loss of access vs. the actual loss of a person? How did the pandemic affected the process and premiere? How did the different pieces change when composers heard other pieces? How can the experience of catharsis carry through other composers and to the audience? What does it mean that the piece has “true dramatic stakes”? What does inheritance mean to you now? About Adam Tendler Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and the 2022 Yvar Mikhashoff Prize. He has been called “currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times), and a “relentlessly adventurous pianist” (The Washington Post) “joyfully rocking out at his keyboard” (The New York Times). A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty states in a grassroots tour that was later the subject of his acclaimed coming-out memoir, 88×50. He has gone on to become one of classical music’s most celebrated artists, commissioning major works from composers as diverse as Christian Wolff and Devonté Hynes, and recently appearing as soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and as soloist on the main-stages of Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, and BAM. An expert in the music of John Cage, Tendler has worked closely with the John Cage Trust and Cage’s publisher, Edition Peters, and performed the composer’s work internationally. He has also extensively performed the music of Julius Eastman and is featured on Wild Up’s latest album of the composer’s works, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich. Other recent releases include Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on the Steinway Label, Robert Palmer: Piano Music on New World Records, as well as his second book, tidepools. For his Inheritances project, premiered in 2022, Tendler commissioned 16 new piano works using the entire inheritance left to him by his father from composers including Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli. A New York Times Critic Pick, the program was described as “not only a display of contemporary compositional force, but also a true show…with a sense of true dramatic stakes.” Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist and serves on the piano faculty of NYU. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at Green-Wood Cemetery. Land Acknowledgement David hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 11 - BLOT (Body Line of Thought): performing microbiology
14-12-2023
Ep. 11 - BLOT (Body Line of Thought): performing microbiology
Vanessa Goodman and Simona Deaconescu chat about their show, BLOT - Body Line of Thought, which will be presented at the 2024 PuSh Festival from January 22-23 at Left of Main. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Vanessa Goodman and Simona Deaconescu about their show, BLOT (Body Line of Thought). They discuss how this unconventional performance developed through installations and iterations, the body as microbiological being, and the role of “bio-friction” in their show. They also discuss: How can the body be redefined as a microbiological being? What is nature when affecting and being affected? How did this project emerge? Did the subject matter come up later or was it how it started? How can the idea of contamination be both positive and negative? How is the body governed by microbial environments? How did installation work and numerous iterations affect the development of the piece? What is “bio-friction”? How does this piece intersect with social identity? Can bacteria shape our preferences? How much do we control what we actually do and feel? How is this performance unconventional? What is the difference between movement that sensualizes vs. analyzes? About Vanessa Goodman Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. Her choreographic practice is driven by weaving generative movement and audio into performative environments. Her work creates a sense of intimacy between our surroundings and the body. She has received several awards and honours, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the “Space to Fail” program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. Her work has toured Canada, The United States, Europe and South America. Recent collaborations include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw and BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu.  About Simona Deaconsecu Working across genres and formats, Simona Deaconescu examines social constructs, at the border of fiction and objective reality, sometimes with irony and dark humor. Her work explores future scenarios of the body, creating spaces in which nature, history, and technology meet, and the notion of choreography extends beyond the human body. Simona Deaconescu holds a BA and a MA in Choreography from The National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and a BA in Film Directing from Media University Romania. In 2014, she founded Tangaj Collective, an organization that works with transdisciplinary artists and researchers. In 2015, she became the co-founder and artistic director of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival. In 2016, she received the CNDB – National Centre for Dance Award for her contribution brought to Romanian contemporary dance. Over the years, she developed part of her projects in collaboration with CNDB, and in 2022 she became an Associated Artist of the center. Developing artworks greatly influenced by science, she was supported by European Projects based on research and interdisciplinarity, such as Moving Digits and Biofriction. In 2018 and 2022, she was nominated as an Aerowaves Artist with her works Counterbody and Choreomaniacs. Land Acknowledgement Vanessa joins the podcast from Mi'kma'k territory in Nova Scotia, where the African Nova Scotian community helped build much of the existing infrastructure. Simona joins from Bucharest, Romania. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.
Ep. 10 - because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude we all have it): bridging artistic traditions
11-12-2023
Ep. 10 - because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude we all have it): bridging artistic traditions
Rakesh Sukesh discusses bringing Indian dance traditions to a European performing arts context. Show Notes Listen to Gabrielle Martin in conversation with Rakesh Sukesh about his show, because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it). Gabrielle and Rakesh discuss topics including the philosophy of creating and moving through chaos, whether practice can be a source of healing, and the process of coming with an Indian passport to the rest of the world as an artist. Co-presented by Indian Summer Festival and The Cultch. Gabrielle and Rakesh ask the following questions and more: What is the philosophy of creating and moving through chaos? What is the particular challenge of solo work, and the desire to seek out collaboration? How to convert experiences into pieces of art? Can practice be a source of healing? What happens when we are caught between cultures, which have problems either way? How to be used as the protagonist of research? Is the process of meaning-making different between choreography and text? What is the “Intact” method? What is the process of coming with an Indian passport to the rest of the world as an artist? About Rakesh Sukesh Born in Kerala, India, Rakesh was introduced to yogic principles and practices early on, setting the stage for his transformative journey. Dance unexpectedly entered his life at the age of 15 when he began as a Bollywood dancer in local productions. In 2003, Rakesh joined Attakkalari India, marking a significant shift in his trajectory. In 2014, he became a certified yoga teacher through the esteemed Shivananda Vedanta Centre, a step that deepened his understanding of movement and holistic well-being. Over the past 14 years, Rakesh has dedicated himself to researching a movement method known as the IntAct-Method. This practical fusion of Kalarippayattu, contemporary movement, and yogic philosophy has gained recognition in reputable institutions worldwide. Rakesh has taken a hands-on approach in creating over thirteen dance pieces, each with its own distinct purpose. Currently, his focus is on developing a solo performance because i love the diversity (this micro attitude, we all have it), scheduled to debut at the PuSh Festival in 2024. In 2020, Rakesh co-founded and assumed a leadership role at Sanskar, a global performing arts platform. This pragmatic initiative aims to foster growth and collaboration, especially in India and abroad. Land Acknowledgement Rakesh joins the podcast from Brussels, Belgium. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, PuSh's Director of programming. And today's episode highlights the philosophy of moving and creating through chaos. I'm speaking with Rakesh Sukesh, choreographer and performer of because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it) a PuSh festival commission which will be presented at PuSh Festival January 22nd to 24th 2024. In because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it) Rakesh embodies the chaos of an unjust society, finding humour in the confusions and contradictions. Born in Kerala, India, Dance unexpectedly entered Rakesh's life at the age of 15, when he began as a Bollywood dancer in local productions. Since then, Rakesh has created numerous dance works and dedicated himself to researching a movement method known as Intact Method, a practical fusion of Kalari Pieta, contemporary movement and Yogic philosophy. I'm honoured to share a discussion that looks at the collaboration and exploration of form behind because I love the diversity. Here's my conversation with Rakesh.     Gabrielle [00:01:15] Hi Rakesh. Welcome. Thank you for taking this time to chat with me a bit about your process and the project, because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it)   Rakesh [00:01:24] My pleasure to be here, definitely. Definitely pleasure to talk about it.    Gabrielle [00:01:28] Thank you. And I just want to start out by acknowledging that I am speaking with you from the unceded stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh).It's an absolute privilege for me to be here, for me to be working here, for PuSh to be doing its work here. Would you mind just letting us know where you're speaking to me from?    Rakesh [00:01:53] Yeah. Right now I live in Belgium. Since last five years. And Brussels has been my base. And it's a great place to be as an artist and and as a as a foreign artist it's, it's a very welcoming community and and it's a great place to develop yourself and and share your work. And that's where I am now, right now.    Gabrielle [00:02:17] You are an established international performer, sought after educator. And because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it) is your first solo, evening length choreographic work, and I'm curious what compelled you to undertake this project at this point in your career and how your practice up until this point shows itself in the content of the piece?    Rakesh [00:02:43] First of all, about this being my first full length solo performance, I have done a short a piece with me a long, long time ago, and I remember kind of struggling through the process because it's quite a lonely, depressing journey when you go into a studio. And I told myself, No, I'm going to step out of this and I rather prefer to collaborate with the artist or create on somebody else. But considering what this topic of the piece talks about, which is the aggressions and microaggressions per se, which is the racism and expectation of society and and where I come from and where I am now. And over the years, it's kind of a baggage that you start to carry on you. And then it came to a point where there was intense threshold to to to put it out there into into the space. And one of the... I mean, my work, my teaching is is inspired by my culture a lot and which is there and in my culture and anywhere you go, we always speak in a holistic way. We never really separate body or ideology or or a space that you live in time, your live in memory that you have it somehow. We embrace everything all the time. And that's all in my in my teaching. Well, what I propose is it's kind of an interconnected practice where I'm a dance teacher, I'm a movement pedagogue, but I'm drawing and through movement how we can research and understand or express our different aspects of ourselves. And so by saying so, I realised that the fact that I carry all this information or another synonym is karma Indian maybe call it, which is that the baggage that we have and how, how it's defined me right now in this, in this moment, which is that the experience that we gathered and what do you do in the moment governs what's going to be for yourself within you and also the environment you live in. So kind of having these experiences in my personal life and the questions and and wanting to understand these questions through a research, which is my practice also, and, and trying to go through a journey and to see what I find in that journey and, and eventually to see how I can convert that those experiences into a piece of art. And this is what we research in my practice, how to convert things into a piece of art. And that could be coming from something physical and mental, emotional and psychological. And so the kind of my practice is became my my source of healing, let's say, and source of discovery, a source of expression, way of expression. So so then I said, okay, after 12 years, it's time to do a solo again. It's time to tell a story again. So that's how I start this process.    Gabrielle [00:06:20] So you're working with award winning Canadian playwright Marcus Youssef for this project, and can you talk about that collaboration, the decision to work with text, how the text has been developed, how the collaboration has influenced your practice?    Rakesh [00:06:35] Well, I have I have not met Marcus in person up till until very recently. The beginning I got introduced by you PuSh Festival and by the moment I saw his body of work. And intuitively felt like, I feel like there is something about this artist and and I like the way he he how he approaches topic and how he identifies the topic within him and and and analysing and arguing that the the topic or thematic within himself. And I like this approach of you take something and then you find yourself with that idea and trying to yeah to to understand what is this idea means and how you see that out. And I like this approach of him. And so yeah, we, we matched and we somehow we said yeah, we like each other, you know, online. And we started the process in the beginning. I have no idea. I just had this vision of creating this piece that I just don't wanted it to be a dance piece. I wanted it to have kind of a aesthetic of kind of a lecture performance, dance, storytelling, and kind of like a collusion of all this different world to me together. So when I spoke to him about it in the in the initial days, we just he just asked me questions and he asked me to speak about my experiences. So I spoke about, you know, certain racist issues that I've confronted and being in Europe and dealing with different kind of aggression in the art world and expectation from the art world and you me being from India. What do you expect of and how much is expected of? They say that like, Oh, we are very open for diversity. Please come and share your information. But up to a certain point, not more than that. And but share any information to be like this is not the way that you that you would share it in India. So there's a lot of like a different kind of tonality to kind of life that I'm navigating. So I start to speak a lot of experiences and, and also referring to other stories, other people's stories. And that's what I do very often when I go to create a space, I try to pull references of other books or events or stuff. I was amused and challenged by Marcus is that he directed the entire research on me, putting me as the protagonist and and going through these stories that to me, I spoke and creating this character, which is Rakesh, who was an artist became fascinated about being in the Western world, navigating his life as an artist and at the same time, outside in the real world, in Western world, things are very different than how experiencing in the art world and also art world itself how absurd sometimes you are, you are called upon to a certain places to share your practice and sometimes for the same reason you're not welcomed. And so it's kind of like creating a storyline of this, this artist Rakesh Sukesh and going through this, this arc of his life episodes of his life and also his inner, you know, questions and problems that is confronted and also reflecting on his own culture. He comes from, okay, I am I'm in this world and navigating with all these different problems. I would like to go back to my country, but my country has also has problem. It preaches yoga, it preaches. We are very old culture and great, but we also have problem of caste issues and difference between male and female and arranged marriage and how how you are measured in the society. The darker you are and the value of yourself goes down. And and meanwhile, it also talks about yoga and spiritualities. And so so this character kind of kind of gets stuck between this world and the trying to figure out these problems. And and so hence, like all the stories that I was saying became the text of the piece. I don't want to say more about it because I also want people to experience the piece. So I will just stop at that.    Gabrielle [00:11:24] As a choreographer, when you're creating a work and you're creating the dramaturgy and the the kind of codes through which you convey the intention behind the work, that can be quite different than when you're working with a text. And it's the there's this narrative dramaturgy. And often that that process of meaning making or where the focus goes can be different. Have you found it to be really pretty organic? Has it been? Yeah. I'm just curious if there's anything more to say about that.    Rakesh [00:11:59] That's the exciting part for me in this process is that the development of this piece became very natural for me. And it's because I have Marcus who's creating this fantastic dramaturgy in the text wise. And also I have another collaborator, Alessia Luna Wyes, who's who's Italian, who's based now in Belgium, and she's focusing on more from movement, dramaturgy and aesthetic from a dance point of view and the fact that the piece focussed on me, the character, and hence me wanting to say the story verbally and also the physicality that I have. And also we are questioning me being this Indian artist, creating a piece in the Western world for the Western public. How is it being perceived? Or when I do a certain movement, let's say if I say a story and I'm doing a movement. Moving and dancing with that story. Immediately there's a judgment from the audience saying like, this story this way we're not sure and or yes, we like it because it has something exotic, but this one we're not sure. Maybe it's a bit too much. So kind of like taking that into the piece that that into the dramaturgy like, oh, that's the problem we're talking about. And so hence the whole, the whole journey of the development became very organic, I would say. I don't think I found very difficult to define the, the, the synergy between the body dance and the text. And also it goes back again to my my practice in the room where I am teaching. I'm sharing verbally, while I'm also able to express that physically, somehow. So we use that as the essence as part of the whole development of the project.    Gabrielle [00:14:03] Yes, I remember. I remember that from having taken a workshop with you, which was incredible, which was also my introduction to you and your work and the storytelling that was part of your teaching practice and that was so compelling and just as inspiring as your physical demonstration of movement propositions. I want to talk a bit more about your teaching practice. You've developed the Enact Method, moving through chaos, and can you describe this method which you've spoken about a bit, but also the process of its development and the relationship between moving through chaos and because I love. Is there a relationship? And if yes, what is it?    Rakesh [00:14:45] Yeah, I would say yes. There is a relationship to give a kind of back story of my research. This is a practice that I propose. I call it modern research. Before I would say I would teach this technique. But now it became a more research space. And before when I was teaching, I was teaching very clear methods that come from my culture. I was teaching a martial art form which is called Kalaripayattu and using the, the physical preparation that they do in this martial art and which has a lot of inspiration from animals and how to use the human somatics in that in an organic and a healthy way where we can keep exploring the boundaries and and what to our city of the physicality. Because in martial art it's about efficiency. You are able you should train yourself to deal with an intense environment while you being calm to understand the environment. So and I was using that as a as a starting point and I was teaching it. And meanwhile, I am very much inclined to yogic principles because it's also my family's kind of loosely there are busy with it. Also my parents are, you know, they're very much into yoga and philosophy and stuff. So I grew up in that. Of course, as a as a child, as a teenager, I was not really caring for it. You know, my fascination was to come to the into the Western world. And I arrived. And then I reflect on my own culture and the ancient discoveries. And then you look at the modern science and neuroscience and and they all talk about how the human development , where is the human development. And somehow it's all kind of like, call me back to the whole yoga principles, the practice that you have developed. Marriage is about the human enhancement eventually. And so I start to, you know, start going more deeper into that. And I do teach this training. And for myself, I don't want to become a yoga teacher, but rather going to an intense process to understand it and but draw all principles and philosophies from yoga and put that into mind is this research that I have been doing. And in India we have this usually in ancient time before we had the Western education system. And normally you study under a teacher for 12 years. And that method is called Gurukula system where you're studying at teacher's house for 12 years. And after 12 years, ideally, you're done with their education. And then you go and live with that information that your teacher gave and you see what life teaches you with that with that information. So the previous practice that I was teaching after 12 years, I said, okay, I need to change it. I need to reset into something new. And then I start calling an intact method, which is that to to keep an idea together or if something is wrong, you fix it. It's kind of a synonym. And also arriving it was also the time of Covid and worst time of all the different problems in my life was I was going through. Then I realised this. Well, there's so much chaos that we we are facing in life, right. Then for me, the focus become right now the chapter that I do is breath power of breath. And for me I realise breath is a it's like the inner root. Of ourselves. It's like the tree. So the deeper, the calmer, or the proper you breathe, the more resilient you become. And so bringing the power of breath and dealing with the different natures of us body, mind, spirit, spirit, whatever the environment and past and future. And how do you navigate all those different aspects? By keeping the breath as the core. So hence, like now it become a more research practice. When I'm proposing tools for the practitioners and everybody takes the tool and they are all working together in the studio. Of course, the tool provokes different experience in each and everybody, so I cannot access that experience to say, This is what I'm teaching you. You can only find it for yourself. So hence it became more a research research process right now. And again, that also reflects into my piece, which is my experience, my my stories, which I'm trying to convert that into a piece of art. And this is what I do, both in my class and in my performance.    Gabrielle [00:19:33] You're working on a lot of levels. Clearly, you know, with your the philosophy you're bringing to your teaching, to your what is becoming, you know, methodology for research, the development of your creative projects. And you're also the director of the Sanskar Festival. And so this festival in this festival, you're facilitating international creative exchange between Indian and international contemporary dance artists. And because I love is also an international collaboration and has had its own obstacles and setbacks due to your Indian passport and the inequities of movement. Can you talk about the context you're creating within and the relationship with Sanskar and your work with Sanskar?    Rakesh [00:20:19] I found a great growth in my the fact that I'm travelling and I'm now living in outside my homeland and because you put yourself in an unknown space and you are, you are discovering yourself, right? And meanwhile you're meeting these amazing artists and there's so much they inspired you and, and you, you develop yourself and you find yourself and you being an interesting projects. So when I look back now, if I did not travel from India, I don't know who I would have been and what I would have been developed into, right? At the same time, it was not an easy process. It's it's really a difficult journey, me coming from with an Indian passport, trying to be in the Western world. It's it's really not... It's it's very difficult. And one has to have like a very wealthy family who can really support you to do that or you have to really go through a very difficult process. And in my case, my family was not really wealthy. So my my journey was a bit of like ups and downs and turns and twists. What was fascinating is that when I started to travel, of course, you know, to give an example, when I'm in India, I'm watching certain companies in Europe, which are considered to be the very advanced in in the contemporary dance, right? Like, you know, Pina Bausch and Ultima Vez. And you're like, wow, you want to do that one day? That's that's your dream. And of course, what you have in India is classical arts, folk art, and then you have Bollywood and contemporary art, physical art is it's very. Is it? I could not find it. Even now, you cannot really find it clearly. So we are always striving behind a community that is already ahead of you, right? So you already copying them, trying to become that thinking 'That's contemporary dance. We got to roll on the floor. We got to create an amazing scenography and like them like that in order for you to call yourself a contemporary dancer.' And for me, over the years, I realised I become more Indian dancer. Me being in Europe, you know, I kind of got more and more fascinated by my own artistry. Of course I roll on the floor, I do jumps and I do create work. But I found it like, Wow, there is so much richness in my culture. But this journey brought me the awareness, how to investigate that, to make it contemporary. And that's what I am doing personally. Of course, I meet a lot of young artists from India. They write me emails, their messages saying like, Oh, how can I be in Europe? How can I... How can I study? How can I grow? How can I? So they they asked me and and of course it's not cheap and it's not easy. And so then we realise that, okay, we need to do something in India. And meanwhile. You know, talking about, let's say, yoga, let's... to give an example. I come to Western world and and I see people and I respect that very much and that, you know, people go and they do teacher training and yoga and they come on a yoga teacher and, oh, you I do this kind of yoga, I do that kind of yoga. And then you look at your own culture and what is meant for what is it been for for thousands of years being twisted and turned and created and brands and varieties of yoga. And that goes also in dance, right? Like people go study a little bit of Kathak for three months and they come, they create like, oh, this is Kathak.    Gabrielle [00:24:09] Mm-hmm.    Rakesh [00:24:09] And this is what I'm doing. And like it's interesting. I see there is a there is an interest in the community here to go to different cultures, to look into their information, to get inspired and, and use it for whatever intent they have to create art or to perceive life through that. And the same thing goes the other way around from India. People want to go and experience and be, you know, be in the mind of Western community. So you realise, okay, let's, let's create this project called Sanskar. And then the word Sanskar means creating imprint and an imprint like memory for future. So you realise that like what, how, what kind of environment that we can create that there is... There is an impact that happens from people from very diverse community that they are getting inspired by each other, learning from great masters, from India, from abroad and how it can help them towards future. And while coexisting together without boundaries and also learning from each other. So that's kind of like the philosophy of Sanskar. In a way, that's what happens in, in in my personal life with this whole difficulty of travelling and trying to fit in to being the best in the world. And so we realise that's not easy for young artists in India to do it. Then we created Sanskar and we do it in, in, in real space in India. And also we created kind of a virtual platform to address not just Indian artists, but creating space for people from different parts of the world.    Gabrielle [00:25:57] Thank you. Clearly there's so much potential in the transmission of knowledge and exchange of practice that can transpire with international collaboration. And yeah, these moments of these touchpoints and opportunities for collaboration. And your project is one example. And at the same time, often there's a commodification that happens or an idealisation or an exotification or just a lack of care around that whole process. So it's really interesting to hear about how in so many ways your own personal journey, you're translating that to to facilitate something more for others.    Rakesh [00:26:45] And also, it's I mean, I'm the co-creator of Sanskar. There's another my collaborator called Narendra Patil. So it's like the border region. And he's going through the same process, like he's trying to find himself in the open and create a life while we are resonating to the same issues. And and hence we created this platform. Yeah. Because for us, it's like what we had first. If we look at, let's say any space with with high creativity, let's say a tech company, or or NASA, it's a very diverse community working together. Right. You have Indians, you have Asians, you have people from around the world putting their creative mind and creating that, that, that great product. So somehow, like how he can create a space from artist that can bring what they have this amazing knowledge they all have in a space, throw it into one ball and to see what it's going to become like, who's getting inspired by what? And at the same time, everybody knows the source of it it comes from meanwhile. So, yes, you are fascinated by Kathak. But listen to a traditional Kathak teacher here, how they studied, how they value knowledge. Yes, you are fascinated by as you become a great choreographer in Europe. Understand the research that you need to put inside and and what are the process you have to go through. So it's like creating a platform and also giving a perspective towards what it takes for one to achieve something. So, so yeah, we're interested in this idea of creating a space of innovation by bringing in different things at the same place. And it's up to the participants to decide how they judge it, how they what they take out of it, how they carry forward.    Gabrielle [00:28:46] Similar to the audience's experience in your work.    Rakesh [00:28:51] I'm curious. I'm curious how it's going to be.    Gabrielle [00:28:54] I'm so appreciative of your generosity today and sharing more about your practice. It's clear the generosity you have as a teacher. I got to experience that and as someone just in conversation and then with these initiatives that you are co-directing, directing, that generosity is very clear and and the generosity to kind of... To pull from your own life experience and put that on the stage. So I'm really just so thrilled that this work will be part of the 2024 PuSh festival. I'm really looking forward to the performances January 22nd to 24th and that these will be also presented with Indian Summer Festival and The Cultch. So we're just thrilled to be able to host you and knowing the journey it's been to get to this place after we had such excitement to host the work in the 2023 festival. And then we're not able to do that because of the because of the inequities in the world around movement and the fact that you weren't able to receive a visa until and for quite a while after your application. So thank you for your patience as well and going through all of that and and still being on board. To come to PuSh and premiere the work.    Rakesh [00:30:17] Well, first of all, I am humbled and thank you for this time and all this opportunity and help PuSh gave and also gave... You, you have supporting this project from all along. I mean, I sometimes wonder if this support did not come through. I don't know if I would have had the resources to pull a show like this and also able to bring in fantastic artists like Marcus and Alessia and the others into the project. So your support as being one of the important for this project. These difficulties it's not the first time I have been through this, you know, this kind of difficulties in the past. The only thing that I my mantra is to it to persist, you stay on and something will unfold. And and so yeah, when it fell apart last year, I'm like, okay you go through your whatever the after effect of the news, but stick to the project and let's see when we arrive. So now it's going to be there in January. I'm really excited to be there and I cannot wait to share it and I'm just excited. I cannot wait.    Ben [00:31:31] That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Rakesh Sukesh, choreographer and performer of because i love the diversity (this micro-attitude, we all have it), which is being presented at the upcoming PuSh Festival. My name is Ben Charland and I'm one of the producers of this podcast, along with Tricia Knowles. PuSh Play is supported by our community Outreach Coordinator, Julian Legere. Original Music from Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of this podcast are released every Monday and Thursday. And for more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @PuShFestival. If you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word. And on the next PuSh Play.    Vanessa Goodman [00:32:18] When you have a layer of immunity, your immunity becomes part of your identity.
