Theatre Conspiracy wins Rio Tinto Alcan
Performing Arts Award for Extraction
Through the biographies of four performers, the bilingual, documentary-style play Extraction looks at lives transformed by the rapid growth of Beijing and Fort McMurray, Chinese investment in Alberta’s tar sands and the evolution of Canada/China relations.
Extraction, directed by Amiel Gladstone, will run March 5-9, 2013, as part of the season at The Cultch in Vancouver. Theatre Conspiracy was presented with the annual Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, a $60,000 prize that will support the development and production of Extraction.
Work on the play began with two weeks of research and casting interviews in Beijing in June 2011. Conspiracy’s Tim Carlson, videographer Flick Harrison, consultant and performer Jimmy Mitchell (a former Canadian diplomat in China) and Conspiracy board member Victor Bonderoff, interviewed dozens of people in Beijing, including reporters, interpreters and government people as well as citizens who were caught in Beijing’s legendary traffic jam in 2010. Car culture has boomed exponentially in Beijing, transforming the city, as Chinese society has become increasingly affluent.
The next phase of research work took us in September 2011 to Fort McMurray, where Chinese companies are investing heavily in tar sands development. Chinese “guest workers” make up a significant part of the vast labour force there in what has been called one of the largest industrial projects in human history.
The performers in Extraction are not actors but people with distinct life experiences who play themselves: A former Canadian diplomat and journalist who spent the most of the past 20 years in China; a freelance interpreter from Beijing who has worked for diverse clients in cultural, corporate and government spheres including Steven Spielberg and Tony Blair; a mechanical engineering student who was trapped in the legendary 2010 ten-day traffic jam in Beijing while en route to the small farm where he grew up; and a tar sands labourer who came to Fort McMurray as a temporary “guest worker.”
“We have cast two performers from Beijing, one from Vancouver and we are still looking to cast someone from Fort McMurray, where we’ll be spending a lot of time this spring,” said Carlson. “Ideally, this would be someone of Chinese descent who came to Fort Mac as a guest worker or as an industry or conservation professional.”
Extraction is a bilingual show (Mandarin and English), that will integrate theatrical use of audio and visual translation / interpretation techniques — illustrating the difficulties and solutions the performers encounter living in a foreign place and echoing the way we interpret the radically shifting political, social, environmental and cultural planes influenced by the oil extraction industry.
Extraction follows on Tim Carlson’s dramaturgy work with Berlin’s Rimini Protokoll over the past three years, heading up the research and casting for two PuSh Festival shows, Best Before and 100% Vancouver. Amiel Gladstone, who directed 100% Vancouver, will also direct Extraction, with original music by Ron Samworth (Best Before, 100% Vancouver), video and projection design by Flick Harrison, dramaturgy by Jeremy Waller and stage management by Yvonne Yip.
Monster
Interpreting a contemporary fairy tale
Craning Neck Theatre, in co-production with Theatre Conspiracy, will workshop ground-breaking American playwright Erik Ehn’s new Saint Play Monster this April 29-May 13, 2012, at Chapel Arts, with public performances May 10-12, 2012 as part of Craning Neck’s workshow series. This will be the second part of a three-phase project leading to the World Premiere of Monster in April 2013.
The head of playwriting and professor of theatre and performance studies at Brown University, Ehn is renowned for proposing the RAT (Regional Alternative Theatre) movement in the U.S. and for creating the annual Arts in the One World conference, which engages themes of art and social change. He refers to his Saint plays as “contemporary fairy tales for the stage.”
Monster is the story of two women: St. Clare, an ascetic nun of the 13th century and the Saint of Broadcasting; and Reena, an art teacher stricken by poverty and sickness in present-day Vancouver. As in all the works in Ehn’s Saint Plays cycle, the play examines the common pathways of secular and religious existence; focusing on issues of addiction and transcendence, Monster looks at two women as symbols of communion, their blood binding pain with meaning and purpose.
Led by director Jeremy Waller (artist-in-residence at Theatre Conspiracy), the workshop will centre around Ehn’s second draft; while digging into the new text, Craning Neck will continue to explore the intersection of event and stylized performance styles and design concepts, culminating in six public performances – May 10 to 12 – where audience feedback will be elicited. The design team will include Parjad Sharifi on projection and lighting design, Emma Hendrix on sound, and Florence Barrett on costumes; Heidi Taylor will be production dramaturge. Performers Adriana Bucz and Nita Bowerman will return to the project, and we are very pleased to announce the inclusion of Nneka Croal into the ensemble.
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