Ep. 9 - Same Difference: when audiences perform
07-12-2023
Ep. 9 - Same Difference: when audiences perform
David Mesiha and Gavan Cheema discuss the fluid boundary between witnessing and participating in performance. Same Difference runs Jan 24th-28th at PuSh Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with project lead David Mesiha and dramaturg Gavan Cheema about their show, Same Difference. They speak to a wide range of topics, including how audiences can best experience this mixed-media performance installation, and whether the fracture of identity can be a positive in art. Gabrielle, David and Gavan speak to a wide range of questions, including: How is form questioned in the visual, interactive and performing arts, and how does this change between them?How does this particular show experiment with form and audience participation?How can audiences best experience this piece and others like it?Why does this piece not require live actors?How does this piece handle identity and questions of self?Can the fracture of identity be a positive in art?How does coming to a new place really change someone at different ages?How do we remember particular things in our lives? How do we choose to share different information about ourselves? About David Mesiha David Mesiha is a, Toronto and Vancouver based, award-winning music composer, interactive designer, sound/video designer and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy in Vancouver. David’s practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. He is intrigued by the relationships between form and medium. His work utilizes multi channel immersive audio, interactive design and Digital Performance. He has worked on shows such as Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, Foreign Radical by Theatre Conspiracy, and You Should Have Stayed Home by Spiderweb Show. He has been nominated and won Jessie Richardson Awards in multiple categories and has received a Dora award nomination for his sound design work on Oraltorio by IFT theatre. David’s music has spans multiple mediums and formats such as video games, film, theatre and interactive media. David’s Same Difference by Theatre Conspiracy [An immersive performance installation] premiered in Vancouver in April 2022 and will be presented at The Theatre Center in Toronto Winter 2023. David is currently working with Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn on asses.masses, a video game performance and with Adelheid and Heidi Strauss on You Are Swimming Here, an AR mixed-Media piece. Chosen credits: Theatre: Sound designer for The Humans (Arts Club Theatre), Antigone (YPT), Sound of the Beast (Theatre Passe Muraille), You Should Have Stayed Home (VR Performance, SpiderWebShow), asses.masses (video game performance), 15 Dogs (Crow’s Theatre) and Szepty (Rumble/Pi Theatre).   About Gavan Cheema Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, producer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is based out of Vancouver: the traditional, unceded, and occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a first generation Canadian, with roots coming from the five rivers of Punjab. She is a recent recipient of the Sam Payne Award for Most Promising Emerging Artist at the Jessie Richardson Awards. Gavan’s play Himmat premiered in Vancouver at The Cultch in May 2022 and will be presented at the Surrey Civic Theatres in Spring 2024. She holds a double major from the University of British Columbia in Theatre and History, as well as a high school teaching certification. She has created work and directed for various local, national and international stages and has extensive experience in youth engagement, theatre education and workshop facilitation.  Select directing credits: Conspiracy Now (Theatre Conspiracy), Rishi & d Douen (Carousel Theatre), Danceboy (Tremors Festival/ Vancouver Art Gallery Fuse), Burqa Boutique (Revolver Festival), Marie’s Letters (Shift Festival), da’ kink in my hair and You Used to Call Me Marie (Envision Festival), The [Organization] (Unladylike co.), Disgraced (UBC Players Club). Assistant direction: Clean/Espejos (Neworld), Foreign Radical (UK tour), The Orchard [after Chekhov] (Arts Club), Victim Impact (Theatre Conspiracy), Men in White (Arts Club) and Bombay Black (Vancouver Fringe Festival). Select dramaturgy credits: Same Difference by David Mesiha, Isolation Suite by Tim Carlson, Danceboy by Munish Sharma. Upcoming directing: Catfished (May 2023, Alley Theatre), The Dynamics (Oct 2024, Theatre Conspiracy), SWIM (Feb 2025, Theatre Conspiracy & Pandemic Theatre). Land Acknowledgement Gavan joins the podcast from Surrey, BC, the traditional territory of the Semiahmoo, Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations. David joins from Toronto, Ontario, which is the traditional territories of many First Peoples, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and subject to Treaty 13. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin. PuSh's Director of Programming. And today's episode highlights multimedia experiments in immersive form. I'm speaking with David Mesiha, responsible for concept projection design, sound design and also the project lead on Same Difference and Gavan Cheema, responsible for dramaturgy and co development. Same Difference will be presented at PuSh Festival January 18th to 20th 2024. As an immersive mixed media installation and digital performance, Same Difference invites audiences to wander through a beautiful, ever shifting environment of mirrors, music and video imagery where you might encounter the other and the self in new ways. David's practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. His interdisciplinary works integrate VR, AR and video game design in imagining new creative spaces that open dialogue between visual arts traditions and those of the performing arts. Gavan created work and directed for various local, national and international stages and has extensive experience in youth engagement, theatre education and workshop facilitation. Her play Himmat premiered in Vancouver at The Cultch in May 2022 and will be presented at the Surrey Civic Theatres in April 2024. I'm thrilled to share this discussion on a work that invites us to encounter ourselves in a whole new way. Here's my conversation with David and Gavan.    Gabrielle [00:01:35] Hello, I'm Gabrielle and I'm the director of programming with the PuSh Festival. And I'm here in conversation today with David Mesiha and Gavan Chema. And we're talking about Same Difference and a bit about the practice, your practice in general as collaborators and co-artistic directors of Theatre Conspiracy. So David, as the concept, production design and sound design and project lead behind Same Difference and Gavan is is dramaturgy and co-development on the project. And also just a little note that, David, you're involved in quite a few PuSh projects this year. So your work will be while it's really centred with Same Difference, you're also you've created the original music and sound design for asses.masses, and you're also the music composer and sound designer on Sound of the Beast. So it's a little bit of a David Mesiha spotlight at PuSh 2024. Anyways, very excited to be in conversation with you today.    David [00:02:36] Thank you. Grateful for it.    Gabrielle [00:02:38] I just want to start out by saying by just acknowledging the land that I'm on today and where I'm having this conversation with you from. I'm on the unceded, the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh). And I know that I think Gavan you are in Surrey... Colonially known as Surrey?   Gavan [00:03:02] Yeah. So I'm on the Katzie, Semiahmoo, and Kwantlen First Nation land, which is also colonially known as Surrey. So I've been here, I've been you know a first generation kid, born and raised on these lands and always kind of thinking about my relationship to the Coast Salish people.    David [00:03:18] And I'm calling in from colonially known as Toronto, Tkaronto, which is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnaabe, the Chippewa, the Haundenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and subject to the Treaty 13.   Gabrielle [00:03:43] Thank you. Thank you for providing that context. And I want to jump right in. So, David, as a music composer, interactive designer, sound and video designer, your practice centres the questioning or the questioning of form and interactive and performing arts. And so I'm curious, how are you experimented with form in Same Difference?    David [00:04:06] Yeah, thanks for the question. Same Difference sort of builds on a number of previous pieces, such as a long term investigation of of form and performance and centring design as an equal part of of development and presentation of the work and not just something that is quote unquote 'supporting' a narrative. It's an integral part of the narrative. So in Same Difference, there is not a linear narrative. It is a kind of choose your own adventure in a way for audiences. Audiences are free to choose where and how to experience the piece in the in the context of the piece they can experience said by being in the middle of the space where projection and the set that this form of two way mirrors gives them the flexibility to choose perspectives and vantage points which changes drastically what they experience and see or they can experience around the perimeter. They're listening to a series of interviews that have been done with immigrants and refugees. Now, more specifically, the piece does not have any like performers and so it is self-guided, does not have a guide, it does not have a master of ceremonies of any kind. So it exists in the in-between worlds of visual arts, installation, media arts and performance. And it is still a performance because of how things are constructed and how the space invites audience to be performers. And so, so to be more specific that there are no live performers and that audiences choose... It is self-guided for the audiences. And there are two simultaneous containers for the experience and within them many different vantage points depending on where and how you move in the space. And and it's very much playing also with the tension between sort of a meditative experience and one that is actively engaged with narrative, although one that is nonlinear and emergent.    Gabrielle [00:06:08] How does the way you're working with form in this project relate to some of your other Theatre Conspiracy work?    David [00:06:14] Yeah. So actually, even before Theatre Conspiracy, I'd worked with Parjad Sharifi on a project many years ago called Project X was with Leaky Heaven in 2010, and in that piece, Parjad and I was the first time that we experimented with mirrors and audiences actually watching and experiencing a show through mirrors as the main container and driver of the affect of the piece. So that was one of the first times we're sort of putting audiences in a totally immersive environment that dictates everything about their experience was sort of emerging. That work then became also part of Theatre Conspiracy when I worked as a co-creator and designer for Foreign Radical. And in Foreign Radical, it is an immersive and interactive piece. And the container for Foreign Radical is audiences are constantly being moved from space to space and what they see mediated through projection design, lighting and sounds is quite different all the time. And different groups of audiences experience different things at all times, and sometimes they are aware of what other groups of audiences are experiencing and sometimes they are not. And that really informs the emergent narrative that occurs between different groups of audiences in the space and how the space itself sort of evolves through the duration of the piece. So I feel Same Difference very much is sort of the natural progression of, of these two like sort of touchstones or landmark pieces and over the last ten years in that takes that further with allowing audiences to cater their own experiences. Also opportunities for audiences to interact with each other in whatever ways they choose. And yeah, so it, so it kind of pushes even further the idea of immersion and interactivity within a performance space. And this time, without even the help of a guide or a present performer as narrator.    Gabrielle [00:08:12] Yeah. I want to know a little bit more of the dramaturgy considerations when working with form this way, but working with interactivity and immersion. Gavan, you're a director, playwright, producer and dramaturg, and as a dramaturg and co developer on this project, what have been some of the key dramaturgic considerations throughout and specifically with regard to its form?    Gavan [00:08:32] Yeah, absolutely. So like with this piece, just for some context that this piece was in development for for several years and has been in David's brain for probably like ten years, right. So I think as somebody that's, of course, a dramaturg on this project, but also somebody that's, you know, a friend of David. I think it was a really special, you know, investigation of what this piece is going to be and what the form is going to be. Because as a dramaturgical outside eye you're of course trying to look at what is this piece and what are the all the things that it can do. Right. But it's also like, what is David's vision and like what is the thing that he's trying to execute and like, how do we make sense of this experience that doesn't have any performers, that is immersive, but that has these powerful stories? So I think it was a really exciting opportunity to like, look at how all of these things are going to be in question with each other. And I think one of the most exciting things about being a dramaturg on this piece specifically is like A) asking the difficult questions in terms of like logistics, like trying to figure out how audiences are going to interact with the space, but then also asking the really obvious questions where it's like, if we do this thing, like, how is that going to change somebody's experience of this piece and just having the opportunity to watch it again and again and again and again and really try to understand like, what are the ways that we want audiences to best experience this piece and how can we develop a container for that? And also for some more context in terms of development, this piece did have actors at one point, right? So like when you're working, you know, in devised creation processes and like in rooms with several people, like I think as a dramaturg, just trusting that like, instinct is important. And sometimes that means just tossing out something that you spent like a couple of years doing and being like, 'this is the thing.' And really just like encouraging people to like, move forward with that and trust their instincts and, you know, create the thing that makes the most sense. So I think with this piece in particular that was also a gift is when we figured out what it was. And what it was, was a piece that didn't have live performers and trusting that like that was going to be the container and then trying to think about form in a different way with that context. Because we had spent a few years, you know, investigating this as a documentary piece of theatre that had actors, that had text, that had all these different pieces. And then another exciting thing about this piece and being dramaturgical, you know, lends to it is like trying to think about what documentary is, is in form. And I think that's also really exciting with Same Difference because I think it it does kind of challenge what documentary is in form in a theatrical sense. And it was really exciting to be able to investigate what the limitations of that are and what the potential experiences are that we can create with audiences, you know, interacting with stories that are real, right? And how do we respect those real stories and those narratives as well as, you know, the experience that we're trying to create for people?    Gabrielle [00:11:48] Yeah. I just want to circle back. I'm curious why why this work did not require live artists or actors in order to communicate what it needed to communicate or why the other forms took precedent or where became a priority.    Gavan [00:12:06] I can let David speak to this in a second as well. But I think for me, in terms of thinking about it, dramaturgical, it was kind of essential. Like at least for me, when that clicked, it was essentially making this piece a play that isn't a is isn't like, you know, an identity play or it's like when you put actors on stage and they're embodying other identities that are really different, especially when we're thinking about things in terms of immigrant stories and refugee stories. I think the exciting thing about making this piece have all these stories is just exist in the voices that they came from in various different ways. It really allowed us to create an experience that is about somebody questioning their sense of self, somebody thinking about like their relationship, you know, to all these different, of course voices, but also their relationship to their self. And I think it gave us a lot of opportunity to play and really ask the difficult questions and the exciting questions that we wanted to without kind of, you know, being, you know, cornered into this being somebody's identity that somebody else is embodying. And then putting text onto stage makes it really concrete. And the form that this piece takes now makes it a meditative experience that people will take what makes sense for them away from it.    David [00:13:28] It's a little bit actually ironic because when I very when I started working on this piece at all, even before sort of starting to put into formal context, I was imagining it initially as an installation and we did our very first workshop, in fact, in 2018 in Toronto investigating the installation aspects of it and then over the pandemic and also as the original team of creators were present, there was a desire and a drive to try to find narratives through lines and not through lines led us down the path of having performers and having performers let us down the line of of imposing linear narratives and and stories in a way that is a different less about the affect and more about telling plot lines, even if they are informed heavily by real stories and documentaries. But as we sort of did those experiments and in fact did a public showing, I had a strong inkling that that was not it. Many of the reasons are what Gavan spoke to about, that this is not really about identity in a geopolitical sense. And as soon as especially when you're centring refugee and immigrant stories and as soon as you put bodies of performers on stage with it, that automatically becomes a thing that everybody gravitates to. And not that that's not valuable, but in this particular experience, I felt that that actually was creating a distance between what I was hoping audiences would experience firsthand and stories. And I was more trying to imagine a world where the affect of questioning sense of self and a relationship to identity is at the heart of it. And that relates to not only immigrants and refugees, but many, many people. And sense of self, I feel, is is a thing that goes even a step deeper than geopolitical and even ethnic identity. They're completely related, of course. But, you know, it's what makes people who grew up in the same communities and places their whole life still feel like outsiders. It's that sense of self. There's a fracture that can happen and that that is at a deeper level. And I was really curious about that. And on top of that, I also felt that actually even language as text in theatrical context could be a little bit detrimental in this kind of process because as soon as we use language as a way to approximate concepts, I sometimes it may allow people to again create distance between affect and and complex questions and simply overlaying it on somebody else and relating to it at an arm's length. And I was really hoping that we could find a way to allow people to experience uniquely and individually completely the affect of questioning sense of self and questioning 'How do I know I am who I am? How do I know that what I think is right? How do I know that my cultural heritage or community or context is right or is wrong?' And interviewing immigrants and refugee, that was really clear. It's easier to highlight in those contexts. It's not only happening to them, but often people come from environments and societies where they believed one set of things almost an axiomatic way about the world. They're transported to a new place and they're faced with new questions and new realities that makes them question all of it: 'was what I believe in ever true. And if it is or it is not, how do I know that what I believe now is true or not?' So anyway, it's a long way of saying about to say that we just felt, and with support of Gavan and other co-creators, it was actually a relief arriving at a place of like, we don't have to force it. We can actually engage with this piece for what it wants to be and focus on the affect and experience of the space as opposed to telling one unique story.    Gabrielle [00:17:23] I want to focus more on yeah what you're talking about, which is this sense of self and belonging. And I know that the research process for Same Difference involved interviewing immigrants and refugees, which you've referenced as part of your exploration into how much sameness and difference we need to feel like we belong. And I'm curious if the nature of your inquiry or your perspective on this changed through the process of realising the project?    David [00:17:46] Yeah, I don't think it completely changed it, more like it confirmed suspicions and there was there was some comfort in that on a personal, very personal level, being an immigrant myself, I reference that in my program notes that I often feel like I don't belong in any space. I'm often in kind of a state of suspension in between spaces. I'm not I'm not somebody who feels at home when I relate to Egypt or when I go on visits. I don't. I feel like an outsider there in many ways. I feel like home in other ways. And similarly here. I also often find that I'm in spaces where even language and how my brain works because it jumps between many different language functions, I cannot fully express myself. Or if I do, there are assumptions about what I'm saying. So all to say that I was curious about if this was just me. Or other people would experience the same thing. And the interviews were phenomenal, not just because the stories are so incredibly touching, beautiful, but also that there was this underlying theme almost with all the stories. And no matter what we had, you know, people who are in the 60s who had emigrated from Ireland to young people from Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, the whole gamut. Bosnia as well as Serbia. I interviewed those two like back to back two days, and it was quite fascinating. They immigrated during the Yugoslav War and it was quite fascinating to hear what they had to say. And so what I... What was also comforting about it was a couple of things is that there is something about outsiders that felt like they were always outsiders, even where they come from. And there's a suspicion that a certainly for immigrants sometimes actually the reason why they emigrate beyond their socio economic motivations, that there are also sometimes a feeling that wherever they are is not fitting, is not working, and they need to find something else. And then there's also the similarities between all the different stories, regardless of the specificities about their political context, which could be very different on a personal level. There were a lot of similarities about how they were experiencing this sense of fractures, how they were coming to terms to it, how were they were living with it. And I found to me what was a revelation and discovery was being obsessed with sameness and difference was no longer actually kind of the objective. It was not really important to define one's identity in terms of sameness and difference, understanding identity is transient and almost always changing and evolving, but in fact actually acknowledging the fracture that happens when your in-between states can actually be beautiful and can provide a whole new kind of outlook, an opportunity to engage in the world in a very different and hopefully empathetic way because you're able to see through the fractured, the complexities and one's identity and sense of self.    Gavan [00:20:53] As Yeah, absolutely. I think David summed up that question really well, and I think it was honestly like a gift, being able to listen to those interviews multiple times and to be able to pull out the threads that tie us all together as as humans that go through these lived experiences that are really real and really visceral and like hearing how people describe those. You know, the first day of school at a new space, like, you know, trying to find a job in a new space like these experiences that I think everybody has in life and then try to think about ways that that gets even fractured when you're new and you're trying to figure out your place in this new world. Right? Because I think that was one thing that was really interesting when you're looking at these interviews, back to back to back to back, and you get to listen to them all is is how does, you know, like coming to a new place like really change these formative experiences that you may have as a young person, but also as somebody that maybe came here older and how there's so much sameness in that. But also people that still live here, like I was born and raised in Surrey, but I definitely come from a Punjabi family and, you know, like my older siblings were ESL for many, many years because they didn't necessarily have the same language skills as a kid born and raised here, and how there's all these layers of of complication that kind of we all navigate and work through as, as young people coming, you know, to a colonial space. I think that's another thing where it's like we're all trying to investigate, like what our relationship is to the space, to ourselves. And it was really beautiful being able to listen to all of the interviews many times and find those threads and then think about it dramaturgically in terms of this experience and what are the, what are the stories that we want to highlight in the installation because we only have like 45 minutes, right? So how do we take like hours and hours and hours of beautiful stories and like really rich images and really kind of like zero in on the ones that we feel were kind of really providing us that container that we wanted to investigate.    Gabrielle [00:23:10] I'm wondering and we're talking about identity, we're talking about sense of self, and you've also both touched on your own experiences and how they intersect with the subject matter. And so I'm curious beyond Same Difference, where does your lived experience sit in relationship to the work you create?    David [00:23:30] For me, actually, that's even when I was I remember even as a young child in Egypt, I was feeling and not an outsider in terms of like social context. I had I had a very social active social life, but an outsider in terms of perspective, I always was seeking what is where is the crack, What is different about what is being shared with me? When I was very young, I remember spending hours like making faces in mirrors, as I'm sure most many, many people do. But what I also remember thinking like if I was paying enough attention, I could maybe see how the image in the mirror is different from how I'm acting. And I could catch a break and I would be able to tell how we are different because it was a feeling I could never put my finger on. All to say that... So my work has been very much obsessed with finding the nuance and and looking at ways to sit in the discomfort of the grey zone, of not knowing where the clear lines are and and where we sit. And it's a very uncomfortable space, but it's a space that I also really relish in the work because I find that complexity of that space and the nuance that can be found in there speaks to me a lot more about what it means to be human and that that is something beautiful about that connecting with everybody, regardless of ethnic, religious, geopolitical context. Not at all saying that those things don't have like an insanely massive impact on lived experience, of course, and complicate things on people's lived experience, but also the norms that can be found in the complexities that arise with these systems, and then the experiences as individuals is something that fascinates me. So a lot of my work tends to be about using then also media and design as ways to look at those cracks and look at those cracks in form and aesthetically as much as in content. And I kind of view all of that as one thing. I think of design and and dramaturgy and content as one thing and not, you know, not as just layers that come after each other. They're just all performers onstage at all times.    Gavan [00:25:50] Yeah, absolutely. And I think to add to that, like for me, one of the exciting things about seeing difference and thinking about it in relationship to my other work is how it really challenges for me personally and also I think for both of us, just like what documentary can be and like the place the documentary has in our theatrical landscape here, because I think a lot of the work that I've done in the last little while with Theatre Conspiracy and also my personal projects is really thinking about, you know, memory, thinking about how we remember particular things that happen in our lives and how, you know, even a documentary story is going to be affected by the way that people choose to share different information about themselves. And then how as a director, you know, a writer, a dramaturg, you get to work with that material and create a narrative that makes sense to you. So there's always all these layers, even within documentary work, of kind of editing and reframing and fracturing and working with stories that I think is really exciting. And I think for me, when I think about, you know, my relationship to my work, I think that it's also exists in my brain. Like, how do I edit my own stories? How do I fracture my own narratives and how do I piece together stories that create an opportunity for people to just be vulnerable with each other? Because I think at the end of the day, like that for me is really like the powerful nature of of documentary theatre and of works like this that are not prescriptive is it really gives people an opportunity to exist in spaces and really just like ground themselves in this like mutual sense of vulnerability that like David's speaking to where it's like we are humans and like we all experience these different things regardless of like how we arrive to them and like how do we provide people with the space to investigate that, to challenge that, and also to like be playful with that and kind of how do we infuse some fun and humour in that? And I think that's one of the really exciting things about this piece. And then also about how I think about my work is to not necessarily lose that fun, to lose that humour, because sometimes documentary work can get really heavy. I guess people's stories carry a lot of weight and they're really rich in especially these ones. So those are some of the things that I think about when you ask that question.    Gabrielle [00:28:15] Thank you. Yeah. In conversation with you, it's really clear the passion that you bring to your work, your shared areas of inquiry, your rapport. And I'm curious, you're both co-directors of Theatre Conspiracy and clearly collaborated on this project. And so I'm curious about what the shared values are that energise you to to collaborate.    Gavan [00:28:37] Yeah, absolutely. Like I think for both David and I like if it's not already, clear we love working collaboratively and like we really love working in spaces that are non-hierarchical that really provide us an opportunity to kind of come as we are and see those differences in maybe thought in perspective as like ways that we can elevate the work. So I think for us, it's always being in conversation with each other about what are the things that are important to us and like not necessarily losing our values. Because I think David and I have both very similar values. Like we both work at Theatre Conspiracy and we're drawn to Theatre Conspiracy because the company has historically created spaces for artists to come together from various different backgrounds and work collaboratively and work in spaces you know that are devised. And I think for us, when we think about our co leadership, a lot of it is really intertwined with the values that already exist within the company and thinking about the ways that we're excited to kind of move forward with all these things.    David [00:29:38] So beautifully said, everything Gavan said. And yeah, and just like I've said, like Theatre Conspiracy already has a long legacy, led by Tim Carlson was one of the co founders, of empowering and enriching the community of artists in Vancouver while creating work that is also in conversation with internationally, with with our international community. And so I'm very passionate and excited about us being able to continue that legacy in terms of how we support our local artists, but also creating work that continues to challenge to be in conversation with the international community, but also challenge our assumptions about everything, challenge our assumptions about what we know about how we create work and about form and about what is performance and about what is documentary. That really excites me again, because that's where complexity and complexity I think is beautiful.    Gabrielle [00:30:39] Perfect, precise, articulate note to end on. It's been really inspiring to be in conversation with you. It's a real honour to be able to have Same Difference as part of the 2024 PuSh program. Same Difference will be on at the Roundhouse January 24th to 28th. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having spent all the years of research on developing this piece and realising it as it is now and for bringing the piece to PuSh.    Tricia Knowles [00:31:12] That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with David Mesiha, responsible for concept, projection and sound design and project lead on Same Difference. Joined by Gavan Cheema, who is responsible for dramaturgy and co-development of Same Difference. The performative installation will be a part of the 2024 PuSh Festival. I'm Tricia Knowles, producer of PuSh Play along with Ben Charland. PuSh Play is also supported by our community outreach Coordinator, Julian Legere. Thanks to Joseph Hirabayashi, conductor and creator of the original music featured in our podcast. New episodes with Gabrielle Martin are released every Monday and Thursday. And for more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, please visit us at pushfestival.ca and follow us @PuShFestival on Social Media. Coming up on the next episode of PuSh Play:  Rakesh Sukesh [00:32:10] Breath is a it's like the inner root of our self. It's like the tree. So the deeper the karma, the the proper you breathe, the more resilient you become. Bringing the power of breath and dealing with the different natures of us, Body, mind, spirit, spirit whatever, the environment and past and future. And how do you navigate all those different aspects? By keeping the breath as the core.
Ep. 8 - Dear Laila: Creating vulnerable intimacy
04-12-2023
Ep. 8 - Dear Laila: Creating vulnerable intimacy
Basel Zaraa discusses his intimate, one-on-one storytelling practice. Dear Laila runs Jan 20th-Feb 3rd at PuSh Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Basel Zaraa about the installation Dear Laila. They talk about how this intimate installation uses objects to connect with patrons; how we use art to deal with personal and collective trauma; and how we can show big events as experienced by normal people. Co-presented by Boca del Lupo and Pandemic Theatre. Gabrielle and Basel ask the following questions and more: How can Individual experiences tell political stories, even if it is something they have not chosen How does Dear Laila build on Basel’s previous work? How do we use art to deal with trauma, personally and collectively? Why is this installation experienced by one person at a time? Is the personal approach able to connect people more to the experience? How is the connection to story enhanced via interaction with objects (photos)? How can we show big events as experienced by normal people? About Basel Zaraa Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and the search for identity. His current project, Dear Laila, is an interactive installation that recreates his destroyed family home in Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. His previous work includes ‘As Far As My Fingertips Take Me’, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded outstanding production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. His work has been shown at over 40 venues and festivals across five continents. Land Acknowledgement Basel joins the podcast from Birmingham, UK. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form and Gabrielle Martin, PuSh's director of programming. And today's episode highlights how political histories are told through individual stories. I'm speaking with Basel Zaraa, the artist behind Dear Laila, which will be presented at PuSh Festival January 20th to February 3rd, excluding the 22nd, 28th and 29th 2024. An intimate interactive installation experienced by one audience member at a time, Dear Laila shares the Palestinian experience of displacement and resistance through the story of one family, exploring how war and exile are experienced through the everyday, the domestic and the public space. Basel Zaraa is a UK based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and the search for identity. I'm delighted to be able to share this insight into Basel's approach to weaving the personal and political. Here's my conversation with Basel.    Gabrielle [00:01:06] Hi Basel. It's really nice to be in conversation with you. I'm Gabrielle. I'm the director of programming and I'm speaking with Basel Zaraa, the creator behind Dear Laila. Hi, Basel.    Basel [00:01:17] Hello. Thank you Gabrielle.   Gabrielle [00:01:19] Yeah, and I just want to contextualize where I am. I'm on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh). So this is colonially known as Vancouver. And I'm absolutely privileged to be here as a settler on this land. And where are you right now, Basel?    Basel [00:01:40] I'm at my home in Birmingham, U.K. of the moment.    Gabrielle [00:01:44] And the the audience, our listeners, our audience can't see, but you have a beautiful olive green wall behind you that we were just admiring. So it's a little unfortunate that it's that we don't see the visuals. I want to jump right into understanding a little bit more about your practice and about this piece. And can you speak a little bit about how political histories are being told through individual stories and experiences in your work?    Basel [00:02:15] Sure. And just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm a Palestinian refugee who was born and grew up in Yarmouk refugee camp and Damascus in south Damascus in Syria. And I am the third generation who were born and grew up as a refugee outside Palestine. So Yarmouk camp is one of the biggest Palestinian refugee camp outside Palestine and one of 12 other refugee camp in Syria. And there is also other refugee camps for Palestinians in Lebanon and in Jordan and in West Bank and Gaza. So as Palestinian, our individual experiences, I think the political stories and this is not something that we have that we have chosen, but something that has been forced upon us by history. So if you ask a Palestinian about their life, their answer might take you back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or to the Palestinian catastrophe or the Nakba in 1948. And by creating my new work year Dear Laila, I'm trying to I'm trying to to tell how this big historical events are experienced through the everyday life of ordinary people. And I'm trying to share the Palestinian history of war, occupation and exile in a way that my young daughter could understand. So I try to build or to recreate a miniature of my destroyed family home in Yarmouk camp. I built a model of this house and this house and a story of a family trying to find the meaning of their exile. A family like many families of our communities who are stuck and in a loop of losses and and keep repeating itself by down the generations.    Gabrielle [00:04:26] And how does Dear Laila relate to the work you've made previously and your artistic approach in general?    Basel [00:04:32] I think, Dear Laila, based on the theme of my previous work, I make artwork about my communities, experiences of war, occupation and exile. And it's a way of me to face and express and understand the trauma that we live with. And my previous work. As Far As My Fingertips Take Me or As Far As Isolation Goes, both in collaboration with other artist Tania El Khoury and both are 1 to 1 performance. And the performance is the experience between one audience member and me through a gallery wall. And I use sound and touch to tell a story of my sister and brother who made the journey to skip the war in Syria to Europe in 2015 and I think a year later continue that theme by going back to the beginning of the story and to tell the story of the Palestinian who are or the first exile of the Palestinians, the first displacement in 1948.    Gabrielle [00:05:54] You're storytelling in innovative forms. And I'm wondering if you can speak about the symbolic and concrete space of Dear Laila.    Basel [00:06:04] Dear Laila centered on a miniature model of my destroyed family home in Yarmouk camp, and with the three stories and represents the three generations who lived in the house. And the first floor was built by my grandparents when they first arrived to Syria from Palestine as a refugee and my family built the new stories  as the family grow down the generations, the house or the whole Yarmouk camp represent the our community trying to find or to create a new home or a new life in their exile. And even so, we trying to create a new home, but it's still a temporary home for us because we it's like it's a refugee camp and we lived there as refugees for generations. And I feel by by losing this new home or this temporary home or the camp, it also felt like like a threat for our right to return to, Palestine because we were waiting for generations as a refugee, because we hoped that one day we will go back to Palestine. But by using this new home, we felt, yeah, it's that threat for that right to return. So I felt if I want to say something, I feel like the the house or Yarmouk Camp symbolizes in a way our right to return to Palestine.    Gabrielle [00:07:46] And how does solitude function dramaturgically in the piece? Because it's a piece for one audience to experience at a time. So in terms of the effect of the work compared to the collective audience experience that usually takes place in a in a work created for a theatre. Yeah. Why that choice for it to be for one person.    Basel [00:08:09] I decided that I think Dear Laila to be experienced by one audience member at a time is in order to try to get audience more closer to the story I'm telling. So I hope this personal approach can get or can make the audience member more connected to that experience by, by and by get by getting involved or interacting with the installation and the space. So, for example, at one moment I ask the audience to open one of the books and they find some photos inside. And this is the photo that we saved from our destroyed home in Yarmouk camp and is the only link that we still have that connect us to that place that we lived there for like three generations. And and I feel by touching these photos, I hope that the audience might get more connected to the story behind these photos. And I'm like, I'm trying to invite the audience to sit in Laila's room, Laila's my daughter, and to try and to imagine that they're hearing the story of a story of one of their parents. And and I hear what I want to say also, Like I'm trying to tell a story about like how big events sometimes are experienced by normal people, people like them. So, yeah, and at the end of the story sometimes, like, I ask them to take like a thought in order to remind them with my granny stories who used to sprinkle salt on our heads to keep us or to keep evil away from us and in this way I'm trying to invite them to take a bit of the story and carry it with them. So yeah, I feel like by touch and stuff, all this and then like I'm trying as much as I can to make it more personal with them.    Gabrielle [00:10:14] Yeah. And it works. It's, it's, it's brilliant. The, you know, the construction of it and the, the journey that the, the audience goes through. And, you know, congratulations. This work just won Audience award at the Zurcher Theatre Spectacle. That's pretty incredible. I think they have you know from 30 shows you know, this is really highlighted.    Basel [00:10:41] And I'm so happy to about that and I can yeah, I'm really glad to hear that as well. Thank you so much.    Gabrielle [00:10:47] You know, clearly it's it's not just, you know, the expertise and how you're working with your forms to to frame and deliver this experience, but also your generosity. There's an incredible generosity in in sharing a story that you would share with your daughter that we can all get to experience. So I'm just this is going to be such a special experience in this upcoming festival. And so we're glad to have it running for multiple days because it's one for one person at a time. So from January 20th to February 3rd at the Fishbowl on Granville Island. And we're just really looking forward to to having you here as well Basel.    Basel [00:11:35] Thank you. I'm really looking forward to it as well. And to come to Vancouver is like my first time I will be there. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to it, as well.    Ben [00:11:46] That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Basel Zaraa, the artist behind Dear Laila, which will be presented at the upcoming PuSh Festival. My name is Ben Charland and I'm one of the producers of this podcast alongside Tricia Knowles. PuSh Play is supported by our Community Outreach Coordinator, Julian Legere. Original Music from Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media at @PushFestival. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word. On the next PuSh Play:  David Mesiha [00:12:26] And there's a suspicion that is certainly for immigrants sometimes actually the reason why they immigrate beyond their sociopolitical and economic motivations, that they're also sometimes feeling that wherever they are does not fit in, is not working, and they need to find something else.
Ep. 7 - asses.masses: Theatre as a political practice
30-11-2023
Ep. 7 - asses.masses: Theatre as a political practice
Milton Lim and Patrick Blankarn discuss the role of democracy in theatre. asses.masses runs Jan 20th-Feb 3rd at Push Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin discusses asses.masses with co-creators Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim. Their show, a performance that takes the form of a participatory video game. They talk about their collaboration, the democratization of theatre through participation, and how to make a theatre comfortable for 4+ hours. Gabrielle, Patrick and Milton tackle the following questions and more: How did asses.masses begin? Was it from a desire to collaborate on a game, or to create a performance?How can theatre use other technologies in performance (emails, phones, etc.)?What does it mean to ask someone to do something for you in a theatrical context?How to make a theatre comfortable for 4+ hours?What kind of stories can be told when not limited by traditional time limits?What does duration of a show, how does it function, with regards to storytelling?How do you determine when the dramaturgy of a game will deliver a concept better than other forms?How do artists engage with AI ethically?How can artists make video games dramatic when a usual core mechanic of games is inconsequential death?Democratization of theatre through participationIs there an underlying call to action in writing and theatre making?Do you experience democracy with asses.masses or is it just a representation? About Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists based in Vancouver, BC. Their collaborations include video games, participatory installations, and card games, exploring urgent questions around social value of art, digital labour, and the political and artistic potential of games. They’re also the co-founders of the national video archive of Canadian performance documentation, videocan. Land Acknowledgement Patrick joins the podcast from rural eastern Ontario (Wolf Lake), traditional Algonquin territory. Milton joins from Singapore, land of the indigenous Malay and Orang Laut communities. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin. PuSh's director of programming and today's episode highlights Gameful Performance. I'm speaking with Patrick Blankarn and Milton Lim, co-creators of asses.masses, which will be presented at PuSh Festival January 20th, 27th and February 3rd, 2024. asses.masses is a custom made video game designed to be played on stage by a live audience. Brave spectators take turns each night stepping forward from the herd to seize the means of production and become the player. Patrick and Milton are conceptual artists whose collaborations include video games, participatory installations and card games, exploring urgent questions around social value of art, digital labour and the political and artistic potential of games. I'm thrilled to share our chat on what 'democratic' means for theatre and more. Here is my conversation with Patrick and Milton.    Gabrielle [00:01:01] Just before we dive right into it, I want to acknowledge that I am joining this call from the ancestral Unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), where it's my privilege to be living and working and having this conversation here today. And I will just invite you to share where you are joining me from.    Patrick [00:01:24] Oh, well, I will begin. I am in rural eastern Ontario, actually at my parents place, which is on Wolf Lake, which is historically, I believe, Algonquin territory.    Milton [00:01:36] And this is Milton speaking. I am currently joining from Singapore, which is the land of the indigenous Malay community. And if I was to be more specific, the Orang Laut community.    Gabrielle [00:01:46] So you're both working across performance and game design or in gameful performance and with themes of labour, economy and social capital. I'm wondering if you can talk about how asses.masses began. What came first, the desire to collaborate on a video game designed to be played on stage by a live audience over eight hours, or to create a performance about the perils of labour redundancy in a post industrial society?    Patrick [00:02:10] Yeah, that's interesting. You know, we've we've kind of explored this question in different ways over the last couple weeks as we've been on tour with asses.masses and you know, I was thinking about it as like sometimes I think we've said it's like a chicken egg thing of we were making games, but there is a bigger and longer history that maybe both of our practices sort of make it a kind of a logical conclusion to have ended up something like asses.masses. So I had been making, you know, performances that incorporated other forms of technology and media for, you know, probably almost eight years or six years before starting asses.masses. Like I was working with email, with phones, with like audio guides, with parades and things like that. So like, there was a long history of trying to create shows that didn't have actors but could be activated by the public. And there was a sort of lecture performance that I had sort of started called Donkey Skin in Vancouver at a event called Interplay, shout out to Diana Peters, that was sort of like looking at can video games be a part of performance in some way? And around that time I think actually we had already started another project by the time I was trying that out, which was called Culture Capital. And and that is a card game that is played on stage. And so they, they are there, I guess part of this, you know, not tradition, but like a lineage as we were potentially like exploring the potentials of creating something that audiences fill in, like the bulk of the labour. And I guess in that exploration there is a lot of conversation around, well, what does it mean to ask someone to do something for you in a theatrical context? Before we like go further is there like an alternative history that you sort of put in the background that leads, you know, the roads that all lead together to donkeys?    Milton [00:04:17] No, I wouldn't call it an alternative history as much as I would say it's our parallel histories of working on non-performer-structured performance. And on my side, I was working with Theatre Conspiracy on Foreign Radical a lot as I was coming out of school. And then of course, that show is cyber... Cyber security and surveillance with like 20 or 30 audience members going throughout a kind of space, that one does have performers in it. But we spent a lot of time thinking about game design and spatial design and voting with your feet. After that, I'd worked on more media pieces and so lots more kind of spectator driven spaces where there was no performer. Whether or not that was White Pages, which was about phonebooks, or if it was about okay.odd, which was much more structural films inside of a theatrical space. So in all those circumstances, I think you and I kind of found each other at kind of the right time to work on Culture Capital. And then the trading card game was for a while the thing that we kept working on. And then asses.masses quickly joined into those conversations, especially as we tried to more heavily consider videogames as the specific genre and not just games in general.    Patrick [00:05:39] Yeah, and I guess that comes out of I was an MFA student at SFU and at the tail end of my degree I was playing with imagery related to donkeys and labour. And I think the main thing I was thinking about was that we live in an era where someone might work a job all day and then they would go home and they would consume media that was, you know, in their pastime or leisure time. But certain video games that make, you know, are comprised of a lot of labour that you would put in and potentially you might even work the job that you work during the day in a virtual context when you got home as a way of playing. And so there was this tension and or relationship between why in some cases is this labour and why in some cases is this or what like, you know, sort of capitalised or exploited labour, exploited labour as opposed to play and sort of a release. That was a sort of an inception point and when we started to work on the show at the Shadbolt in Burnaby, the conversation just sort of, you know, built and built towards looking at our donkeys working, what kinds of jobs are they doing? And at some point we settled on the idea that, well, I think we could make a game that an audience would play. But it wasn't until many years, even years, I would say later that we realised were like, I bet we could make a game that was over seven hours. And you know, has this like epic narrative that draws on the histories of the games that really inspired us when we were younger. Roleplaying games like Final Fantasy and Zelda, Chrono Trigger and and other forms where like that we would start to really imagine, oh, this is this can be a lot bigger than what we initially had set out to explore.    Milton [00:07:26] As for many years, we actually toured around just like a 20 minute version of asses.masses and then eventually a 40 minute version. But it was only in the what is now episode one of the full game for, for quite a few years. And we toured around quite a bit. It was quite astounding to actually tour around an unfinished piece. And so now that it's done and again, we didn't actually know that it was going to be like 7.5 hours until an opportunity like a month out from the premiere like it was it was a kind of a late addition to that to actually test like, 'Oh, I think it's actually this long' because we thought it was going to be like 4 or 5 hours for the longest time.    Patrick [00:08:02] You know, to look back on why did we feel like we had to keep telling people that it was going to be a safe seven episodes or, you know, 4 to 5 hours? Because even at the time, as you know, as you're discovering how big you can make something. Testing the waters, testing the kind of walls of, you know, what can this be? You know, I think it still took us a period of time to, like, commit and say, well, actually, you know, this is a this kind of experience can work. It needs kind of certain kinds of support, you know, for anyone who's listening and going to come to see us as masses, there's food, there's like a bar. We have everything that we can give you so that you can be comfortable in a theatre for, you know, seven plus hours. But that's a learning, you know, we were learning about, Oh, right, How far can we actually go, “How, how big can we make it?” And as we started to tell a story that we started to get more and more excited about or engrossed by and characters that we came to love more and more, you know, there's sort of a logical unfolding that was required to to make it to the end of that story. And it just ended up being ten episodes plus an epilogue and all this sort of scaffolding that's that's needed.    Milton [00:09:10] So there are maybe two other things to mention about time. The first one is that at no point did we ever say like, it has to be this long. Like we want to have people sit there for 8.5 hours, like what ostensibly is a full workday. That was by happenstance. We're very happy for that fact. But it was as long as it needed to be to tell the story that we wanted to tell. And more than anything else, which is the second point, it was more fuelled by our inquiry into what kind of stories can we tell when we aren't limiting ourselves to like an hour or two hours maximum that you would traditionally have in like a Western or like maybe more Canadian theatre show? Because as we were travelling around doing Culture capital, we kept hearing from people like, Oh, X show is too long. Or it could have shaved five minutes off and there was this real attention to like, you can tell your story more economically. But we were also very conscious that like, Oh well, there are only certain kinds of stories that you can tell in that time span. And if you think about serialised media or if you think about other video games that take 60 hours, those stories couldn't possibly be told any shorter or they'd be fundamentally different stories or like just the notes. So that was one of our guiding questions. And in case you're worried, like, Oh, they're just doing it for 7.5 hours just to have the seven a half hour show. The case was actually that we put story first and we're quite proud of it.    Gabrielle [00:10:33] Yeah, no, this is perfect because it gets to a question that I was just thinking, which is what does that do? What does that duration do? How does it function? How does that form function with regards to the storytelling? And so yeah, Patrick, you create in the form of games, stage plays, books and visual art and Milton, your practice spans digital media, interactive and game design, acting, directing and dancing. And so how do you determine when the dramaturgy of a game will benefit the experience of delivery of the concept better than a text based play for the stage or a book, for example, and vice versa? And and then to add on to that question. And what does the that duration do? So what does the game form do? Yeah.    Patrick [00:11:18] There's a couple of ways of sort of breaking this down. Mm hmm. One way to say it, I think, is that every technology, every art form has its own kind of history and tradition and temporality by bringing a video game into a theatre, you invite certain behaviours, certain associations, certain flexibilities. Right? Like you could just stop playing and walk outside and get more food and come back in. The game's not going to sort of run on without you. Well, that fundamentally changes, you know, the the idea of how we're moving forward as a group because someone has to sort of give input in order to progress the story along. And I think in and I don't think that that's not unique to a video game right like that in our card game experiences as well and in the sort of tabletop role playing game that we've made with Laurel Greene, you know, all of these sort of forms, game forms. And it's not exclusive to game forms either, but like these particular game forms have this kind of flexibility. They have a permission to vocalise in the theatrical space. They have a permission to sort of negotiate power. They make a kind of flexibility possible. That is and time is just one element of that. It's actually also just how you see each other and the way you respect or listen to your fellow audience members. Milton, what else do you feel like it's made possible?    Milton [00:12:45] Yeah, and in order to zoom out, I'd say that both Patrick and I tend to create conceptually. And so when we think about our mode of interaction with any medium, whether or not they'll be books or dances or stage plays or anything else, we do try to ask the question like, could it have existed as anything else without depriving the very nature of the conversation? And so in our case, when we bring up video games, we invoke them not just in its form, but also in what what the thematic concepts are doing within the video game form itself. And so we could have made a play in other formats, but it would have been asking very different questions through its interaction with it and similar with like I think the most analogous version of some of the conversations we have is like a choose your own adventure book where you get to like the work is reading, but also the work is choosing what, what paths and what things you want. But it would have to be something read by a collective group of people, but that wouldn't put it into dialogue with 'Let's play' videos and the kind of contemporary spectatorship we have around video games and the interaction with people like actually behind you doing it at the same time. I feel like we have those social interactions kind of built in with a lot of video games, whereas we don't necessarily have it in the same way with books or other media as well. So the closest things that we're trying to put into parallel are theatre and video games at the same time. And both of those have that kind of spectatorship, both like kind of rubbing up against each other, but also in dialogue with one another.    Patrick [00:14:17] Then I think maybe one way to add is that, you know, theatre is a composite or like compound art form as in our video games. And you know, they're made up a bunch of other they're made up of a bunch of other art forms and, and the particular kind of, you know, when you put a videogame on stage, what that allows you to do is sort of highlight certain elements that it, you know, brings to the foreground based on its like the traditions of what have been made in sort of videogames, but also just the nature of questions on control, present questions around winning and losing, whether you can or cannot win all of those sort of themes become sort of material in the room. And I think that for, For us, that's you know, I think that's just like the that has to be the first step to any project at all actually is like, that the form is going to sort of tell you things about the themes that you're going to explore. Like rather than setting out and being like, I want to make something about Labour. You know, where can I get some something about labour? It's like, Hey, look, in this game, the idea of video games, what video games are doing right now, what they're inviting us to do and think about, happens to be about Labour. Like we should make a story about labour set inside of it. So that kind of folding back on itself is, you know, that that principle I think is at work in everything that we've made together. But it's also about like it's at work, at everything that we've ever made individually and in other groups, because I think that that's just what makes us the kinds of artists that we are.    Gabrielle [00:15:59] I want to talk a bit more about the themes now in asses.masses, the donkey or ass references humans now, as we are confronted with increasing numbers of unemployed manual labourers, capitalism, technology, techno phobia and workers rights. And Milton, you're a founding member of Synectic Assembly. Am I saying that correctly?    Milton [00:16:19] Mm hmm. That's right.    Gabrielle [00:16:21] Okay, an artificial intelligence focussed art collective. And I'm wondering how you're engaging with AI artistically with the ethical considerations illuminated by these current issues and these themes in asses.masses.    Milton [00:16:34] Mm hmm. I won't go too deep into some of the things outside of asses.masses for this, because I'll just tease perhaps the idea that I'm working on a theme park, a speculative theme park project with my friend Shawn Chua from Singapore. And one of the components is this AI based Fortune-teller who would guide us around the speculative theme park as well as help us create it using natural language processing. But in terms of asses.masses, clearly we're in the time of the the writers strike, which has just reached conclusion supposedly, and then the actors as well, and film and TV and as well as going into the video game industry. So it's very apropos to the conversations that we're having around technology, as you're saying, Gabrielle. And so for us, we didn't know all these things would be happening when we started working on asses.masses, but we could kind of see certain things coming down the way that they did based on the fact that Patrick and I have talked a lot about this, but there's a video by Jesse Show, video game developer in 2013 where he talks about things that he imagines for the future of video games and around the future of storytelling in particular. And one of the things that he proposes is that video games won't be taken seriously as an art form until they learn how to listen or respond with the idea that a lot of theatre can do drama really well because characters can die. But video games traditionally can't because characters are dying and retrying. And that's one of the main mechanics of a lot of games which we can talk about for asses.masses, we thought about that a lot and we worked in the dramaturgy that death actually means something in the game. And so in our cases, when we think about like computer systems that can learn and can listen from its participants, that is where the game industry is going. But that's also generally with technology writ large, that's kind of the direction that it is necessarily heading towards. And in built with that, our conversations where losing a job is very, very clear and that parallels the donkeys that we have in asses.masses that parallels traditionally people who felt like they were going to be put out of work when the printing press was going around. And any technology that has preceded digital technology as well. And so that fear of losing jobs and especially quickly, fear of technology, we've tried to build into specific characters that are in asses.masses that have to represent their their fears, where they're coming from, but also contend with people who are more optimistic, optimistic about where technology is going and how they should be used. So in terms of like how we're ethically dealing with some of these considerations, the AI that we're using in asses.masses Is not the same AI that people are very scared of, which probably also still doesn't exist yet. It is coming, but that AI that people think will be able to write scripts flawlessly, we'll be able to do all these things, is half the conversation. The other half is of course the very real considerations of like what are humans using AI for? Which are the real conversations happening around contractual and lawful kind of uses of AI? So yeah, we're not necessarily engaging with the specifics of the policies that are being put into place. That feels like it's an entirely different project. But yet for technology, more generally, we are engaged in that conversation. I don't know, Patrick, if you want to add to that.    Patrick [00:20:16] We learned how to program to make asses.masses, so it's entirely built by us and that includes, you know, a certain number of components that would categorise be categorised as AI. Enemy AI like what states do they move through? What's the sort of logical sequence of what to do based on a certain kind of stimulus or input? And what I was going to say was that what I think is interesting about something like asses.masses, which is it uses old aesthetics of video games and for the most part, you know, 70% of it or so. And that's very intentional to be able to have a conversation about what's going on now because the fear that we hear and sort of see disseminated or, you know, you might just hear of a certain generation around technology comes from an inability to see and or grasp what's going on. And I think that part of, one of the things that asses.masses is able to do is because in the same way that I think anyone who sort of champions telling a fable or telling a story about any kind as a way to sort of build a bridge, you know, mechanical things are far easier to understand than electro digital sort of compound things. Like if you see a refrigerator of a certain generation, you're like, okay, this is where it heats, this is where it cools. I can like, connect to these things. We don't live in a world where we can actually see how things are being produced. You know, our iPhones become these sort of like shut in black boxes without a certain very high degree of understanding or sort of technical know how. So what I'm just trying to say is that, you know, when we're trying to create a context to think about these things, it's important, I think, to have found a middle ground and to even use a character who's anachronistically positioned as the protagonist, as a conduit to try to understand what's going on. Because if we do, I mean, if we think about sci fi of a more traditional flavour, I'm sitting next to like a version of a copy of Neuromancer here, and you imagine these worlds like just how just how opaque those are and, and where a lot of our sort of fear comes from, I think comes from exactly that of not knowing what actually how it works. Because as soon as you understand how it works, it's actually a lot less scary. It's just like, okay, well, like that's how this experience is created. This is the decisions that are being made and I can intervene. I can fix a refrigerator, but I can't if I if I have no idea what the fuck is going on at any given moment.    Gabrielle [00:23:00] And clearly your work and your collaborations are, you know, are very original. And in terms of Canadian theatre or performance, very innovative in terms of, you know, the interdisciplinarity and experimentation with form. And Patrick, you also write on the politics of theatre, including the democratisation of theatre through participation. I'm wondering, would you say that there is an underlying call to action for the theatre community in your writing and theatre making?    Patrick [00:23:33] Yeah, I would hope that anyone actually who makes anything would believe that their work is some kind of call to action. But that's maybe a bit of like a maybe not everyone aspires to shit disturbery. But yeah, I think, you know, and I was thinking about this in a sort of broader context of what milton and my collaborations have become because we are also the co-founders of a national video archive for performance called VideoCan, Videocan.ca. You know, that comes out of the conversations that we were having with our as we were building Culture Capital, which were interviews with artists from across the country about, you know, what kind of values were ship shaping and shifting within their regional contexts, what kind of art was being deemed better or worse than others. And more broadly, I would say, my, ever since I was a theatre student or like a theatre history student back in my undergrad, I was displeased with the, what you could say, I guess was like a complacency towards what we could do in a theatre. And I went to school in Halifax. I went to school at the University of King's College. And, you know, that was a great space where a lot of young people had full 100% autonomy over a theatrical black box. We could do anything we wanted. And I saw my peers pitching to do, you know, well-made plays. And that's a very specific context to have sort of had your artistic, I guess, like teeth forged metal teeth, I guess. And but that that is I think, you know, I owe the that that time of my life in that place the the sort of you know my debts are to that time where I really started to try to figure out what this thing was that people kept calling theatre. They seemed to really like it. I didn't understand why I bet we could do other things in here. I bet I could, like, go longer or shorter or be louder, be more chaotic. That definitely translated into a whole era of writing, which I think I'm actually at the end of in some ways. You know, my undergraduate thesis was called To Have Done With The Image of Theatre, was very sort of like, 'let's try to have a conversation about what we think it is.' And even it was like in those years that I had started thinking about what VideoCan was to become, because it was the only way that I was able to participate in a greater conversation about what performance was right now was by watching video. And so when again, when Milton and I had met and a couple of years into our collaboration and we started talking about, you know, video documentation, how we shot it for our our own purposes, but also wouldn't it be great to be able to see stuff? We just decided, yeah, okay, well, we're going to do that because there's people out there who were like me who didn't grow up in a city like Vancouver that didn't have a PuSh Festival. And, well, I guess I grew up in Ottawa, but, you know, that was a different era. But that, you know, people in like other places that didn't have access to boundary pushing and innovative stuff all the time. So I think that, you know, all of it is really tied together. And I would hope that anyone who sees something like asses.masses, or anything else that's on VideoCan like is able to think of like, 'oh, right, so this is okay and this is okay and everything in between, and everything that's not represented here is possible within these, these, you know, these cubes that we build for the purposes of creating context for people to come together, to think things, think new things, remind themselves of things.' And a lot of, I guess the way that we've handled, I think, sort of sharing our ideas on that subject is that not and I often will write these dialogues for publication. It's one of the ways that we feel like, you know, yes, there's a call to action, but also our hope is always to model the possibilities of thinking about something differently. And I would say that something with the form like asses.masses or something like Culture Capital or Farce or anything else that we've made independently or together still participates in that idea of look at how this thing can also be involved. We can also include this form. We can include the people who love this form and all of the traditions that come with it, because that's the actual function of these places.    Milton [00:28:13] I would also add that in terms of process as well, like through any of the asses.masses master classes that we have, which we're very happy about the name, but also any particular moments in which we're allowed to share, like even in this conversation, our views or the process by which we've made asses.masses. Both Patrick and I feel very strongly coming from the vein of something like VideoCan, in sharing out the kind of research that we've done in the learning. So if you're listening and you want to know more about like, how do I create this within unity, how many YouTube videos did you have to watch in order to understand how to move characters around and to transition from scene to scene and to do shaders? So, so many. But we hopefully are trying to model a kind of process that can work. Not everyone will want to create a game of this size right away. You know, the doors are open for any of us to do this, and so it's not specialised knowledge that can't be attained by anyone. It truly has been made on the backs of YouTube creators who have afforded as generously as we are trying to do now, 'here's what I know and you can learn it.'    Patrick [00:29:21] Shout out to that 16 year old who made the platformer controller that we adapted. I mean, like, to be quite frank, the community that we were able to engage with by making a video game was far more supportive, responsive. And like in there in the ship with you than any community I've ever interacted with in the context of making live theatre. Right. You could go on to a forum and say, How do I do this? And someone would be there right away to tell you. That's just the nature of how that community operates. There's some other people in there, you know, who are less helpful. But for the most part, they're including that 16 year old kid. Very helpful.    Milton [00:30:02] Yeah. And maybe now's a good time to also say that. Patrick, you've also written recently about democracy and theatre in an upcoming issue of.    Patrick [00:30:12] Canadian Theatre Review. That's right. It's true. And I guess maybe we can well take a sort of short step over there because because I do think it is interesting. When Milton and I were in residence in Brazil in April, March-April 2023, after asses.masses had premiered, we'd had two residencies in one in Buenos Aires, one in sort of split between Recife and Sao Paulo. And we were asked or we were told by someone who was seeking to understand the kind of works that we were doing. They said, Oh, your work is very democratic and in in form. And I thought that was interesting, and I took the opportunity in for the CTR journal, that we were both invited to contribute writings to, to reflect on why, what it means to be called democratic in our art making like that. The experiences to this person, this this individual who is responding to an artist talk that we're given that that those works were democratic like to their core. And it made me wonder about all the other works that people make. And if you're not going to call them democratic, then what are we going to call them? Because it's true. We have to. I'm not. Yeah, that's a longer essay. And trying to figure out like, well, what do we mean by democratic and like does it come into being? Does democracy come into being when you come to asses.masses? Or is it sort of a, you know, suspended representation of democracy? I will let anybody who comes to asses.masses decide whether or not they experience democracy that night. Sometimes I think we see something that doesn't look a lot like democracy, but it definitely does look like a lot like the way that 20 year olds maybe think that politics should be run. And then, you know, it changes and it evolves over the course of the evening because there's a lot of energy maybe that comes in at one point or the food fuels you at after the second intermission and all kinds of things change. So all that's to say is that I think the way that we recognise or encourage us to think about how our art forms create real political spaces and interactions, you know, this broader has broader implications for that, for other art forms if we're going to give us Democratic as a title. Well, let's talk about all the other ways. Are they oligarchic? Are they fascistic, are they, you know, autocratic? And maybe that's maybe some of those forms, you know, maybe that's not a problem. Maybe we have to represent those types of experiences to be able to understand them so that when we engage them within a different political theatre, we we understand them and we know how to respond. And we are we are versed in in something. But yeah, I don't think asses.masses prescribes one particular form of political organisation and that's actually something that is very beautiful about the first scene for us every night when we get to watch the first scene of asses.masses, we learn a lot about how this particular random ragtag group of 100 people has decided to conduct themselves in space, at least a start.    Milton [00:33:18] And they continuously surprise us. We are always taking notes and just trying to better understand, like how are people responding to any part of the game? But based on that first like ten or so minutes and when we learn what kind of audience and what kind of community they will become, we can never prescribe exactly how it's going to shake down because it just keeps changing over and over and over again. So yeah, we remain curious about how things will unfold. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to also say as part of the same issue of CTR related back to the technology conversation, I've written a cowritten piece of writing with Bart Simon from Concordia University about quantification and participatory performance. And so talking about how we might engage with the world of quantification and by extension the world of technology that we hope we can run headfirst into it. And I feel like asses.masses is part of that conversation, yeah.    Patrick [00:34:18] The journal edition will be published by foldA of... foldA 2024 in June of next year.    Milton [00:34:25] Yeah. And in case anyone is listening about the conversation about like a democratic process inside of asses.masses, the show is really fun. We want people to know that we know that we can get very heady sometimes about it and just like talk about like a theory and practice. But it's also a really fun video game that we've made and we hope that lots of people will get to play it. And it's also a show that needs you. There are some performances that I've gone to where I realise I could have not been there and the show would have been exactly the same. asses.masses is not the same without you.    Gabrielle [00:34:57] And we're thrilled to have it at PuSh 2024, January 20th, 27th and February 3rd. So yeah, to those listeners, come see for yourself. Is it Democratic? Was four hours truly not long enough?    Patrick [00:35:13] It wasn't. It wasn't. If you leave in four hours, you'll have to trace down all of the people who stayed and figure out the ending. And you probably will not believe them when they tell you that that was the ending.    Gabrielle [00:35:26] An experience unlike any other in the festival. So I am super thrilled that this is going to be part of it. Obviously it's going to be a stand out experience. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Milton and Patrick.    Patrick [00:35:40] Thank you. Thank you so much.    Tricia [00:35:45] Thanks for listening to PuSh Play. My name is Tricia Knowles and I'm one of the producers of this podcast, along with Ben Charland. That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, co-creators of asses.masses, which will be presented at the upcoming PuSh Festival. PuSh Play is supported by our Community Outreach Coordinator, Julian Legere, with original music from Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media
Ep. 6 - Lorenzo: The radical potential of ‘entertainment’
27-11-2023
Ep. 6 - Lorenzo: The radical potential of ‘entertainment’
Ben Target discusses his belief in entertaining an audience above all. LORENZO runs Jan 18th-20th at Push Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Ben Target, writer and performer of LORENZO. They discuss how we treat the concept and theme of loss on stage, how Ben’s work has evolved from Fringe Festivals and standup comedy to his broader theatrical work today, and Ben’s mantra that “Entertainment is the engine, boring an audience is a crime and art must provide hope”. Gabrielle and Ben discuss: How do we treat the concept and theme of loss on stage?How has Ben grown as an artist between his first Fringe Festival a decade ago, and the most recent one last summer?How did Ben's work evolve from standup comedy to his broader theatrical work today—and how has it remained the same?Does a performer need to get permission from the audience to say something that isn't strictly speaking funny?What serves that audience rather than what the performer can get (laughs/applause)What is the best story we can put in front of the audience rather than what will make money?Why is collaboration so important, and why should an artist let the people they trust into their heart?What was supposed to be part of the project that ended up getting cut?What about Ben's mantra: “Entertainment is the engine, boring an audience is a crime and art must provide hope"? About Ben Target Ben Target (he/they) is a multi-award-winning comedian, performance artist, writer, actor and director. He was born in Singapore and has lived a peripatetic life in London, Voorschoten, Houston, Jakarta and Paris. In 2011, he won the national stand-up accolade, the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year. In 2012, his debut comedy show Discover Ben Target was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer, toured to Australia and New Zealand, and was filmed as a special for the streaming service NextUp Comedy. He returned to the Edinburgh Fringe with Hooray for Ben Target (2014), Imagine There’s No Ben Target (It’s Easy If You Try) (2015), Orangeade (2017) and Splosh! (2018). He has starred and co-starred in several comedy shows over the last decade, including Richard Gadd’s Waiting for Gaddot (Amused Moose Comedy Award for Best Show, 2015). As a director and dramaturg, Ben has worked with Kieran Hodgson (Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2023), John Hastings, Rob Copland, Katie Pritchard, and more. He has written for Joe Lycett (BBC Three) and Jamali Maddix (Channel 4), and teaches stand-up comedy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Soho Theatre and Angel Comedy. Land Acknowledgement Ben joins the podcast from London, UK. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin PuSh's Director of programming. And today's episode highlights the theatrical treatment of loss. I'm speaking with Ben Target, writer and performer of "Lorenzo", which will be presented at PuSh Festival January 18th to 20th, 2024. "Lorenzo" is a life affirming story about death with shadow puppetry and live carpentry. Ben is a multi-award-winning comedian, performance artist, writer, actor and director. He was born in Singapore and has lived a peripatetic life in London, Voorschoten, Houston, Jakarta and Paris. I'm honoured to share our discussion that looks at the intersection of comedy and tragedy in "Lorenzo" and more. Here's my conversation with Ben.    Gabrielle [00:00:54] Hello, I'm Gabrielle, the director of programming at the PuSh Festival, and I'm really thrilled to be speaking with Ben Target about "Lorenzo" and your wider practice. Thank you so much for being part of this conversation today.    Ben [00:01:06] Thank you so much. It's it's a delight to be here. I'm sitting in London and this is where my practice is based, but I'm so excited to be touring. I can't wait.    Gabrielle [00:01:19] Yeah, you'll be you'll be joining us myself and PuSh here on the Unceded stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and I and PuSh we see it as our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose stolen territories we live and work and with the land itself. And that gives a bit of context for where we are. And I want to just jump right into getting to know a bit more about you, the show and your practice. So over a decade ago, you received a best Fringe Newcomer nomination at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And in this summer of 2023, you brought "Lorenzo", which won the Edinburgh Fringe Festival's Fringe First Award. And how have you grown as an artist in this time between those two works? You know, bringing those two works to the Fringe. And how have your interests, process and relationship with your own work changed?    Ben [00:02:18] That's a big old question to start with. Yeah.    Gabrielle [00:02:20] It is.    Ben [00:02:22] But thanks for the shoutout for the accolades. So the first one, the Edinburgh Comedy Award, Best Newcomer, was for my debut show, which was a comedy show. I think I was quite different to many of my peers at the time in that I embraced comedy because it was seen as gauche and tacky, and I thought that was an added layer of fun cheekiness. And the Fringe First award was for new writing and theatre, and that's for the later show that I'm bringing to you guys. And so, yes, my my practice, even though it began in stand up comedy, is now also in theatre and I straddle the two. Still. I think that was a choice I made because the story of "Lorenzo" is is an uplifting one, a hopeful one, but it's also sad. There's an undercurrent of melancholia. And even though I began writing it for for the stand up circuit here in London, I noticed that I didn't really get permission from the audience to say things that were not exclusively funny. And it was quite scary for me to step into the theatre world, not having trained in it, not really feeling I had permission to be there. And also, I think feeling I didn't necessarily have the skills to write one long hour narrative, but I've loved it. I just feel I have so much permission to be everything I can be on stage and everything that this story needs me to be. And I found a real difference between theatre audiences and comedy audiences. Both I love playing to, but I felt theatre audiences were willing to sit and listen and be part of the project. Whereas comedy audiences, I feel, are waiting for me to impress them. And there's an excitement to that. There's a sort of a tension that naturally builds in the room. But I'm really interested to keep going in this kind of comedy theatre hybrid world. In terms of my relationship with my practice. I think I've I've matured as a person, thank God, because the person I was a decade ago was quite an arrogant, impulsive, impetuous, exuberant young person. And I had I had quite a big struggle with my mental health as I entered my 30s. And that sobered me and humbled me and I think made me a lot kinder and tender and open and honest. And I think my works got better for that. I think I approach things now so much more from what is it that I can do that serves the audience rather than acquisitional? What can I get out of this by being the funniest person in the room? So I feel a lot more peace in myself. And I think my artistic practice is, is is is a reflection of that. It's a lot healthier, it's a lot more collaborative, it's a lot more about what is the best story we can put in front of the audience rather than what is the story we can tell to make money?    Gabrielle [00:05:49] Yeah, that I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Having seen "Lorenzo", having experienced it, your generosity is incredible and that's why it's so evocative. And I think that's why the audience goes is so willing to go on this journey.    Ben [00:06:06] Thank you so much for saying that. I think the show was the show is on the surface about care, specifically palliative care. About a year and a bit that I spent looking after an old man who looked after me as a child. So there's a sort of reciprocal the reciprocal nature of care is explored within the show, intergenerational care. And I think I try to approach the show by dipping the audience gently in the experience of being cared for having to care about a subject and possibly projecting onto that subject their own experiences of care or thoughts about being carers in the future, which I think is is certainly in British society highly likely for most people in my generation that we're going to be in a caring relationship as our elders get to that stage because there's less support from the government, less support through the National Health Service. I think it's a reality that a lot of people are frightened of, but in my experience as one that is is, is can be tough but is worth firmly embracing. It's it's it's enriching. It's rewarding. Just one of the most important, amazing experiences I had. And yeah, it just feels like a real privilege. Such a weighted word but privilege to share it with the with with any audience, to be honest.    Gabrielle [00:07:44] Yeah. It really is a work that touches on really profound experiences that will and do affect all of us and that we often don't address together. So it does what theatre can be so wonderful at doing. It's that space where we can kind of collectively address some of these human experiences that we might not otherwise address socially in a collective manner. So "Lorenzo" was really your first kind of theatre theatre show, the debut theatre show, and you've spoken about the different relationship with the audience working between that form and a more classic kind of stand up comedy form. Is this the first time that you've had a work that really benefits from that treatment, or is it just the first time that you had the support and were and were able to kind of embrace that form? I'm just curious about I guess I'm trying to get at understanding, you know, what that form does for the themes and stories that you want to convey.    Ben [00:08:55] That's a great question. I think in terms of my evolution, my shows, my solo shows, whether comedy or now theatre, have always been theatrical. They've always been aesthetically pleasing, visually stunning. Sounds incredibly arrogant to say. But I do think of things first and foremost, visually and experientially. And this this show that I've just made is the first time that a theatre has come to me and said, 'we like your work, we like how you make work and we like this story that you have' and embraced it and supported it. And I felt really like I flourished. I've blossomed with that with that kudos from them early doors. And I think it's it's a testament really to what can happen when an artist is, I suppose, experienced enough to commit entirely to a project, but also get the backing, especially the financial backing to, to grow a show into the fullest of of their kind of imagining. But in terms of inhabiting the theatre space, it has been on my mind for several years. And that's because I sort of got known within the comedy scene, specifically at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as an innovative boundary pushing comedian. A lot of my shows were high concepts. A lot of them used music and scent and sound interestingly, and I was always trying to find the laughs with those tools. But increasingly towards this project, my my shows began to be something other than comedy. I just wasn't brave enough as an artist to let go of my identity as a comedian because I'd lived in it for a decade and I was afraid of the solitude that can come with taking a new step into the unknown. And I think what helped was in 2019, I was commissioned by the Yard Theatre, which is a great space in East London that puts on a lot of radical work. And they were really interested in my relationship with audiences and how I work with audiences, often collaboratively to build shows in the moment. And I wrote them a narrative that they were really interested in developing with me. And then, of course, we all know what happened. The pandemic bulldozed it, but it didn't leave my brain. I was really sort of like, okay, if I made something again, maybe it would it would need to go away from comedy. And I think it was sort of serendipitous that all these ingredients were met or sort of arrived at a time that my recently departed director by departed, I mean, unfortunately, he died in April. He just he just saw my work and knew I was ready, ready for this chance. I'm incredibly grateful he gave it to me.    Gabrielle [00:12:19] And I want to talk about that. Yeah. The support you received to develop, to develop "Lorenzo" and to develop it as, as a as a work of theatre. You worked with multiple dramaturgs and outside eyes through the process. I'm curious, what was the best piece of advice or recommendation you received in the process?    Ben [00:12:38] Outside of my work as a performer, I'm I'm I earn most of my money as a as an outside eye/ dramaturg/director. And many of the shows that I've made with comedians, especially over the last few years, have done really well. And that raised my status within the community. I think when I got this opportunity I was really keen to to invite people into my process because so many artists had been that generous with me inviting them into this. And I was really lucky that I got to work with just some of my favourite people that I've met in the last ten years, and all of them had excellent advice from Joz Norris, who I've made multiple shows with, who suggested that the language of love within my family, which is a fracturous unit, is mischief. And that helped me hone in on things within the show that kept it light and ticking along when the subject matter got heavy. My my close creative collaborator, Letty Butler, who's an incredible writer, far, far more gifted than I am, she she was particularly useful giving me permission to put into the show things that I felt deeply but was was scared an audience wouldn't embrace. She really gifted me the courage to go for it. And I think part of that was because we have an amazing art project, an open journal. We don't live in the same city, but every day we sit down and we write a kind of no holds barred, what our day was like and how we were feeling and sharing that with somebody. Knowing someone's going to read that means there's no space to hide, which is quite freeing. Um, Adam, my, my dead director was really useful specifically at taking my writing style, which was quiet, flowery, superfluous, plenty of juicy turns of phrase which I loved in stand up because they can elicit a certain excitement from an audience. And he made me tone my writing down and keep it super simple. In fact, he used to sit next to me as I was writing, and any time he saw a sentence he didn't like, he would say, "All right, Hemingway, who the fuck do you think you are?" And that would make me so...    Gabrielle [00:15:17] That's amazing. Very direct.    Ben [00:15:22] He was direct. I mean, I could speak about these collaborators endlessly. Lee Griffiths, who was the director who came on board after he also lost his friend Adam. Lee, was just extraordinary at going round for round with me. When I make work, I commit to it fully all of my life: the money that I have, the time, and it can be quite overwhelming and not a lot of people want to come on that journey with you because it's it's intense and the risk is that it's not going to be fruitful. But he was there all the time. And something he did, which was great, was before every show or preview or work in progress offering or even script read, he would come up to me and he'd say, "okay, Ben, what is your one intention for this show?" And I would tell him, and sort of having that simple monorail to skate along, it meant the edits were so much easier in the moment because I could just let go of information that wasn't serving that singular purpose. And I think, yeah, there are so many people who gave me such wonderful advice. I think the big learning from it is to let people into your heart, people you trust. And as long as you're all committed to not serving a singular ego but trying to serve the project as a whole, it will likely come out for the best.    Gabrielle [00:16:52] Very eloquent. Thank you. And I'm curious because, you know, there's shadow puppetry in this work. There's fire breathing. Are there things that were supposed to be part of the project that you ended up cutting that you were? You know, I feel like fire breathing is one of those things where it's a great idea and then you realise, oh, okay, maybe, maybe not. But it stayed. So what about are there other things that, you know, in one version of "Lorenzo" you were going to have a completely different have some other pyrotechnics or something ambitious like that?    Ben [00:17:33] Yeah. I mean, there is a lot in this show. Some of it very much came from me. The fire breathing, for example. I was born in Singapore, so had some experience as a young, very young child with aspects of Cantonese culture. And I remember the sort of extraordinary Lunar New Year Festival with dancing dragons and poi and fire breathing as a child. So I sort of felt, even though "Lorenzo's" the main character's heritage is well, he was Cantonese but grew up in Hong Kong. I felt like that would be a big, fun, dumb, beautiful way to kind of telegraph an aspect of of celebrations within his and within his heritage. There was the woodwork idea, I do some woodwork on stage, came because Adam commissioned me to build him a set for a really popular show a few years ago, and he just he loved the fact that I was a comedian, but also a carpenter during the day. And he was just like, 'I've never seen wood work on stage. We should figure out how to do that.' And then I sort of ordered all the equipment and then he died and I was like, 'Now I have to figure out your idea.' I felt like he sort of played a prank on me in terms of stuff that didn't end up in the show. There was there was the idea of the blueprints of the separate houses that I talk about in which the the characters grow up in being projected onto the stage. So there's a London as a character is present for the audience to see. There was also the idea that what I might build during the show is Lorenzo's bed and that we sort of cut out on an empty bed in the middle of the stage. That was the idea that I would do the whole show on rollerblades with those kind of 1950s Americana, like fast food service trays, like serving the audience food throughout. But ultimately.    Gabrielle [00:19:55] Damn. Where's that "Lorenzo"? Just joking.   Ben [00:19:59] Yeah I think ultimately there was there came a point where there was just so much happening that I realised I was throwing ideas at the show because I was too scared to find that singular, juicy narrative that was exposed and raw but carefully kind of sewn into what was happening. And I just wanted whatever happened in the show to elevate the story. And so actually, Lee and I purposefully withheld the fire breathing, the set, which is beautiful, and this the shadow puppetry from the public until two about two days before the Fringe. So what we wanted was a bullet-proof story that could stand on its own as a piece of performance. And then when we got to the Fringe, we elevated everything with the added elements, and it just took off in a way that neither one of us expected at all. But it gives me heart that if you write, if you write a comprehensively good story, that's enough, that everything else is just fun. In fact,.    Gabrielle [00:21:10] You don't need to roll away.    Ben [00:21:14] Maybe that's the next show.    Gabrielle [00:21:15] Yeah. Still sounds pretty great. You have a mantra. Entertainment is the engine, boring an audience is a crime, and art must provide hope. How did you come to this mantra? How do you make a show that addresses dying and death entertaining and hopeful. And I'll just add to that I'm curious because earlier you spoke about audience expectations and entertainment you know comedy clearly falls more in the kind of entertainment area in Canada. It's really under very much underrecognized as an art form. And I think that there is sometimes an arts practice, a kind of a criticism of, of, of entertainment, right, in the contemporary arts world of 'pandering to the audience' or, yeah. So I'm curious, I just it was really it's really interesting to see that  entertainment as a kind of fundamental piece of, of your practice.    Ben [00:22:18] Yeah. Thanks. I mean, thanks for reading the mantra out. I I'll try and dissect it. It's sad to hear that comedy, especially stand up, is not recognised in Canada necessarily as anything but something frivolous. I think it's an art form. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I think the funniest people I've ever met in my life are most of the Canadian standups I know in the UK who I mean, I hope there's some sort of big renaissance for Canadian stand up in general or just a recognition. I think it's very clear when you're standing on stage as a stand up, when the audience don't like you because they're not laughing. And I think spending a decade in that space where everything must lead to a laugh, well, it's a fairly gnarly puzzle. And it's it's so satisfying when you crack it. And what I love about stand up in particular as an art form is in comparison to so many of the others that I know of, it's far more accessible. And certainly in the U.K., I think the scene is relatively healthy in that you'll get people from multiple different backgrounds, life experiences onstage, sharing their point of view. And how enriching is that for an audience? Say you go to a comedy club, you might see four great acts. You're going to be laughing at different styles of delivery, but also different life experiences, and you walk away I think if you're really listening and embracing the work of far more rounded human. And I think I've become a better person in stand-up, it's been an incredibly educational experience. And I think I think if we look at like the history of theatre, it's it's there as well. I hate to bring up I hate to bring this guy up, but like, you know, Shakespeare is full of dick jokes. It's full of shit, piss, bodily fluids, interesting fights, great dynamism. And I think theatres were built to hold people of all backgrounds. And the one way you can guarantee that they're going to kind of collectively arrive at the same point together is by Is by great, honed entertainment. And I think it's just a vital weapon for an artist. If you can make someone feel something, then you can probably slip in your poignant point afterwards. So it's just quite basic really to me anyway. I'm not saying it's easy to do. It's really hard to do, I think, to entertain people. But it's it's first and foremost in my brain when I'm making something because I know it's the quickest route to success, basically, if I can make something fun and poppy. Then I can be a bit moody, then I can be a little wise or cutting or whatever it is that I'm trying to do for myself in the work. It's going to be the transaction is going to be best if it's first and foremost fun for the audience. Um, in terms of boring an audience, I mean, that's the tricky part with that is it's subjective. Like I've learned from stand up that it's so rare that you'll write like a joke or a piece that everyone's going to like. You're going to write a lot of stuff that most of the people in the room are going to be like, but you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea. And yet there is such a thing as objectively entertaining work. So I suppose what I mean by 'it's a crime to bore an audience' for me at least, is just remembering to check in in the moment with the audience when you're on stage watching them very carefully and trying to pick up cues from them as to whether they're in the story or slipping out of it. If they're slipping out of it, do I need to pick up the pace. If they're slipping out of it, do I need to bring in a change. If they're slipping out of it, do I need to address it immediately? Do I need to be direct? And I think it's a good reminder for me because I want everyone to come with me in the room, because togetherness ultimately is always my goal as an artist. I just think there's so much there's so much division in the world and how amazing is it that we can sit as a group of strangers in a strange space with someone on stage telling a story and by the end feel part of something? Some hope, you know, some sense that beyond political divisions, there's there's communal strands of togetherness working to keep this this this whole sort of ship righted somehow. And hope. I mean, it sounds kind of cheesy and maybe reductive, but I do think artists are their best agents of hope. And that comes in so many different forms from someone reflecting back at you how you are. The hopeful thing for me in that is if you don't like it, at least you can address it and try and change it. If you do like it, there's there's, there's glory in there and the feeling of self-possession and, you know, to being didactic teaching how one can do things better, to making you feel something. If it's if it's sadness, then there's the catharsis of crying. And also you discover what really matters to you and what you want to hold on to. If it's happiness and joy, well, that's a glorious thing to feel. So, yeah, that's quite a long winded answer, I feel. But that's that's where I sit with those three things.    Gabrielle [00:28:26] Well, it's beautiful and it's very clear. It's very clear in your work and it's very clear that you that you're a mature artist and you have a really thoughtful team behind you as well, because this is it, really. You know? Yeah. It wasn't. It wasn't by chance, but, you know, it was a sold out show at the Fringe, which is very hard to do, and won the Fringe First award. And we're just really lucky to have it opening the PuSh festival this upcoming year. So thanks so much for sharing more about your perspective and your work. And now that the audience has heard some of the things that aren't in "Lorenzo", they need to come to see what is in "Lorenzo".    Ben [00:29:10] Well, thank you so much. Thanks for embracing the show. I can't wait. I cannot wait to join you all.    Ben Charland [00:29:19] That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Ben Target, writer and performer of "Lorenzo", which will be presented at the upcoming PuSh Festival. My name is Ben Charland and I'm one of the producers of this podcast, along with Tricia Knowles. PuSh Play is supported by our community outreach Coordinator, Julian Legere. Original music from Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @PuShFestival. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please spread the word. On the next PuSh play:   Patrick Blenkarn [00:29:59] Every night when we get to watch the first scene of asses.masses, we learn a lot about how this particular random ragtag group of 100 people has decided to conduct themselves in space at least to start.  Milton Lim [00:30:11] And they continuously surprise us.
Ep. 5 - Returns: Reckoning with systems of capitalism
23-11-2023
Ep. 5 - Returns: Reckoning with systems of capitalism
Nellie Gossen discusses her playful interruption of consumer fashion processes. Returns runs Jan 7th-Feb 3rd at PuSh Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Nellie Gossen about her intriguing performative installation Returns at the Dance Centre, which will be part of PuSh and showing for the duration of the 2024 Festival. Co-presented with The Dance Centre. Gabrielle and Nellie ask: How can we use clothing as a tool to think and feel through social systems?How does end of life care and other educational practices inform the work and design?How will the installation expose and reveal the systems of production behind clothing?How does clothing form an archive of labour that can be drawn upon with performance?Why is fashion increasingly present in art spaces in Vancouver and beyond? What does this mean for audience experiences? Artist practices?Will people come back to the installation throughout the festival? About Nellie Gossen Nellie Gossen (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. Working through the media of fashion, costume, textiles and performance, Nellie uses clothing as a tool to think and feel through social systems. With an interest in repurposing the materials, rhythms and choreographies of the mainstream fashion industry, Nellie practices fashion as a space of study, ceremony, and as a critical site of research into embodied experiences of consumer capitalism. Drawing on formal training in both Fashion Design and Religious Studies, Nellie is particularly interested in the space that is created when clothing and contemplative practices meet. Nellie’s work has been presented throughout Canada and Germany. As a costume designer and textile collaborator, Nellie has worked with artists such as Nancy Tam, Steven Hill, Francesca Frewer, Erika Mitsuhashi, Alexa Mardon and Michaela Gerussi. Alongside her artistic inquiries, Nellie studies and practices end of life spiritual care. Land Acknowledgement Gabrielle and Nellie both join from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to Push Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, PuSh's director of programming. And today's episode highlights clothing as a tool to think and feel through social systems. I'm speaking with Nellie Gossen, responsible for the direction and concept of Returns, a durational performance installation running throughout the PuSh Festival January 18th to February 3rd, 2024. Returns unearths the materials and performances already at play within consumer capitalism. Nellie works through the medium of fashion, costume, textiles and performance, considering the many truths of industrial labour and consumption. Her work explores the materials of mainstream fashion as a vehicle for study, spaciousness, social action, rigorous love, practice and phenomenological inquiry. I'm excited for you to hear our discussion that highlights how these considerations culminate in Returns. Here is my conversation with Nellie.    Gabrielle [00:01:01] I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that both of us are here today on the stolen Unceded ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) . And it is it's an absolute privilege to be here living on these lands that just contextualises where we are. And I want to now talk about the work that we're doing and the collaboration. So your work explores the space created when clothing and contemplative practices meet. And I'm curious, how did you arrive at this unique point of transdisciplinary inquiry?    Nellie [00:01:40] For me, these are not fields that I have intentionally brought together. They are rather just parts of me, parts of what I'm interested in, parts of my own training and experience. I come to this work with formal training and the field of fashion design and also in religious studies and spiritual care. So these are just these two poles of my own interests and explorations that of course are going to come together in my practice, whether I like it or not. I think, so I'm primarily thinking about the field of fashion, and that's been a thread that really weaves through all of my work. And when we're thinking about fashion and engaging in that industry and that system and fashion design education, we're really always going to be referencing or talking to the flow of money. Fashion is so deeply intertwined with capitalism from the kind of earliest stages of capitalism as we see it now. So this is always going to be a reference point and always going to be kind of a reckoning when we're talking about thinking about working with fashion. For me, in my practice or what I what I kind of see and understand is that the fashion industry, fashion field is interested in bringing in question topics that are relevant to folks, what's happening out in the world, reflecting, reflecting our lived experiences. And because it is so intertwined with money, with with marketing, with profit, it has the tendency to really flatten and limit and kind of water down all of these experiences. So I guess something that I want to name is any time I'm thinking about fashion, I feel like there is this reckoning with this lineage of less nuance and complexity rather than more. My interest and my field really is really always going to be one of how we can bring more interesting questions and more space into thinking about clothing and and bringing in kind of contemplative practices, thinking about attention practices, thinking about slowing down, feeling with the full body, thinking about weaving and lineages of how we make meaning, of how we reckon with what is known and what is unknown and unknowable. It's just extra space for me to to kind of find what is interesting for me in fashion practice and, and to really be be drawing on other fields and other interdisciplinary practice, other mediums to kind of create more space to think about clothing and fashion in a in a bit of a wider frame.    Gabrielle [00:04:37] Yeah. So the way you're speaking, I start to get a sense of how the contemplative practice is embedded in the experience that you're designing with Returns and your kind of artistic interests. You're currently studying end of life care, and I'm just curious if you could expand a little bit more on how so that that experience and that education informs the design, how we may feel that, for example in Returns or in other projects of yours.    Nellie [00:05:12] Similar with with end of life care and about spiritual care. These are I didn't set out with the intention of making a work about that. That's just really a reflection of the questions that I'm asking in my own life. You know, as a student of the field, somebody who has been been studying and practising that in that world, I think there is so much that that enters into my work and is profoundly relevant to how we are moving through the world today, how we're making work today. I see a lot of folks starting to integrate grief work and death work into artistic practices these days. And I think it really speaks to, you know, how we are navigating and negotiating some of the larger questions of bearing witness to to to what what we are what we are seeing in the world today. I think in a practical sense, when we're talking about care practices of of this turning towards are building and capacity building muscle to turn towards experiences that are really challenging, to turn towards suffering, to turn towards complexity and to try to build spaces to to hold that complexity in life or in art practice or in whatever other container it it all creates more space for us to think, think about or for me to think about my artistic practice in a more nuanced way. So what's actually happening in in Returns, it can be considered a caregiving practice. We are borrowing clothing, we are borrowing systems from the larger fashion industry and thinking about how we can use our bodies to offer them value or to to witness them to to care for them and to care for garments that are that are essentially otherwise made to be disposable. So this kind of practice in a way of a re-sacralizing commun-  or commercial garments or commercial materials and how we can bring our our attention can actually change and impact those materials.    Gabrielle [00:07:36] Yeah. So you're touching on a little bit about what happens in returns that there's this this disassembling and reassembling of garments and and there's an embodied practice there too, that there's dance artists who you're working with who are engaging physically in this space, and that this all kind of comes together to critique consumer capitalism. So it's a durational performance installation that addresses modern production and consumption and how we exist with it and consumer capitalism. and so I'm just curious if you could talk a bit more about how those different mediums come together in this piece to... I mean, you already have been speaking to that, but maybe you could just expound a little bit further on, for example, why are you working with dance artists? What does that add?    Nellie [00:08:32] Something I'll say right off the bat is my my clothing practice has always been in conversation with with performance. And when I say that, you know, my clothing and contemplative practices have kind of come together accidentally, I've been much more intentional with with really incorporating dance and movement and performance practices into my work kind of since the beginning of my more formal, formal artistic practice. So I have been thinking about how we can meaningfully incorporate those tools or incorporate the tools of of the moving and thinking body into clothing practice. What I will say about the the piece, maybe I would just really briefly tell you or just explain what happens in the in the work in the in the kind of briefest sense we are borrowing kind of cycles and the systems that are really already at play within within the retail consumer systems. So we this project works in 30 day iterations where we are going to stores going into mass chain stores that that work with a 30 day retail return policy. And then this 30 day retail return policy essentially becomes the framework becomes the container for our inquiry, our 30 day inquiry. So we buy a whole bunch of clothing of all different kinds, we bring it back to our performance space where we take it all apart very, very carefully, take it all apart, and then use the material. We explore the material, for that for the duration of our of our work. So we sew new clothing, constellations, we work, we create new kind of sculptural forms. And then we do have this ongoing movement practice working with movement scores that that run throughout the piece that's totally part of part of the work and the way that we work. So not all is happening. Towards the end of the 30 day period, we we take apart everything that we have been working on and again, very carefully begin to reassemble all of the pieces of clothing that we are using back into their original form. So this is to reference care practices across the board. This is one of of of caring very, very, very specifically for these garments. And yeah, so at the end of the 30 day practice, the 30 day period, everything is reassembled back into original form and returned to stores for a full refund. So again, pulling things out of systems that are already in existence, borrowing, borrowing the materials for just a temporary period and then returning them back in into the systems that we that we that we're working with. So that's the kind of the basic form that we're thinking about. And to kind of come back to your question in terms of the production and consumption and how we're using this space to witness that, I really do understand all of the garments, all of the materials that we're working with to be in the material manifestation of these these larger systems of capitalism, of the fashion industry, of of global supply chains and the fashion supply chain, the systems of production are hidden from our view. It is not profitable for consumers to be exposed to the hugely exploitative, you know, process of of of production. So we're really sitting in this place as consumers in the global north of of these positions of privilege of how how can we even witness these systems. What how can we how can we reckon with our with our positions in this in the space. Yeah. How can we even begin to engage with, with systems that are, that are hidden from our, from our view. So these pieces of clothing essentially become this material record or this archive of this labour that we that we can work with. So we are really imagining clothing, commercial garments as, as the material that we have to witness, witness the systems and borrowing this particular 30 day retail exchange as the way of of of using our bodies to witness the kinds of patterns of consumption that are part of our everyday lives. So yeah, essentially we're just using the materials, the systems, and we use that in ways that we can and the ways that we can slow down a little bit to to kind of have a better sense of, of what is happening and, and how we can kind of yeah, how we can learn from, from these these materials and to address the clothing movement dance relationship. I in my practice the kind of core centre central interest is the body and I understand the clothing element as a practice of the body. I understand the movement and dance element as a practice of the body. I have over the last couple of years done this, this work with dance artists as a way of, of really inhabiting this system from the perspective of the moving and thinking body and how we can trace bodies as we- our bodies, other bodies- the kind of choreographic patterns of these of these systems from more of a of a movement and performance and dance lens. So that has been an ongoing layer or two to the equation. And this particular iteration that I'm sharing this is going to. Be the eighth full iteration of this process that I've done. And this time I'm going to be working with three really talented artistic collaborators, kind of each coming from their own, with their with their own skills and expertise. I am working with Erika Mitsuhashi, who comes from the Field of Dance. I'm working with Jaewoo Kang, who, similar to me is thinking about clothing and costume practice in an interdisciplinary context and working with Tone Puorro who is joining us from from Berlin. And they are thinking about materials and craft and performance and community organising. So we've got a lot of different layers that we're bringing in. Each of us already has the pre-existing practice thinking at the intersection of of clothing and performance. So we've got a whole bunch of new voices to kind of explore what is possible in this 30 day, 30 day container.    Gabrielle [00:16:05] Thank you for that beautifully articulated insight to and what this is all about and and all the the thoughtful research that has gone into making Returns. And I'm curious, you have spoken about fashion becoming increasingly present within art spaces in Vancouver and beyond. And would you be able to speak a bit to why fashion is becoming increasingly present and what that does for audience experiences and artist practices and the kind of maybe themes or or techniques that are developing through that.    Nellie [00:16:49] I mean, something that I can speak to right off the bat is that we are in this interesting moment in Vancouver where the fashion depictions exhibition of the VAG just closed. The Museum of Vancouver has a fashion history exhibition. The my collaborator, Jaewoo Kang is currently in a show with the Griffin Art Projects to do with fashion. So I have never have never witnessed a kind of momentum in this city around thinking through questions of fashion before. It's a it's a medium that has often been left out of artistic practices. It's been considered more in the world of design, and it's sometimes been a challenge to see that in in more artistic conversation or art conversations. Yeah, So I recognise that, that it is having a moment and I see a lot of folks turning towards clothing practices and kind of incorporating that into other kinds of works. I think the people have been doing that for a long time and I also recognise, you know, that there is momentum coming from lots of different ways. The pandemic, our kind of increased intimacy of supply chain issues and and this kind of global interconnectedness when it comes to materials and supply chains, I think it brings fashion or brings brings this kind of production process into our lives in a in a much more immediate way. Fashion is hugely problematic when it comes to our ecological situation. And and I think there is increasing motivation to look at what's happening there. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of these kind of entry points that that how folks are more interested and thinking about this this topic. And there have recently been a number of of books that have been published about kind of fashion history and textile history that have reached a wider public. So, yeah, I do, I am witnessing this kind of this kind of momentum and and uptake and in the general public being kind of interested in engaging with clothing. And something that I will also add and what I'm thinking about and, and in the process and research that I'm doing is that and I think when we're talking about shopping for clothing, when we're talking about interfacing with these big chain stores and interfacing with fashion, that these are these are practices that that so many people can relate to and have this kind of personal lived, intimate experience with. So, yeah, I hope that can be an entry point for folks in kind of engaging with their work in a different way.    Gabrielle [00:20:00] Yeah. You've spoken about shopping as an artistic practice. Yeah. And so you're kind of touching on that now. Is there anything more that you want to share on that?    Nellie [00:20:10] The shopping have been such a huge space of research for me and it is incorporated into this work, Absolutely. It's not really what folks are necessarily going to see as as audiences for this work. You know, we are we are essentially just opening our working process up in the in the sewing in the building and the wearing for for folks to come and see that side of things. But all of this all of this work is in reference to systems, to exchanges in in this kind of shopping retail space. So a lot of my research and the research that we have been doing is also just growing into retail spaces, into malls, into stores, and witnessing the performances that are already happening there, witnessing the kinds of movements, the kinds of patterns, the kinds of embodied experiences, and what it feels like to be moved by music, what it feels like in the stores, what it feels like to be moved by spending money. Like what, what that does to the body, what that does to one's, you know, embodied experience. All of these, all of these patterns and these paths that are that are set out for us in retail spaces. So that's been a huge part of my my own practice and. I own research, and partially because as somebody who likes clothing and has been thinking about clothing, you know, it's the fine line in this contemporary day and age, the the the the boundary between liking clothing and liking shopping and it feeling good to consume and shop is is thin. So I, I come by my interest in shopping honestly it's I am a researcher of my own experience of what it means to interface with with those systems. So yeah, very much a big site of my own research and, and what kind of comes together in my practice.    Gabrielle [00:22:24] This... Returns is going to be running through the festival, which is really exciting that there's an opportunity for folks to see. It. Not only is are there lots of opportunities to experience this work, but also you could come more than once. How might that function as a you anticipate folks coming back? Yeah.    Nellie [00:22:45] Hopefully. Yeah. So we are for the whole full month cycle. It starts on January 6th and runs all the way until February 4th at the at The Dance Centre. And we are going to be open to to the public for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week within our formal working period, which is then going to be January 7th to to, February 3rd. That's going to be our performance window. We're open five days a week. The the entry is free. So we hope that that will encourage folks to come back. Many times our days, our performance days are structured in more or less the same way, and we are continuously working with the materials in different ways throughout the month, and they're going to take on really different forms as the clothing, as large scale kind of sculptural installations. So we are just kind of working, moving with them, thinking with them continuously. So I really do hope that folks can come back a couple of times to kind of see the evolution of the materials and our practice throughout. So I would absolutely encourage, repeat, repeat visits. Yeah.    Gabrielle [00:24:21] All right. Thanks so much for just bringing us inside your world a little bit more and giving us more of a sense of the context and how we can engage with this work. Yeah. Thanks so much, Nellie.    Nellie [00:24:35] Thank you so much for having me.    Gabrielle [00:24:40] PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles and supported by our incredible community outreach coordinator, Julian Legere. New episodes with Gabrielle Martin are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, please visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @pushfestival
Ep. 4 - Sound of The Beast: Creating care through discomfort
20-11-2023
Ep. 4 - Sound of The Beast: Creating care through discomfort
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard discusses refusing to prioritize comfort over authenticity. Sound of the Beast runs Feb 20th-23rd at PuSh Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s new work Sound of the Beast. Donna-Michelle shares why people are creating work that looks more like itself and less like each other and her relationship with the people whose stories she’s telling. What is our contribution to the lived reality that we are fictionalizing? Co-presented with Vancouver Poetry House, Rumble Theatre, and Pandemic Theatre. Gabrielle and Donna-Michelle take on some big questions: What is creatively exciting these days? Why people are creating work that looks more like itself and less like each other How to use value-based centres in the work? How to serve the most affected, not the most vocal? What is Donna-Michelle's relationship with the people whose stories she's telling? What is she really asking for when she asks for someone’s story? What does it do for them? What is our contribution to the lived reality that we are fictionalizing? How do we have a shared ethic of research? Where does Sound of the Beast sit in relation to other works? What does it mean when you decide to tell your story, and do it solo? About Donna-Michelle St. Bernard Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, a.k.a. Belladonna the Blest, is an emcee, playwright, and agitator. Her main body of work, the 54ology, includes Cake, Sound of the Beast, A Man A Fish, Salome’s Clothes, Gas Girls, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses, and The First Stone. Works for young audiences include the META-nominated Reaching For Starlight, The Chariot, and Rabbit King of Kenya. Opera libretti include Forbidden (Afarin Mansouri/Tapestry Opera) and Oubliette (Ivan Barbotin/Tapestry Opera). She is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of the Playwrights Canada Press Refractions anthologies, and editor of Indian Act: Residential School Plays. Land Acknowledgement Donna-Michelle joins from Treaty 13 Territory, as newcomers call Toronto, which is the traditional territories of the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit. This is also territory that is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, PuSh's Director of Programming. And today's episode highlights how the story calls to its form. I'm speaking with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, writer and performer of Sound of the Beast, which will be presented at PuSh Festival January 20th, 21st and 23rd 2024. Part Concert, Part Theatre Sound of the Beast blends the personal and the political with stories of coming up in Toronto's hip hop scene, the intersections between conscious rap and political activism, and the sacrifices we make for the things we believe in. Donna Michelle, a.k.a. Belladonna the Blest is an M.C. playwright and arts administrator. She is artistic director of New Harlem Productions and a vocalist with folk funk hip hop trio Ergo Sum. She's a true believer. I'm delighted to share our discussion that gets into her ethic of research and retelling and what happens at the nexus of ease and discomfort. Here is my conversation with Donna Michelle. I have a ton of questions for you. I'm really curious to get to know more about your practice, about this show. First, I just want to acknowledge the territories that I'm on today for the call. I'm on the Unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, so the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) . And it's an absolute privilege to be here working for PuSh, to be based here, and just to be living here as a settler. So this is where I am today.    Donna-Michelle [00:01:38] I am coming to you from Treaty 13 Territory, but as newcomers call Toronto, which is the traditional territories of the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit and this is also territory that is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant. And we are all implicitly signatory to that responsibility here.    Gabrielle [00:02:04] So I just want to dive right in by asking what is exciting you the most creatively these days?    Donna-Michelle [00:02:12] I'm really excited, by the way the shape of things is changing and maybe I'm a nerd, so I'm going to mix up that it's changing creatively and organisationally and disciplinarily. You know, the people are creating work that looks more like itself and less like each other. And people are creating work in structures that look more like what is needed for this moment and less like what we think it's supposed to look like. And so I think I'm excited by the possibilities of opening those vessels up and working. Working to blossom out rather than to crush ourselves into the shape that we think is expected.    Gabrielle [00:02:58] I think that segues really nicely into a follow up question I have about New Harlem Productions, because you're the artistic director of New Harlem Productions and this is an arts organisation that prioritises marginalised narratives and centres, sustainability, solidarity, professional development, equitable resource distribution, social implications and frontline experiences. So I feel like when you were just describing what excites you about how people are making work. To me, I'm thinking about your own company and I'm curious in your experience how these values change the nature of creation and production, your creation and production.    Donna-Michelle [00:03:42] Yes, I appreciate that question because it is an ongoing consideration. I think that new Harlem started as like a net to catch what was what was not being picked up by the mainstream organisations for reasons that were unclear or not valid to me. Like this piece works in languages other than English and we don't trust people to follow it. I trust people. Let's go. Let's do this. Or looking at artists who were emerging with with a strong voice that was that, that needed different support for the audience or different outreach for the audience. And like just a little bit more work. Let's just do that little bit more work. Not that we're the greatest and everything not to shine us on too much, but it's my perspective was that there were artists that we could lose if they weren't encouraged, affirmed and supported in doing something that was not what we expected them to do. And so working, working in the way that we do at New Harlem, really trying trying to have that value based centre, which is, by the way, a practice that evolved from my work with Native Earth Performing Arts, where we were able to say the all of the work of this company should be guided by these seven grandfather teachings that that seem to exist across many different nations, although they sometimes take different wording or different shape. And so that seemed like something really that's possible to guide our decisions in a way that is not that does not leave it to the judgement of an individual, to the judgement of the leader of the moment of the company. But there's these more enduring guidelines of how and why we're doing things, and that if we can agree to that, then when we when there is disagreement or when there are difficult choices to make, we agree what the touchstone is. And so similarly at New Harlem, we've evolved these value statements around, as you mentioned, like sustainability, ethical resources. And so those writing those things out or articulating those things allows us to say like, we do need some funding and we don't want that oil money. And that is clear to us because this thing in recently learning more about trauma informed practice and pulling some principles from that out a little bit more, such as like, Wow, I was considering the most effective, how do we serve the most affected, not the most vocal in any given scenario, you know? So I think those things really help us to move through some very difficult moments and to make choices to take what might seem like a risk. But from where we're sitting is very clearly the correct thing to do, and that helps us be emboldened to stand up for what feels like the correct choice to make.    Gabrielle [00:06:39] Thank you. So eloquent.    Donna-Michelle [00:06:40] So philosophical.    Gabrielle [00:06:42] Clearly you've thought about this, clearly, this is deeply embedded.   Donna-Michelle [00:06:44] We never stop thinking about it.    Gabrielle [00:06:49] And clearly your work is also about creating space for others as well. And so I'm curious, maybe we can talk about the 54ology project because you're the principle creator behind this project, but you also have many long term collaborators on it. And it's a project that looks at each country in Africa through a different piece of performance work. You're now about two thirds of the way through. And so I would just like to know why 54ology and how has this project and the collaborators in your long term collaborations, how has all of this changed you if it has?    Donna-Michelle [00:07:29] Oh has it ever. So 54ology the first piece that ever existed in some draft form with something called OSU data that had to do with HIV infection in Sudan and sort of like folk remedies and the impact of that, these folk remedies and the impact of the like poor investment into other remedies that well, that was a tough one. It was I was pretty blunt about certain things that are difficult to take in. That was the beginning of me sort of learning about like what is what is my positioning in relation to this story that I'm researching that is not my story? What is the positioning of, what is my understanding of how the story affects other people differently than it affects me? So from from that piece which was workshopped but not produced, I went on to create the first draft of The First Stone, which is my the biggest piece to date, which is about child abductees in Uganda. And that and so that was really challenge challenging. There are so many stories there. I encountered many people who were affected by that. That historical moment, moment is a very small word for it sorry, and I really had to evolve what is my relationship with the people whose stories I'm telling? What is my ethic of research and retelling and engaging with those kids who are now grown? Taught me a lot about non extractive research and about what I'm asking when I ask someone for their story, what I'm asking when they retell it to me, and it's like a very difficult part of their life. And then so now I have this story. Thank you so much. And what did that do for them at all? Really trying to consider those things. What is our contribution to the lived reality that we are fictionalising. And that is something that's evolved through the 54ology understanding of our responsibility to the source of our the need for us to make a meaningful contribution to the communities that we're deriving our stories from the need for to show them what we've done with what they've offered, and then also thinking about the shape of the story. You mentioned that there are so many collaborators and sometimes sometimes in the 54ology, it's a story about things unsaid and then I'm like, mmm, but I'm a sayer. That's that's mostly what I do is I say. So like, who are my choreographic collaborators that can help me to bring a different vocabulary to this and who are the musical composers and so on, or multi-media artists who can bring other vocabularies that I may not have into this? And then? And then how do I. How do how do I share what is inside of me in this of this story so that we move forward into it together? And how do we have a shared ethic of research? So I'm not a sound bitey person, so maybe this has become a diatribe, but 54 ology is so much about process to me.    Gabrielle [00:10:52] Yeah, right.    Donna-Michelle [00:10:53] And so much about like how the story calls to its form and and when I need to step up and when I need to step back in my narrative voice being a part of it. So I've learned so much through doing the 54 ology about different forms. And I feel like each new piece is an education. And there are and there is yet so much for me to learn. And I'm just really excited and really grateful to everyone who's contributed to it in all the ways.    Gabrielle [00:11:19] It's really beautiful how you articulated this ethic of research and retelling and how your process of building your own methods for non extractive research. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more to that. I know you talk about the after effects are like not just in, okay, you know, you're doing the research and you hear from people and hear their stories and create a work and then how does that work then exist in relation to them? I mean, you've spoken a bit about that. But yeah, I mean, this is such a kind of theme with, you know, with the PuSh festival wanting to put forward work that accelerates social change. So therefore often it's talking about or addressing situations that have a real impact of trauma in a lot of people's lives.    Donna-Michelle [00:12:15] Yes, I'm so interested in this, like and a strong part of what we've evolved through doing this work is an ethic of care for both the audience, both the artists and the audience and the folks whose stories we are telling. And and so what I referred to earlier about, like serving the most impacted or the most vulnerable, like, like it comes into play when someone someone gives you a story, "This this is a thing that happened to me and it was hard for it to happen and it is hard for me to tell you." And then if I if I were to take that away and go, "what a good story, so dramatic" and just tell it again and in the same way that I received it, the way that that would impact another person in the audience who has lived this experience, which I have not can be quite brutal. And I feel like often that brutality is excused by the courage of telling it raw, you know, which is something that is that's something that the performer or the creator wants, you know, or that might be something that's like titillating for an audience who will never be near to that experience. And so that's that's sort of a specific case study, though, of like, you know, who who's being served. Why am I telling this story? And I think that there can be a tendency to say, I'm doing a service by drawing awareness to this story, and it just isn't enough to be doing that. When when I draw awareness to this story, does that put money in the bank for the person whose story it is that I'm telling? Because it mostly doesn't, what does it do? Does it change the social environment they're operating in? Well, not if I'm out here bluntly and brutally saying their business to no end. Not if someone else is sitting there having not shared their story with me, feeling like I'm bluntly and brutally telling their business and feeling exposed that they're in the audience, who am I serving? I think that's such a big question. And then, too, the other aspect of care is, like all of my plays are going to ask the same question: How. How could you, how could we, how could they, how did this happen? How, why did this happen? How did this happen? How could you. (laughter). That's my question. So in order for us to tell a story in which we're like, where care has been absent or where harm has been done, that story cannot ethically come out of a rehearsal hall in which people are being treated brutally in order to achieve the perfection of the performance or in which people, people who are late because their children were puking in the morning are docked pay for the minutes that they're late. They can't work. That can't work. We can't we can't illustrate a care ethic without practising it and enacting it in a deep and meaningful way. So we cannot move into an abolitionist future if we are unforgiving of our collaborators in that movement. You know, so everything is everything is my point. That's Lauren Hill's point. I share her point.    Gabrielle [00:15:44] Nothing wrong with that acknowledging a good point. Thank you for framing your perspective, this perspective on creation and production so articulately. I want to know a little bit more about Sound The Beast and where it sits in relation to your other works. Because you are a prolific creator and a self-proclaimed word slinger, M.C, advocate and agitator. Yeah. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how this story has called into its form and its relationship in your wider practice.    Donna-Michelle [00:16:26] This play is quite unique in the 54ology and was quite a site of growth and challenge for me. So it is my first time writing a solo show and that that was a big learning. It was the first time when my work had my story in it. It was so hard, Gabrielle, it was so hard because it's just not my style and it's just not.    Gabrielle [00:16:56] A different beast.    Donna-Michelle [00:16:56] Yeah it's absolutely a different beast I'm not accustomed to. I mean, I've been writing these stories about the larger global phenomenon that create untenable situations for people. And so it's very difficult for me to say like, "Oh, it was so hard that time. They didn't let me do this show and I had to wait and do a different show a week later. Oh my God, my life is so hard' getting into that and, you know, acknowledging acknowledging my reality is valid to speak about. It was a thing. I also I was an M.C. before I was in theatre, and I came to theatre from that world and then sort of encountered a little bit of like, "That's cute that you do that. Could you put it down for a second and do this grown up art form?" That was the vibe. And, and so, you know, I rapped on the weekend and did grown up stuff during the week and, and I found my way back. So in this piece where I gave myself permission and also was supported by my colleagues and having permission to be to bring my full self into the theatre, into this formal space with my informal practice as an M.C and with my, my aesthetic, which is like a little sloppy, like, I want I just I don't ever want you to get comfortable with me as like a clean person that's like, safe to have around kids unsupervised. Oh, my God, I shouldn't say that. But you know what I mean. I want you to get the idea that... Lena Waithe there's this thing that I'm obsessed with about her haircut. She's got, like, shaved, shaved down the sides, and then, like, a, you know, a little bit of dreadlock come on down the side or I'm sorry, they don't see dreadlocks anymore. So she's got locks coming down the side. I'm old, I'm adjusting. And and she did an interview about it once and she said, I realise I'm going to butcher this quote, but paraphrasing she said, "I realised that even though everyone knew that I was a queer black woman, that I was in a room sometimes where people were comfortable with me being there. And that is not my role to be someone that is comfortable to have in the room." And I was like, Lena, let me go shave my head. Let me never make people feel that they should, that I'm there for comfort. I'm here for discomfort and not here to... While I do want people, I do want to enact care for audiences and collaborators and everyone, I'm not here for you to be at your ease. That's not my function. And so in order to do that, I'm also stepping very much into my own discomfort and in this performance. Bringing hip hop into the theatre, not as a trick and not as a like, boom pow concert. Like, I'm not I'm not trying to do Beyoncé-esque look, I'm trying to show you what my reality is as a hip hop artist in this community, we perform in small spaces. We perform in dirty spaces. Sometimes people throw bottles, you know? That's my reality. We perform at protests against police brutality. Like that's where my work lives, that's what it's for. It's not for, it's not for going platinum. As if that was an option that I declined. But it's not for that. It's for being in spaces of resistance. And that is my function. And so feeling that being able to bring that into a formal space, like a theatre where like you arrive on time and the show definitely starts at this time. And what is this? This is this not this is not very me. And and then there's a stage manager like. They're always there. They're always like, they never go to the bathroom during your song and forget to play the next track, which is what they do at clubs. Whole different situation. So in Sound of the Beast, I am I am at a nexus of ease and effort for myself and for the audience. I can tell you some stories that are easy to digest, and then I just need you to stay with me through some stuff that maybe isn't. And I'm going to try to create an environment where you trust me enough to come there with me.    Gabrielle [00:21:19] Sound of the Beast: here for the discomfort, and the ease, and the ease. We're super excited to have this work as part of the 2024 Push Festival. Thank you so much for chatting with me, inviting folks into your practice a little bit more and and for agreeing to be part of this 2024 festival. This is an incredible work. You know, it's such a treat when you from the get go of a performance experience, you just know you're in really good hands and, you know, that's that's this work for sure. So thanks Donna Michelle.    Donna-Michelle [00:21:56] Thank you so much. I appreciate it, I appreciate this time with you.    Ben [00:22:02] That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. My name is Ben Charland, and I'm one of the producers of this podcast, along with Tricia Knowles. PuSh Play is supported by our community outreach coordinator, Julian Legere. Original Music from Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PUSH International Performing Arts Festival, visit, pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @PuShFestival. And on the next "PuSh Play:"    Nellie Gossen [00:22:35] When we were talking about care practices of of was turning towards or building capacity building muscle to turn towards experiences that are really challenging, to turn towards suffering, to turn towards complexity and to try to build spaces to to hold that complexity in whatever other container. It all creates more space for us to think.
Ep. 3 - PLI: Locating humanity in risk and imperfection
16-11-2023
Ep. 3 - PLI: Locating humanity in risk and imperfection
Inbal Ben Haim discusses the theatrical power of creating danger onstage. PLI runs Feb 2nd-3rd at Push Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Inbal Ben Haim, the Israeli circus artist behind PLI. They discuss how Inbal’s work draws connections between the intimate and the spectacular, what defines a work as “circus,” the power and originality of imperfection, and more. Co-presented with Chutzpah! Festival. Here's what Gabrielle and Inbal discuss: How does this production and Inbal's work draw connections between the intimate and spectacular?What defines a work as "circus"? How do we define today’s circus?=What is spectacular today?How can physical limitation create new avenues for artistic discovery and exploration? Is injury an accidental antidote to our culture of machinelike perfectionism?The power and originality of imperfection.What is the therapeutic circus?What does it mean to work with paper as a material object, and to be manipulated by it in return? About Inbal Ben Haim Born in Jerusalem in 1990, Inbal Ben Haim grew up in the Israeli countryside. After studying visual arts, she discovered the circus in 2004 at the Free Dome Project then the Shabazi Circus. The call of heights and creating with her body led her to specialize first in the static trapeze, then the rich minimalism of the aerial rope.In 2011 she left her homeland to follow her artistic path in France, furthering her research through important artistic encounters and training: first at the Centre Régional des Arts du Cirque PACA – Piste d’Azur, then the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in Châlons-en-Champagne, from which she graduated in December 2017 (29th graduating class). In Summer 2018, she premiered Racine(s) (Root(s)), which developed from her meeting the musician, composer, and arranger David Amar and the director Jean Jacques Minazio. At the same time, she developed a teaching method for therapeutic circus and worked in various contexts in Israel and France. By blending circus, dance, theatre, improvisation, and visual arts, Ben Haim has created her own form of poetic expression. Largely inspired by the human bond made possible by the stage, the ring, and the street, she aims to create strong connections between the audience and the artist, the intimate and the spectacular, the earth and air, and the here and there. Land Acknowledgement Inbal joins the podcast from Paros, Greece. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin. PuSh's director of programming. And today's episode highlights a different kind of strength in the context of circus. I'm speaking with Inbal Ben Haim, who created the concept, directed and performs in Pli. Pli is being presented at the PuSh Festival February 2nd to 3rd, 2024. Between flesh and raw material, the ground and the air in Pli, we dive into a landscape that is continually built, torn down and rebuilt. Layer by layer, the body and the paper travel together in a fragment of our changing world. Inbar blends circus, dance, theatre, improvisation and visual arts to create her own form of poetic expression. The call of heights and creating with her body led her to specialise first in the static trapeze, then the rich minimalism of the aerial rope. In 2011, she left Israel to follow her artistic path in France, training at the Centre National des Arts du Cirques. I'm excited for you to hear a discussion that highlights her unique interdisciplinary approach. Here is my conversation with Inbal. I just want to start by acknowledging that I am here on the ancestral unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh). It's an absolute privilege to be here as a settler. And I am speaking with you Inbal and where are you?    Inbal [00:01:30]  Hey. So I'm really happy to have this contact for this talk. At the moment I'm in Paros, which is a Greek island, but actually my home base is in the south of France and my origins comes from Israel. So as you can see, as many circus artists, we are a little bit all over.    Gabrielle [00:01:53] I'm sure that that also informs your practice. And you have a very rich interdisciplinary practice with many sources of inspiration. And I'm going to get right into asking you about that and about how you approach Pli. So you describe yourself as a circus artist whose work creates strong connections between the intimate and the spectacular. And when I saw your work for the first time, I was struck by how the spectacular moments unfold through a quiet exploration of your body in relation to material. And your work is also interdisciplinary, for Pli you collaborated with visual artist and paper engineer Alexis Mérat and visual artist and set designer Domitille Martin. And considering all these aspects of your practice, what defines your work as circus? Like still, you define your work as circus, and can you tell us about that?    Inbal [00:02:43] I think in a way it's that's the question of how do we define today's circus, the contemporary circus, the creation circus. We have lots of definitions of modern or even classical circus before. But for me, and it's a very, very personal definition, I define circus as a place of meeting and connecting. Today we see that all boundaries between arts forms, but not only art forms, about practices, about some cultures, like, as I said, I'm coming from Israel, I'm living in France, but at the moment I'm in Greece. We have all those connections of places, cultures, practices. And for me, circus is a place where things can meet and gather together. And there is a place for everything. There is a place for dance, there is a place for music, there is a place for theatre, there is a place for sports and sport practice. I think it's for me it's a little bit the heritage that we have also from the traditional circus. You know, it was a place where there was a space for kinds of weird stuff, some people or phenomenons that didn't found their place in society in different places, or people just doing very exceptional things that weren't yet inside the discipline of I am doing vertical rope or I'm doing trapeze. People were just very exposing a very exceptional abilities, and those were the places that people gathered around. So for me, it's a little bit of heritage that I take from traditional circus, but in out these days and for me a circus, it's a place where all those things can meet in an engaged way. Still, I think what something which is very important for me is the engagement of the body, whatever that means. We can we can ask what it means also. But yes, So first of all, for me, a circus, it's a meeting point, it's a circle point. So that's one thing. And of course, what interests me is how to combine a technique of climbing on aerial movement with bands, with martial arts, with fine arts and visual arts, with improvisation, with the inner work, as these things are touching so many aspects. And the second thing, what you said about the field where I'm working is somewhere between the spectacular and the intimate. It brings me to ask what is spectacular today or what's what's in the circus artists bring us to to want to share with the public because we have our abilities. You know, we kind of we learn so much, we train so much. We're a kind of superheroes in our body, like, you know, like a very athletes, a strong, flexible. We we work all our life for that. But then finally, when  what we come what I want and people in my project and also people around me we come on stage or to make art and what what do we want to share the we want to share this kind of superhero that we are or the very human that we are. And this place between being very, very human like everybody and also have this a little bit superhuman abilities. This is something that I found really interesting because it's open possibilities. In one time, it can make lots of them a very close empathy and connection with the public because we're the same we we want to share our vulnerability. We want to share how we're also fragilities or some moments which are fragile or some moments where we are uncertain. We just we don't want to share just "look at this. I am perfect." Like a little bit older circus can have this style. We use those tools, but we want to you to share something which is profoundly human and that connects people. So for me, in a way, this is the contemporary spectacular to being able already in our society where also fragility is still like a kind of taboo. We need also in our daily life, we need to be kind of perfect, perfect a bit, the machine being very functional and everything. So how can we bring something which is so superhuman but then sometimes so much human and we can build the bridge between those two things?    Gabrielle [00:08:35] Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I find your work so exciting, because it is reframing what we would expect from circus or maybe some kind of traditional expectations around what, yeah, what is spectacular and seeing bodies doing things that we could never imagine ourselves doing, which is still can be beautiful for metaphors of surpassing our limitations, but also often creates this distance between the performer and the audience and, and, and just maybe limits the kind of range of of expression within the form, within the discipline.    Inbal [00:09:15] You know, you can you can think about spectacular hour, like doing a triple Salto and you can think about spectacular about climbing on paper. What do I share when I do a triple Salto? I share lots of things. When I do a triple Salto, it's I don't diminuate. What do I share in this situation and what do they share in this situation? They are both spectacular.    Gabrielle [00:09:40] And that kind of brings me into this next question I have for you, because you've shared that your work became more interesting when a part of your body was injured and then healed, than when it was perfect, and that it's in this kind of vulnerability that I find a different strength. And I think this is especially liberating in the circus context, which is usually obsessed with perfection. And you've spoken about this a bit, you know, the kind of relationship with the body that's a machine or with how we're living our lives as being machine like and having these expectations. And you talk about the process of embracing this different strength. So can you explain a little bit more about that and how this informs your work?    Inbal [00:10:23] Of course. So I start from the very personal stories that when I was in a circus school in France, so I was really like I was realising my dream being a circus school and I was really training so hard and don't listening to my body so much about needing... Yeah, you know, when we are in circus school we are like "aaahh" and it's, it's amazing also. And then I got injured quite seriously. I broke the cartilage of my shoulder in a way that I was really needed an operation. So I stopped. I waited for the operation. I did all the physiotherapy and all this process was like one year and a half in which I couldn't hang on my right shoulder at all. And this is I was doing a vertical rope or aerial dance. And, you know, it's a quite dramatic to say for an aerial artist, you cannot hang on your shoulder like, this is my base tool, ike people are walking, I'm hanging. I had two choices. One choice was to stop, to make a big stop and not working on the for all the time of this injury. What's the circus school proposed me to do is said, "okay, you can go back to Israel and you come back when you're healed." And the other option which I choose was to continue coming and to continue working and see what can I do differently or what is possible even inside the situation. Because still it was like my shoulders, but I have also the rest of my body. And for me, mentally speaking, it was not possible to stop because when we stop, this is not also only body impact. There is lots of psychological and mental impacts and we should talk about more about that, what are the mental impacts of injury and circus or of this seeking of perfection also? So I didn't have these beautiful ideas of, yes, I will do things differently. I just was I must come back to the studio day after day, because if not, I got depressed and then I come and I cannot hang. So I must search other things, you know? So it came from a really need of very basically things. So I started searching and seeing, how can I move differently? Can I hang, you know, very practically, can I hang from different parts of my body, which is not the the shoulders? Can I hang from my knees? Can I hang from my toes? Can I can how can I work with the rope without hanging? How can I work with the objects? Maybe the rope doesn't must be hanged. Maybe I can work with it differently. You know, I was really. I had, like, one year and a half. I must do something. So I needed to find other things. And at that moment, I also came back to my background in dance and in the fine arts, because I was doing cinema and the visual arts in my high school. My mother is a fine artist, so I had some like really, I had the chance, I had some more tools. So I said, okay, I cannot hang? Can I, can I can I drop with the rope? Okay. The rope is a line. Can I draw with it? Can I can I open a old rope and see what there is inside and try to start? And, you know, and I had this freedom because I was in the frame of circus school, and still I could do whatever, not whatever I wanted but finally I found it's like a very big chance that I were I was not able to do what everybody do. And that was a tragedy for me at the moment. I was like, "Oh, I am going to lose all my dream of being a professional circus artist or being in superior school. I just do my small stuff." Then as of today, I said like, "Wow, had so much luck that I was not able to do what everybody do because it's the highway, you know, you do you, you, you do your training, you do your figures, You do what everybody do in Instagram that you saw from da-da-da then to go to the audition to... And there is very small possibilities to go beside because it's not on our what we said "ah, this is valuable" and in this way I found it so much richness and from the moment that I acknowledged this, this that's "okay. This is by having a limitation. This is by having an imperfection thing." I found something which is so valuable and it is a much more unique. And, you know, I invented like a new technique for rope. Invented, I developed that I think you saw in the scene, which is like the knitting rope. I never saw someone doing it. Maybe someone is doing it else in the world. And actually it comes from the research that I couldn't hang, so I was needed to be sitting on or having my weight in different parts and not just hanging on my hands. And that made me develop a whole new technique that finally everybody were interesting at that, much more than if I was doing my pirouette on the rope. So like, okay, wow, it's I thought I'm the like the worst in the class. But finally, everybody want to see those new things. This made me a lot of changing my point of view of of what is this seeking of perfection? Because perfection is we want to be like someone else that we see. This is like a little bit some kind of copy paste process. We I'm sorry if this is my very point of view, but we are never perfect. We are a human. Like the fact that we are unique as as a persons makes that we are not perfect. And this is through our places of break and perfect of non-perfections that we have our very special offer that we can bring to art, to the world, to our body, to circus. And I'm working with a student. She's handicapped in one arm and she's doing rope. We are like about to invent a new way to do rope. So it's non perfection. This handicap make like open amazing field of inventing and finding some new stuff. This is the moment I said, okay, perfection is really nice. Like, you know, society do it so much good for so long. But actually what's art bring what's what's make us some empathy or connection is the places that we are not perfect.    Gabrielle [00:18:14] And original, right but unique, you know, demonstrating an expression that's unique to to who we are and who we are in our full selves. And I think definitely in order to make circus more diverse and more accessible, because there's often a critique that it's not very diverse, because if we're if to us circus means a form where people are doing a certain level of acrobatics and have a gymnastics base, well not everybody has that training from a very young age. And if that's how we define circus, then it doesn't leave room for other forms of exploration that ultimately, I think, adds so much to the form. And I think it's really interesting because there's relatively few circus artists in Canada with in comparison to the amount of work that exists for circus arts. When you compare it to other disciplines like dance, where there's a lot more dancers compared to how much paid work that is for dancers in this country. And so I think what happens is there's a lot of validation that circus artists can receive and also a livelihood which is incredibly necessary and important. And at the same time, I think means that there's less incentive often for circus artists to explore in a way that's really different from those and an expression of circus that aligns with what will sell and what will get work and what will provide a more immediate validation. I want to know, though, about your therapeutic circus, because I know that you've developed a teaching method for therapeutic circus. And yeah, to me, therapeutic and circus don't don't come together based on my own experience as a circus artist in the past. So I'm really curious about about your work there.    Inbal [00:20:12] First of all, I must say, I'm not a therapist. I'm I'm not I don't have this studies, but I was working actually started when I was doing my civil service in Israel in a boarding school with youth at risk. And it was already a moment that I did circus for a few years. But I was very interesting about social work and all kinds of impact that we can bring to society and to people's life. And I noticed that when I do Circus just with the kids that I was working with, they were going through many things. Like if I was doing lots of like a hand, not hand to hand, but acro yoga or acro porter what we call in France. So they needed to trust me. And if in the beginning they didn't trust me so little by little, that's what the trust has built between us. Just because they give me their weights and their hands and they know that if I will drop like, if I will not hold them, they will drop. But if they will not hold me, I will drop. So there is like this very equal relationship. Or when I proposed them to do some rope, it was very, very basic things. But I saw them going through their fear and being able to be there for with with them and going through this fear with them and finally getting somewhere, which is so valuable because, you know, like youth at risk, they used to have, you're not used to hear... You're not good at that. You're not good at school. Your family is problematic. You know, so many problems. And suddenly they do something that other people in school don't do or, you know, something which is exceptional. So to see how what's the impact of this on their values, on some psychological, more point of view or on that than dynamic in a group of doing like a pyramid together. So being able to collaborate and to listen to everybody and to do the same thing, the same movement, to throw someone on the air at the same time, you know, some listening that you can do only from the body. I saw the impacts because I was there guide, daily guide at the boarding school. So I saw, okay, so now with the surface, they trust me more. So when I come to wake them up and I said, Listen, you should wake up. So this is like, okay, I believe you. It's going to be a good day today, maybe. I saw I saw very personal impacts inside. So this is something that I wanted to develop with my partner at the time. And slowly, slowly I started to work to develop some workshops that use circus as a tool or for those kinds of things, for confidence, for going through fears, for having dealing with failure or with success and value a situation. Also everybody in society, I think it is something which is so common. We all fail, we all afraid first and we all react in some ways when we are afraid, we all have issues with confidence, like it's very human, all that, but especially for like a special Publix as a boarding school, Youth at Risk Psychiatric Hospital, where I worked a lot these days in France, I'm doing a project in a jail nearby Paris. I think what is interesting is that the fact that we are not doing a therapy, what a circus. It's fun. It's fun. And this is like really nice at the end when we get to do that, this exercise and actually not a lot of work, we can do really beautiful things. And on the way, going through group dynamics, getting with fear. So this is something that I feel circus can really bring to society and to everybody's life, even without being a circus artist or even without being just a public. You know, we all have a body. We all work with weights, we all work with different people. How does those things combined together that can make us have new experiences and what can it teach us on our life and makes us the possibility to act differently? With our bodies and with those subjects in our life. Finally.    Gabrielle [00:25:23] In Pli, you work with paper and you've talked about how the paper manipulates you as much as you manipulate it. And while working in duality with objects is common practice for circus artists, working with a material like paper is not. And can you expand on the process of creating with this material its dramaturgy and finding balance with it?    Inbal [00:25:43] Maybe I start and what I told you before, what what I mean, the fact that the paper manipulates me because we can imagine about like what is to manipulate a tool or apparatus in circus like balls, like clubs, like she will like even rope. But what it means is that the objects impact me and that I need to adapt myself to the objects. So this is what I told you before. That paper that we use in Pli. It is never the same from one performance to another. The paper on which I am climbing on. It's combined from many paper bands. It's very impacted, in fact, by many creatures like the humidity of the space because paper is like sponging humidity or having very dried space because of like the warming of the of the space. What is the height? So how much a place it takes in the air? How did it how did we build it on stage as we are building it on stage? Maybe one day we were a little bit stressed, so there was a little bit different how we arrange it on the space and so on. The paper is different from one performance to another, which must makes me very, very attentive and very in the in the constant listening to the paper because it's such a fragile and non evident material to go on because it can break. It's not that we found like an unbreakable paper and we're working with it now. We do break it and you know, I'm climbing and breaking it in the same time. So for having this balance between resistance and breaking and fragility, I must be in a very listening all the time and I need to adapt myself. If one place is already a little bit start breaking, I know I cannot hold it anymore. I need to find another place to put my weight or to go above. And I'm all the time in this reading of the situation and kind of improvising with some tools that I know, but kind of adapting myself all the time. And actually this is the paper that tells me, what can I do and what can I not do? So I need to listen. And and sometimes it's really like that for the sound because I felt like *rip* okay, here I can, okay, like, here I put weight, okay, I can go. This is something that not happened, like when I came back to work on the cotton rope. So, like, wow, it's so funny. It doesn't speaks to me. Like, how can I dialogue with. It's like, talk to me, Dude. It was weird? Like someone It's like it's a monologue and not the dialogue. And I go to used to this dialogue. This bring me some to to to some thoughts of the dramaturge artists in Europe in in Belgium that her name is Bauke Lievens. So she's talking about the way that we use objects and apparatus in the circus is very connected to the way that we use object in our occidental society. Like mostly we create objects to our service to make humans more powerful, more comfortable, more easy to make stuff like the objects are here for our service. And in a way, we we can see that many times. Also, when circus like I go on the rope for being in the air. What? What is more important? Me being on the air or the rope? You know, this is a little bit our relationship with this is quite sad, but with nature today, this in a very general way. The society we take, we use nature for our needs. We use trees for our to build. We use rocks to build our house. We use petrol to for our cars. We we have this thing of "how can I use it, how can it be for my use?" And this is kind of a very specific relationship between humans and our environment. And I feel with what we do with this work of paper that I cannot do whatever I want. If I will do whatever I want, I will, I will fall. This is the end of the game, you know? So if I want to be in this relationship, which is quite fragile, I must listen more than talk. I must ask the paper. Okay. What can I do today? I must said, "I think I would do that, oh, no, finally not. I do another thing." Finally. You know, the paper is also much bigger than me. With the lights, it's much more beautiful. It's have such a big place that I want to give him this place. I don't want to be. Hey, this is the paper. He is just here for me that I will climb. Now I want to resonate on this value and this this space. And to see that it is possible to create a new relationship, which is much more based on listening, about dialogue. I think this is, in a way, what I feel that we bring with Pli and the paper work.    Gabrielle [00:31:57] Absolutely. And I think there's a quote from your collaborator, Alexis Mérat, where she says, "The search for balance is the place where we examine our relationship to ourselves and the world," as I think that encapsulates a lot of what you've just spoken to. I'm so looking forward, so much looking forward to welcoming you and your team and Pli at the 2024 PuSh Festival February 2nd to 3rd at the Playhouse. It will be a beautiful space to to showcase and yeah really highlight this beautiful work. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.    Inbal [00:32:33] Thank you, Gabrielle. I'm really up to that. So happy to come to Vancouver and to meet the local community and the circus community and the PuSh Festival.  Gabrielle [00:32:46] PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles and supported by our incredible community outreach coordinator, Julian Legere. New episodes with Gabrielle Martin are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, please visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @PuShFestival
Ep. 2 - The Runner: Seeding compassion with human dilemmas
13-11-2023
Ep. 2 - The Runner: Seeding compassion with human dilemmas
Christopher Morris discusses the humanizing power of narrative. The Runner runs Jan 24th-26th at PuSh Festival. Show Notes Gabrielle Martin chats with Christopher Morris, artistic director of Human Cargo and writer of The Runner. Urgent, visceral and complex, The Runner invites us into a nuanced exploration of our shared humanity and the value of kindness. Co-presented with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs and Touchstone Theatre. Here are some of the topics that Gabrielle and Christopher approach: How do you create theatre about the extremes in the human condition, which are potentially traumatic, while avoiding sensationalism or exploitation of extremes?How important is it to trust impulses in the creative project?What role does this production and Christopher’s theatre serve in society?Where did the concept for The Runner originate?How did Christopher tackle research?Is there an underlying optimism or cynicism in Christopher’s work?How do you make theatre that could only exist onstage? About Human Cargo Human Cargo is a Toronto-based theatre company mandated to the creation, production and touring of new theatrical works. Founded in 2007 by artistic director Christopher Morris, Human Cargo creates innovative, theatrical experiences that provide audiences with a safe environment to engage in a thorough and provocative discussion of ideas. We collaborate with theatre artists and companies in Canada, and around the world, to create our work. We develop our plays over long periods, in the countries and communities the play is set in, and present these productions in Canada and the places they were developed. To date, Human Cargo has worked in Nunavut, Iceland, Greenland, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Republic of Georgia, CFB Petawawa, Montréal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Central African Republic. We’ve presented our work in English, Inuktitut, Icelandic and Dari. Committed to removing the geographic/financial/cultural barriers between potential audiences and our work, we implement a touring/presentation model that reaches out to a new generation of viewing public. We believe this is the only way to engage 21st Century audiences in Toronto, Canada and the World. Land Acknowledgement Christopher joins from Tiohtià:ke, or Montreal, unceded Indigenous territory and a gathering place for many indigenous nations cared for by the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, custodians of the lands and waters. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:01] Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, PuSh's Director of Programming. And today's episode highlights the theatrical treatment of the extremes of the human condition. I'm speaking with Christopher Morris about his work, The Runner, which is being presented at PuSh Festival January 24th-26th 2024. The Runner takes us on a journey of self-evaluation, questioning the merit of actions, the nature of humans and the value of kindness in a divisive world. Christopher is an actor, playwright and director and the artistic director of the Toronto based theatre company Human Cargo. I am excited for you to hear a discussion that highlights his practice and extensive research. Here's my conversation with Christopher, who is joining me from Tiohtià:ke or Montreal, unceded Indigenous territory and a gathering place for many indigenous nations cared for by the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, custodians of the lands and waters. I'm going to dive right into these questions because I'm very much curious to hear what you have to say about your work, your practice and The Runner. My first question to you is, you know, you create theatre that explores the extremes of the human condition. And what do you find to be key in the treatment of experiences that are potentially traumatic? So how do you avoid sensationalism or exploitation of these extreme situations? Christopher [00:01:30] I think the first thing and it's this is always a a tricky thing to navigate. I feel like a lot of my work goes out into corners of the world or communities that I'm not a part of. It's not what I've been brought up in. So I always find it's an interesting balance to trust the impulses that I have. The initial impulse for an idea for a project. One path could be: I doubt all the impulses because they're wrong or I don't belong to even consider a thought like that or an impulse like that. But on the other hand, you can't just have freewheeling impulses and do whatever you want. So I feel that the first step is that I do my best to trust just as a pure artistic person. Trust what interests me artistically about something or the, the potential of what an artistic impulse would bring. I trust that if something excites me, I feel it, it's an interesting thing to pursue. And then I feel like the next step is to constantly from the very beginning and throughout all of the process, very harshly examine and skewer, tear apart, look under every rock; why I had that kind of impulse, why I'm moving towards something. Because obviously, I've been brought up a certain way, just naturally the way I've been brought up in Markham, Ontario, going to Queen's University and living in Toronto and being a white man. That that I cannot deny what that is and it can have potentially negative influences in the way I go about the world that I'm completely unaware of. And I'm aware that that can colour impulses like this. So it's these incremental steps of like trusting it and then to thoroughly examine why I want to explore something like that, why and to find the potential negative things and maybe and why I want to explore something, the biases I have or and also to I think I think like this all the way through. From the second I get an idea for something till after we've premiered it and we're about to bring it to the PuSh festival. It's a constant examination and evaluation of why we're doing this, what the point of this is. And equally, I always approach these projects thinking that at any moment we can kill it. We're not bound to do it or to complete it. It is a long, ongoing pursuit and we may hit times where we feel that we've arrived at a place or gone down a path that it's not right or, you know, artistically, but also ethically or morally or... And I always have that in the back of the mind that we can kill it. And that kind of enables me to, without pressure, go through it properly and and always be aware. So those are kind of like the ethical overalll things that that I think about as I'm working through when it gets to content. I want to do plays that are about human beings and about human relations and how complicated it is to be a human and how to live in the world. I kind of I'm not really interested in theatre that's intellectual debating and that it's more of a visceral, emotional, living experience that that's kind of where where my my taste in theatre is. I love it. I love that. So with that in mind. When we arrive at, let's say, a play like The Runner. It's set in Israel. It's about a group of religious volunteers that collect the remains of Jews who are killed, who meet an early death, be it killed or a car accident or however it happens. And they collect the remains to give them to the family for burial. So. What, what is always interesting on stage to me in theatre is and what influenced the research I did on it when I was talking to guys who did this work and like is what I would ask them, "when is it difficult for you" or "when is there when is there a contradiction for you in your work? Like, where's the problem for you to do this work? What's the problem? What's the problem?" And that that's what I was always interested in. And then it becomes about a human problem, a singular solo, one person dilemma that, that belongs to them and who they are. And if if that's it, if another person was put into that situation, they would have a different approach to it. It may not be a dilemma. So it's very specific singular dilemmas that, that people have where where it's a dilemma, a human dilemma. And that to me is where I find interesting writing. When I'm writing a character, it's these dilemmas that are that are great material for drama, live, live drama. And when it gets that singular, it it helps to push aside any sensationalist tendencies that one would put on stage because it doesn't actually serve the human singular dilemma. It's, it doesn't help. Because I always remember to where I would I, you know, talk to these men. They'd tell me these extraordinary stories, like unbelievable crazy situations that they found themselves in, like out of this world. And I'd I'd hear it, but I'd go that that might be good for 8 minutes on stage. But then what? Like it doesn't do anything. It doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't serve their human dilemma. Not unless the extraordinary story they were talking about was about the situation that caused them the problem. Then it's worth it. Then, then it to me it deserves real estate in my play. Otherwise, it's just an interesting story. It's nonsense. It's just... it's it's phenomenal, but it can't be used. There's no use to it. That that helps to kind of keep,m keep it from things being sensationalised because it doesn't it doesn't serve. It doesn't serve. But even then, if you get a singular story that that is serving the dilemma of the character and, and it is solely their perspective and their their context. And I feel for me as a writer, I need to step back and understand what it means to present that context and really think about who am I presenting this, this world view, their singular worldview to and why and how and what am I putting around it, and am I am I satisfied personally with hearing their solo singular view? Is is that good enough for what actually, I want to also say about the situation that they're in, and I find a lot of the times it's not, it's not enough for me because I'm kind of in the middle going, "I don't want my play to be a vehicle for solely to serve their singular worldview." That's, that's not what I'm... I'm not writing it for them. But I always take what is what I hear, what is being written and I make sure that I present it clearly, honestly, with as much dignity and compassion as possible. But also, I feel it's important for me as a writer and a human being to bring my point of view and feelings to the table. And then again, it gets to that point where it's like, "well, who are you to to be able to be putting your point of view forward? Why should your point of view be putting forward?" And it's a constant, it's a constant battle and debate. And when things arrive at the point when it's going to be getting a state, a rehearsal ready draft of a script, where you are actually going to be like really doing this, throughout all the process of creating, but even then, even especially then, I always make sure I have people that who are related to the project, who are outside of the artistic work, who are from the community or other views that I always share the work with to go "ehh... what do you think? Is this..." Like I identify problems that I think could be problematic or I'm uncertain about, and I always get other other views in it. Because equally as an artist, when you're kind of pushing down, you're going down that path to push towards opening, you can just say, okay, enough, I just want to like finish the script and let's go. And that that's also a dangerous period where you just have to always step back, get different views, you know, And it's important who the who they are, who those people are. But yeah, it's a constant. It's a constant, I don't know, awareness and process and unearthing and examination over time. Gabrielle [00:12:18] Clearly you've thought about this. Clearly, you're a professional of many years thinking about this. And I'm hearing that there's a real criticality, you know, within your own process thinking about that, even though you're a writer, you're also a dramaturg and thinking about how this work will land and ties into a question I was going to ask in a bit, which is about the role that your theatre, theatre serves in society. But I'm also hearing the necessity of having complex and specific dilemmas, and I want to know a bit more about the research because I know that writing the Runner involved years of indepth research with Z.A.K.A members in Israel over several years. How did the concept evolve over time and as a result, when you went in with an idea about what this, what The Runner would be and what we're going to see at PuSh, is there a big difference or has it...? Yeah, can you talk about that? Christopher [00:13:23] Originally I first heard about Z.A.K.A when I was in high school. I heard a news report on CBC about these guys picking up body parts after a bombing in Jerusalem. And it was just so extraordinary. And I thought, "wow", it always stuck with me. And I thought as I got older, I thought, "wow, I wonder if this would be a play or..." But then it seems so obscure. What is the play? What the hell would a play be about this? Like it? So when I initially said, okay, I'm going to I'm going to go for this, I'm going to do this, I had an initial concept of, okay, there would be some kind of event that occurs, negative event maybe. And I thought, I'll go to Israel, I'll meet people, maybe something will occur while I'm there because I went for like five weeks or six weeks. And if that's the case, and I'm already connected with the Z.A.K.A volunteers, I could maybe explore the event that occurs and research and tell the story of how everyone got to that moment and their back stories and kind of bring it to this moment and see what brought them all together at that moment. That was my initial kind of instinct from that from my first trip, it became very clear that it was a very strange pursuit because A.) It's insulting to think that, I'm going to go there and think something bad is going to happen. That's that's not cool to think that about. It's just not cool. It's not cool. And then also the circumstances in which I thought I would find myself in a situation, I just I found it just a very odd frame of thinking for this, which rapidly went away the second I was there, because the situation was much different, and I realised that it's just it's not, it's not good. But what it did do was it got me there and it made me go. And then I was able to quickly let go of it, which was amazing. But what I found though is there were like threads that that continued throughout that that influenced the writing. So part of me thought I don't just want to focus on the Israeli perspective. I thought it would be interesting to see what life is like in the occupied territories. I thought it'd be good to kind of see what that is all about. So I went in being very open to everything and just wanting to understand and let it all just come in and then to let it see where it will go. So over a bunch of time, a few years and after a few visits that the the premise for the, the play there was going to be a bunch of characters in it. There was you know, it was all it was going to be in reality, like in a very real realistic state. And I had written drafts like that, and they all felt horrible. Like they they just they weren't good. They weren't it wasn't good writing. So I went back because I always had an instinct that it would be highly theatrical in some way. Sometimes I think very visually when when I get inspirations to write, like I think I imagine there's all these... if something exploded and it's all hanging in the air around someone and he's in it and it's all suspended or something. So my mind kept going to that kind of an impulse. And I thought, well, a single person and a theatrical expression of it. And I brought Daniel Brooks or asked and he agreed to work on the on the piece years ago. And he was with me working on it for about four years or so until we opened. And he, I brought him to Israel at one point about a year before we premiered it, just to kind of be there with him and get into the world with him and share the worlds that I was getting into with him. And he gave me this really great advice. He always kind of knew how to, to ask this very random question that unlocks things. And I remember he said one day in Israel, "just go. Go off and write. Write ten pages of free flow of consciousness. Like, just whatever comes. It can be anything. A poem, however, comes out. There's no judgement. Just let a free flowing kind of thing occur. Just write ten pages." And he's like, "it never has to go in the script or go on stage. It's, it's exercise." And from that, it it created the form of what this play now this singular man in the state of existence that that that he's trying he doesn't know what state he's in, what's going on around him. And it was from that and it it kind of touched deeply into these initial instincts of of it being theatrical and in a state of of unrest that can't be defined. And so it's sometimes there is a weird loop where it started with these initial instincts went all the way through all these different variations and then kind of back again. But what that did as well was equally that the container for the play allowed a more rigorous discussion and pursuit of ideas that at the core of of the play that that I think and having a one person format allowed a more richer discussion of of the the dilemmas that that that were with the character. So yeah it took many trips there it took a lot of throwing things out. I'm always asking advice from different people that I know in organisations. I'm always I it's important for me to hear views that I don't agree with normally or I wouldn't agree with, or it's necessary to hear them out, to contemplate it and just examine it thoroughly. And I feel like all the trips there, the people I'm meeting and then this, this theatrical framework allowed it to kind of become... in the form that it that it's in now. Gabrielle [00:20:18] Your work examines what happens to us when we're pushed toward spiritual, moral and emotional limits. Is it also infused with an underlying optimism or cynicism about humanity? Have you become more optimistic or sceptical about human nature as a result of your project's research? Christopher [00:20:35] The longer I live on the earth, the more it feels like there is no answer to anything. There's, there's no... Nothing's defined. Nothing. Nothing's right. Nothing's wrong. It's just. I think that's a that's... for me that that would be a pursuit of folly there. It does not exist in the world. I feel that's where I'm arriving at more that the world is just complicated and sometimes we do really bad things and the greatest people can do bad things, and sometimes the worst people can do the best things. And. It's just complicated. I feel that more and more, and I think there are structures that exist in the world, for example, wealthy countries, I think we've, we've developed a structure that allows us to have everything we have at the detriment and on the backs of the less wealthier countries in the world and the less... and we we thrive in that and I thrive in it. And I can be aware of it and know it's wrong and at the same time not give up anything or just continue to exist in it. I find these things are, these types of truths and known realities are are just more aware. I'm more aware of them now and the contradictions of them. But yeah, I think there are there are structures set up that are always going to be a problem, and I don't think they're going to go away. But I equally believe that the pursuit to exist against them and to pursue a life against it has value. Even though it may not take down, take it down. The pursuit is meaningful. It is the pursuit that has meaning. Just two weeks ago or last week, I was in Israel again and a colleague there brought me to the protests that are happening, the anti-judicial protests. You know, 120,000 people were out that day. They've been protesting every week against the government's plan to help that the government is trying to erode the democratic state that's there. And for like I can't remember how many weeks now I think it's 35 weeks, they've been protesting in large numbers on the streets. One may look and go, well, are you going to stop the government from from doing that? Because the government is in charge. They're going to do what they want to do. You can't stop it. You can't stop it. Literally. But. There's value to the pursuit. There's value. And maybe I don't live there. I don't know what the end goal will be, and nor will I say what the end the best end goal should be. I have no idea. But I recognise. That there is meaning in the in the pursuit. And maybe that is the value that that is the value is the act of the pursuit, because it builds something and it will build on it. It'll, it'll build. But yeah, I kind of exist in these kinds of places. More and more I'm am, but I'm not necessarily pessimistic about human human nature. I feel if I think of the bad stuff that we do as people, I just feel I'm more sobered by it. I'm not like, depressed, just more sobered. But what I get more, more enjoyment from, enjoyment is like the the the extraordinary things that people do to to pursue a better way of life. I, I feel I'm drawn more to that and I'm, I'm, I get more out of I react more to that; the the, greatness that the extraordinary things that we as humans do when we are in these situations that are really hard, I believe they can engender people to do the most extraordinary things. And it's it's, that's exciting to me and it's exciting about life. Gabrielle [00:25:20] Yeah, I definitely appreciate what you're talking about in terms of the complexity of these situations. What could be moral dilemmas. I think I appreciate the complexity that you explore in The Runner, and I did have this question What is the role your theatre serves in society? And what I'm hearing is it's not necessarily didactic, it's not demonstrating or offering a moral compass, but perhaps inspiring the pursuit of a of a more engaged, critical existence. Or...? I am looking for you to finish. Christopher [00:25:59] Also, I would say it's the beginning of a discussion that that that's how it... that that's what I like about these plays when they when, when I don't screw them up, when when it's... I never want to present an answer or a solution. It doesn't mean I'm I'm I'm backing out. I'm backing away from presenting an answer. On the contrary, I don't believe there should be... what the hell answer would I have to give. Me? That, that's not my job. And because A) there is no answer, there is no writer, I can't give an answer to anything. It's impossible, no matter what. But what I can do is thoroughly, emotionally, critically, without fear and no bullshit, Examine something from a pure humanistic point of view and... lay it all out, and offer that as a... As an offer. It's an offer for discussion. It's,that that's all it can be. Yeah, I'm really. Yeah. Gabrielle [00:27:10] That's The Runner, an offer for discussion and more. Yeah. Christopher [00:27:18] Equally as well, I feel theatre is really beautiful and a special thing in the sense when to me, when it is theatrical. What is theatrical? Something that is above above our normal everyday existence and way of communicating. That is that, it's lifted. It's a heightened kind of thing. I feel theatre soars when it's like that, when when it's when it can only exist on stage. It could only exist on stage that a script and the way it's directed and performed could only be on stage as theatre. To me, that's really exciting. I want to create theatre that does that. Yeah, I think that that's that's what else I would, I would say with our company that we're always trying to push to, to achieve that, that these performances exist in a heightened theatrical scenario. So we offer the audience theatre, you know, not something that would probably be better done on TV and a TV show with the dialogue and you know, we could get close and but that's just theatre. It's like it's yeah, that's, I believe strongly about doing that, that I feel like that's my, that's what I like. And I feel that that's my goal as a theatre maker to do that. That's what I offer. Gabrielle [00:28:46] Thank you so much, Christopher. Christopher [00:28:49] You're welcome. Gabrielle [00:28:50] Wer're still talking. But we have to stop. But we are, we're really thrilled to be presenting The RUnner with Touchstone Theatre and SFU Cultural Programs January 24th-26th this upcoming PuSh. I'm so thrilled. Thanks so much, Christopher. Christopher [00:29:08] You're very welcome. Thank you. Gabrielle [00:29:12] Push Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles and supported by our incredible community outreach coordinator Julian Legere. New episodes with Gabrielle Martin are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, please visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media @PuShFestival.
Ep. 1 - Ramanenjana: Public dance as political action
09-11-2023
Ep. 1 - Ramanenjana: Public dance as political action
Gaby Saranouffi and Simona Deaconescu discuss how dance can serve as an act of protest. Ramanenjana runs Jan 19th-21st at PuSh Festival. Show Notes A captivating docufiction performance, presented with The Dance Centre and Inner Fish, Ramanenjana is about a dance that made history, when thousands of people in Madagascar danced to drums in the capital city for weeks, as if hallucinating. Co-choreographers Simona Deaconescu and Gaby Saranouffi join Gabrielle to discuss the social role of dance, what is mass dance, and more. Co-presented with The Dance Centre and Inner Fish Performance Co. Here are some of the questions that Gabrielle, Simona and Gaby tackle together: What is dance's social role?What is mass dance? How is it related to "Dance Epidemics" that have occurred throughout history? And how does Ramanenjana fit into this lineage?Why was the residency in Madagascar so important to the development of the piece and the creative process overall?How can productions like this capture and properly represent predominantly oral traditions?Why was it important not just to make a reenactment of Ramanenjana, both from a creative an an ethical perspective?What is subtext in the context of this piece and how was it discovered?How would a similar modern phenomenon be interpreted today?How does dance link the physical and spiritual worlds?Can dance serve as protest? Or as a group protection ritual to safeguard a culture and language? About Simona and Gaby Simona Deaconescu is a Romanian choreographer and filmmaker working across genres and formats. Shifting between fiction and objective reality, her work investigates liminal corporealities by meticulously looking at social constructs, sometimes with irony and dark humor. She founded Tangaj Collective, an interdisciplinary art and science company, and serves as the artistic director of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival. Born in Tamatave, Gaby Saranouffi is a Malagasy choreographer and art activist currently residing in South Africa. She is one of the most influential female artists pioneering contemporary dance in Madagascar, serving as artistic director for the I’TROTA International Dance Festival and the Vahinala Dance Company. Saranouffi draws inspiration from Madagascar’s tumultuous history to cultivate a distinct aesthetic in her choreography. Land Acknowledgement Simona joins from Bucharest, Romania, and Gaby from Johannesburg, South Africa. Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Show Transcript Gabrielle [00:00:02] Hello and welcome. I'm Gabrielle Martin, director of Programing with the PuSh Festival. Today's episode highlights the role of dance as public manifestation. I'm speaking with Simona Deaconescu and Gaby Saranouffi, the co-choreographers of Ramanenjana which is being presented at the PuSH Festival January 19th to 21st, 2024. Ramanenjana is a docufiction performance about a dance that made history. It examines dance's societal role and how colonialism may have spread misconceptions about an extraordinary movement. Simona is a Romanian choreographer and filmmaker, working across genres and formats, shifting between fiction and objective reality. Her work investigates liminal corporalities by meticulously looking at social constructs, sometimes with irony and dark humour. Gaby Saranouffi is a Malagasy choreographer and art activist currently residing in South Africa. She is one of the most influential female artists pioneering contemporary dance in Madagascar. She draws inspiration from Madagascar's tumultuous history to cultivate a distinct choreographic aesthetic. I'm excited for you to hear our discussion that highlights their collaboration. Part of this interview was rerecorded at a later date due to a power outage and poor connection Gaby was experiencing during the initial interview. Here's my conversation with Simona and Gaby.    Gabrielle [00:01:27] I am in conversation with Gaby and Simona from the unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Thank you for joining me, Simona and Gaby.    Simona [00:01:44] Thank you for having us.    Gabrielle [00:01:46] And Gaby and Simona, will you share where you are speaking to us from today?    Simona [00:01:51] Sure. I'm Simona Deaconescu. I'm a Romanian choreographer and filmmaker, and I am currently speaking from Bucharest.     Gaby [00:02:05] Well, I am Gaby Saranouffi, I am a dancer/choreographer from Madagascar, co-choreographer with Simona Deaconescu with Ramanenjana. And yes, I am calling from South Africa.    Gabrielle [00:02:20] I'd love it if you could tell us about the inception of this project and how did this historical event of a collective dancing fever in Madagascar emerge as the subject for this piece? And how did you come into collaboration with each other?    Simona [00:02:35] Maybe, strange enough, it's me, Simona, that started this, this project. I started to study mass dances in late 2019, but got into this research deeply in starting in 2020. I first did a project about another mass dance that happened in Europe in Strasbourg in 1518, and yeah, it was called Chroeomania. So this is where I first got into contact with this concept, right? A medieval concept called choreomania, or like better known today now is also like a bit of a I know it's in vogue, it's in fashion to talk about it. It's also called a dance epidemic. So I started to study this event that happened mainly in medieval Europe or like late medieval Europe in what we now know, as I don't know, Germany, France, Belgium, around the river Reine; so in that period and in that in those places. So studying this event and trying to understand more about them and also to understand how people got to call this mass dances, then epidemics or like choreomania sort of crazed dances I, I went deeper in my research and I found some notes, let's say some connections with other events that were kind of similar, but not similar, but kind of similar and happened in the 19th century in Africa or like in Brazil. And one of them caught my interest and it was Ramanenjana. So then I decided that maybe I wanted to do like a mini series. This is not something very I know accustomed or normal for then like to create shows that that in a mini series like and feel more like in. But but I had this idea to create like a mini series and also to try to involve other people in my, in my research. Um, yeah. And in long story short, in order to be able to research this to get a bit of funding, to find collaborators, I applied to a program that was called and you still called forecast. It was, it's a program that kind of supports artists worldwide but is based in Berlin and this is a mentorship program. So I got selected with this project by Mathilde Monnier, and from there Mathilde Monnier connected me with Gaby. So this is how we started to work together. I wanted to partner with whom to work, I wanted to bring like my research about the mass audiences and dance epidemics. But I also wanted to get in touch with someone that knows the history of Malagasy dance, that is local that have worked in this field before and wanted to co-create this with me. So this is how me and Gaby, me and Gaby got together online.    Gabrielle [00:06:16] I'm so fascinated by the subject of this work or the initial concept of this dancing epidemic or  choreo, choreo   Simona [00:06:27] Mania    Gabrielle [00:06:27] Mania. Yeah, I am curious to know, I'll just ask one more question about this. What were some of the similarities and differences between the choreomanias of medieval Europe and of, say, Madagascar?     Simona [00:06:47] First of all, I must I must admit that I do not consider them to be choreomanias. So I do not agree with the people that have said that these are dance epidemics or they are connected in any way with disease or mass psychosis or something like this. For me it was more interested to see how dance was immersed in the social fabric and in the social life and to see if there are in history some examples in which dance appears, I don't know in, in a method in which it can change the society. So this was my my interest and I was looking for these things. I never really looked for the - although this is what you find when you look for it, the crazy dancing. So I was not looking for the crazy dancing. I was more looking for the historical context in which they happened for the duration of of the event, for how people collaborated between between them, then why this mass dance event happened. So from this perspective, I think the similarities lay in its I don't know, I will say it's contagious that same phenomenon. Right. Because it starts with maybe a group, a smaller group of people, but then it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And then another similarity is the duration, meaning that people can dance for a long period of time. Now, this is, of course, debatable, you know, because also these historical documents have been written in certain contexts by certain people. So we cannot now, we cannot, I don't know, say that it's 100% truth, the truth what we now read. So it might be also some fictionalized version might, might, might also appear, but they are durational. So they happen, they can last days, they can last weeks. So it is this kind of durational event and then they tend to appear in periods of crisis. So when there is some type of crisis, either I don't know it's a political crises or it comes on a medical crisis, you know, of an actual disease. You know, it happens in a period in which like an actual epidemic or like an actual disease or like they have this mixed, I don't know, characteristics of being some kind of political in a way a bit political, but also ritualistic and also in Europe. So in Europe also, they had this ritualistic character, of course, in a completely different way with the completely different, I don't know, form let's say, and aesthetic, but they did have the ritualistic approach more like to towards the pagan, right. It was not towards the Christianity, but the bit towards the, the former pagan Gods that were in Europe. So yeah. And and I think the biggest and biggest difference I found and that's also why I do not believe they are related in any way but they have been forcefully related by people that wanted to put them together in a way, you know, they say like "oh this is like when people are dancing on the streets with thousands, there must be some crazy thing happening there or a disease." But one big difference is the fact that Ramanenjana had a really clear political context in which it happened. So it like the connections with the with what actually happened and how this event started out very clearly described in documents. While in Europe, they are kind of I don't know, they are, let's say, the talk of mystery. So some things are true. Some things you must imagine. There is,  there is not, that you cannot prove this thing or this other thing. But in Madagascar also, it was more recent. It was in 1863. So it's it's in the 19th century. It's closer to our times. But it had this very clear political and social context.    Gabrielle [00:11:28] I definitely want to come back to that. I'm really curious about how that is addressed through the work. But first, I want to get more of a sense of your working relationship in your collaboration, because as I understand, this is the first time you've collaborated, and I'm curious, what are some of the differences and similarities between your choreographic practices?    Gaby [00:11:49]  Well, yeah, it was a very interesting way of collaborating  between the two choreographers that is quite, have a different way of creating.  For instance myself, I come from a background of the African/Island artistic creative landscape whereby my work is mainly focused in the things that are happening mostly in Madagascar, but also happening in the world. And my work is I like to focus my work with the women's societal problems, issues as well. And then with Ramanenjana and Simona, Simona is also coming with a background of European, if I may say, Simona you can correct me,  you'll correct me later or you'll add something. But what that I think makes us to meet is that because of our both works are conceptual, you know, as much as I have roots as an African or people who come from the island. But my work is, is conceptual. So I think also that's the reason why when Simona was creating the piece Ramanenjana and then looking for having collaborations with Malagasy choreographers, and she was introduced to many brilliant choreographers from Madagascar. And then she chooses me. She approaches me because I think because of that conceptual; also, you know, when you have a choreographer want to collaborate with someone, you feel like 'yes ah the work of this person is much more near by myself than than the others. So that's how we we, we met. But, but along the way and what I found interesting is that, you know, the culture shock also during the research that we make you know I am from Madagascar, she's from, from Romania, we both have a different way of working and creating. And then... how can I say that? It's like, it's like the air and the, and the light of the candle, for instance, if the air is blowing too much the candle can die, you know, unless if the candle, the air of the candle is blown just enough then, then the lights continue lighting. So me personally, I was really enjoying the process of our creation. But then mostly I am really, really happy with the really happy and oh yeah amazed that we've already journeyed together with Ramanenjana, in exchange with the team and Simona .   Gabrielle [00:15:06] Thanks for giving us that extra bit of kind of insight about your perspectives and a little bit about the process. And I'm curious to hear more about this process and how the work evolved from the initial concept when Simona first met you to what it has become as a finished work. And yeah, and maybe you can talk about the process involved in that. So both how the idea of the piece evolved through the process and what that process looked like in terms of, you know, the time spent together in Madagascar or in Romania or...   Gaby [00:15:48] Yeah. First of all, we started with documenting information from the internet, from the reading, books exchange, also within  myself and Simona through the Internet, because Simona and I, we never met actually! I met with - that's another eipsode, I'll tell about that but I met the team recently now inside Africa but without Simona  I don't know why I thought destiny... but yes but in any event but we are always in touch, right, thanks to the internet I can see her through the technology. So yes and also for research about the documentation. And then I think the most important that I found that is very profound and give the piece a bit of shape is there is the residency in Madagascar, in February, we met with Olombelo Ricky, that is the composer of the music of Ramanenjana. He's someone that helps us a lot in terms of information. He has, he has a lot a lots of information about Ramanenjana. Also Simona was having a meeting on documentation. But what was interesting is that the weighing of the information that we got, you know, from the the Internet point of view documentary research in Europe and then the one oral in Madagascar of which I say that in Madagascar, we have an oral tradition that is transmitted from generation to generation. There is no written stuff, you know, if you look for written stuff at that time, even now, there are people writing, but it's not much. But at that time it's very rare to find something written on such a, such an event that happened. So what we have is only information that's written from the people from outside of the country, which is like, in the piece is the missionaries and the people who were sent from the outside countries, the British and French and Belgians etc. they came and then they write their own point of view about this Ramanenjana. And, and then and then it's not probably the truth. So, so that's why it was important for us to have the, the residency in Madagascar to meet the real people, the wise people, of which we got a bit of confusion but as surety at the same time, because, you know, we as we have a lot of, a lot of information about the Ramanenjana. For instance, one of the wise men says that the Ramanenjana is a, is a message that is, that is coming from the queen, Queen Mother, from, there is a mountain in Madagascar called Ambondrombe, whereby all the people that is passed away, their spirit lives in that mountain. So the spirit of the, the spirit of  Ranavalona, Ranavalona 1 wanted to do, wanted to send a message to her son Radama. So then through that message, she enters in spiritual context within the people that is alive and then, and then the people who have that Ramanenjana they dance, you know, and they dance from their minds no stopping. And within months and months and months and travel from Ambondrombe, which is very far until Antananarivo. I don't know. Yeah, it's very very far so they travel for mmonth to month. Once the message arrived to Antananarivo the Ramanenjana just stops, funny enough. But anyway So. So these are the information that we got and Also some information we got from other wise people says that Ramanenjana is a sickness that makes people sick. They have a stiff, stiff convulsions and have red eyes, you know. So yes, in terms of, in terms of the choice of the quality of the movement how we, we want to define this Ramanenjana that we never see. And it was quite challenging, you know, sometimes Simona come to me like "Oh Gabrielle I don't know, we don't know how, what kind of... what is this? This working is not working. This is not..." So sometimes we, we tend to, not to say 'hey, everything does not work,' you know? But with time, we managed to define the quality of the movement, of which, in the piece we choose to be minimalistic. We don't want to dance like 'gah-doom, gah-doom, gah-doom' like now maybe people think that is from Africa. So now we're gonna do 'African Dance,' we've made grants and blah blah, blah. Anyway, the prototype that I'm talking about this always, people have a preconceived idea when they heard about oh, 'exotic, I learned African' etc.. But anyway, anyway, it's okay. But yes. So then that drove us to the quality of the movement. The minimalistic and the stiffness and the togetherness having these oxygen of being together and being repetitive. So when you watch this show, you'll see kind of like, like robotic movements. Yes, of course, they have their own, own quality through text of which Simona is going to talk about that later, maybe can elaborate. But also they seek some parts of the, of the piece. It was interesting in that it was also linked to what we, we heard about the information about Ramanenjana  which is not really sure what exactly is this Ramanenjana, so the process was very, very, very interesting of which then when I saw the piece finally not on video but I saw at the JOMBA! Festival in South Africa here went  'this one? Yes this one.' I was so happy, you know, to see the artists live and touch them and and talk and all that, you know finally. It's, it's really one of the piece that have a highlight.    Gabrielle [00:23:20] Thank you so much. It's so great to get a sense of what a rich process it has been and all the different historical information, but also, you know, historical speculation as well as the oral histories, the yeah, the written documentation, the oral histories, the all the different, you know, folklore around it and how that all influenced your... The final work. Did you have anything you wanted to add? Simona   Simona [00:23:52] Yeah. I mean, yeah, regarding this aesthetical aspect. I think for me it was very, very important not to do like a reenactment of the Roamanenjana. I didn't do this also with the 1518 epidemic also, and next year I'm going to build another episode on another mass dance event. So for me, it's important not to do this process of reinterpretion, reinterpretation of the event. Why? Because, first of all, we don't know. So the documentation is very shady, so we don't know if those descriptions are actually what people actually did. So yeah, for me, like this is like an ethical question of not wanting to, I don't know, do like a re-, you know, like this kind of recontextualization or remix or anything that is connected with, with this idea of rethinking what, what happened. But mostly the piece and this series talks about the context in which dance appears, how other people look at dance or how we judge dance in the public sphere there when there is no stage, when there is no convention, when there is no understanding of what will happen. So what happens when dance gets out leash, you know, and takes the public sphere? So this is one one of the things. Of course, the problematic thing was, especially in in Madagascar for me, even though I do not consider myself like completely a European, you know, like living in Romania, this border between Orient and Occident is like... But even with this, even with this background, I didn't feel very comfortable of, you know, like and I also know that the because we had this discussion, she doesn't really she appreciates very much tradition in everything but she does contemporary dance and she likes to explore this aesthetic of contemporary dance. So yeah, this, this is one aspect that I also wanted to clarify for us, it was really important from the beginning not to to do reinterpretation or reenactment of that specific, of that specific dance. And even it's more interesting for the audience, you know, because we talk so much about this dance and we'd say so many clues. And then there is this, you know, mystery of how would this dance actually look like? And I think it makes it a bit more open to everyone. And although it speaks about this specific event in history that apparently repeated several times, I think it also talks about us, all of us, that we can, you know, like we can take charge of the public sphere, we can manifest our bodies. We can use, you know, the I know the legacy that we have from from from our communities in order to play an active role in in society. So for me, even if we don't know exactly what what happened and let's say we received the wrong seven answers and we put all these seven answers in the piece. So everything what we, what came out of the research is now presented in the piece. For us, this is the interesting part, how this I don't know, marginal, specific kind of unknown event was able to create such an important, you know, manifestation and make some changes. And I know now hundreds of years after this, like create this possibility for us to have this, discussion. So this is very rare in history for events like this to to exist.    Gabrielle [00:28:10] And I want to understand a bit more when you talk about what it reflects about society and the role of dance through the text that you developed. So, you know, you've spoken to how a lot of this research and the different perspectives have made their way into the work. How were the characters who have voice in the text, how were those characters developed and what ideas or questions are present in the subtext? So I guess I'm curious about you know, there's the text and then, and then there's this greater critique I hear you talking about, about, you know, how we manifest our bodies in the public space and play an active role in society and how dance can be part of that.    Simona [00:28:48] So in this piece, although there's a lot of text, it's all about the subtext. So because the the language that we have created kind of says something through the mouth and through the words, but say something else to the movement and the real message and the real text, let's say, the real idea, you get it if you pay attention to both. So it's almost like developing two languages in the same time. It's like a code because all these events, they were code. And you have to understand the code. So practically what we did with this language is that we try to convey a message by using the words that people actually used. So we're not inventing other words, but actually using the archive material per se, okay with little modifications, you know, because of the language so that people can understand it better. But 80% of the text that we are using, it's archive text, it's not invented. And but by using this language to fictionalize it in a way in which people can understand the subtext. Another thing that we did is to have this recipe that all that happens on the screen, because a lot of the show is interview with Malagasy people. What happens on the screen represents contemporary Malagasy life and the perspective of Malagasy people on this event that, and why this is important, why it's still present in, in the minds, let's say in the collective minds of Malagasy people. So whatever happens on the screen, all that happens on the screen, are interviews that we made with people, different scientists, different wise people, as Gaby, Gaby said, shamans, anthropology, professors of anthropology from Madagascar. And what happens on the stage is actually a critique of and represents the text that we took from the archives and different perspectives or the perspective of the, let's say, English doctors that were the first one that said that this is a disease. So when Joe Davidson, he was there, so he was the one putting this event on the map of the diseases because he heard certain things and he did this link, you know. So and then we have, I don't know, the French religious voices that come from priests that said, oh, no, this is like, you know, like a possession. This is something, you know, demonic or things like this. Then we have even Malagasy perception. So like we have Dr. Andrianjafy that wrote a thesis about this. He was a Malagasy, but he was very influenced by the French medicine school. He studied in Montpellier, for example. So we try to put all these perspectives together. Of course, it has a funny effect. So most of the parts are funny, but it is done on purpose, you know, because yeah, I mean, it's hilarious what they say about this event. It's hilarious how they perceive this this event. But I'm convinced that if a similar event would happen today, I think whatever would happen in the world, people will still have this type, you know, of language and of talking about untamed dance.  I don't think this happened only in the medieval times in Europe or like 19th century in Africa. I don't think so. I think if today, for example, in Romania, I don't know about Canada, but in Romania, if like a group of 300 people start dancing on the street, no matter if they have or don't have a message, if this event just appears like this and it continues for days, and if you feel that this then doesn't resemble something with the dance that you know, I know something that is warm, that is aesthetic, that is beautiful, that enchants you; in a way, people will still say 'what's wrong with this people? They are crazy, they are sick, they are possessed, they are drugged, they are all these kind of things.' So that's why I think Ramanenjana it's a good example for how we look at movement and free movement today, because I'm convinced that if this type of event would happen today. We will still have these characters that we put on stage. They will still exist, you know, the voice of religion, the voice of medicine, the voice of I don't know, super science, or like so. So yeah. And what's, and one thing that I also discussed with Gaby is the fact that what is missing is the voice of the dancers. In none of these events, the voice of the dancers is documented, none. You don't, these people that documented this event never asked a dancer, you know like 'why are you dancing' or like what, you know, what is, why are they doing this? You know? And that's also a thing that we tend to do today, you know, to say what the other person is thinking or believing or why this other person is acting like that without... I don't know making a simple question, you know, to that person, like, why are you doing this? Yeah.    Gabrielle [00:34:49] Yeah. So this is the last question. Gaby, I'm curious, after all your research, why do you think these people were dancing in the streets.    Speaker 4 [00:35:02] The reason why the Malagasy people danced Ramanenjana at that time, because I think dance is so much linked in our culture. Dance is a way of showing emotions. Dance is a way of linking the spiritual world and the living world. Dance is simply life, you know, in our culture in Madagascar, we have dance that is specializing for when someone is born until someone is dead. In this case of Ramanenjana,  I think the people want to say a message that 'do not sell the land, it's our land.' So at the same time, also, they want to protect their identity and culture by simply dancing and singing. That's where Ramanenjana came from not fighting with guns and creating a war. But to convey this message, strong message, by simply dancing.    Gabrielle [00:36:17] Yea h, I think that one thing that this piece is kind of addressing is, you know, dance as a form of revolt or as you've talked about, a form of manifesting itself in public space. And what are those implications, and especially in a colonial time in Madagascar, and we still see you know the inequities between the global north and the global south in terms of, you know, just access to Internet, visas to tour work...   Simona [00:36:48] So practically, we also had like I mostly believe that this was some kind of protest or I wanted to believe that this was a protest, you know, that people were dancing because of a protest. But from what they found out also from Gaby, but other people I talked to, they do not see this as a protest, but as a protection ritual or like a group protection ritual or ritual through which they are protecting their identity, their way of doing things, their kind of social interaction. So it was something more like, like, like this. And also we talked about like if, if this is political or not, you know, this big discussion that we say today that everything is political. And we also had this discussion, you know, how much, let's say, politics were actually involved in in the dance and also very different opinions in between also Malagasy wise men and wise women and men and people they also have different opinions over how much political involvement was in this, in this dance. So yeah, this is the situation.     Gabrielle [00:38:09] Awesome. And I have one more last question just super quick because you talk about it as a docufiction and is that because about you said like about 80% of the text is drawn from historic sources, but the rest is fictionalized. So that's why you call it a docufiction, or no?    Simona [00:38:24] No, actually, I'm... You know that in performance we have this format of lecture performance. And in let's say in film, we have this format of doc fiction. Maybe it would kind of go into the same category. So for me that I also come from film, so my first studies were in film. I'm still working as a filmmaker. I'm actually trying to kind of mix the both, both of them. So the show cannot be named as a lecture performance, you know, because it's more spectacular than a lecture performance. It usually is. So I felt that goes more into this idea of a docu-fiction. You know, when you mix documentary, documentary information with fiction, but also it contains fragments or parts of the process you went through while doing the show. So this is also an important aspect of the of the docu fiction, let's say genre in a way. So yeah, that's why. So it also itself referred it creates this self- I don't know-    Gabrielle [00:39:38] Referential   Simona [00:39:38] -referential, yes.    Gabrielle [00:39:42] Self-referencing, yeah. Well thank you so much. It's been so great to get more insight into this work, into your collaboration, into all the research, into the, the subtext, into, you know, all this speculation that goes into the, the meanings behind this historic event and how you've treated it for the stage. We're really so excited to have this be an opening show for the festival. So January 19th to 21st in partnership with The Dance Centre. We're really looking forward to having you in January for this upcoming PuSh festival. So thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me.    Simona [00:40:17] And have a nice day.  Gabrielle [00:40:21] PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles and supported by our incredible community outreach coordinator, Julian Legere. New episodes with Gabrielle Martin are released every Monday and Thursday. For more information on PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, please visit pushfestival.ca And follow us on social media @PuShFestival.