***Named one of the Top 10 theatrical works of 2020 by the Globe and Mail***

Rumble Theatre was pleased to present the Vancouver-based, online premiere production of The Chop’s Pathetic Fallacy. The show ran from November 25 to 29, 2020 as a livestream performance, available to watch online.

In creating Pathetic Fallacy, writer/director Anita Rochon (who shares Artistic Director duties at The Chop with Emelia Symington Fedy) set herself the challenge of devising a live touring work that reduces climate impact by putting no performer “on tour.” Instead, every show—regardless of its geographic location—presents a different local actor in the central role of this provocative and innovative piece. Each performer receives all their staging instructions live, standing in front of a very temperamental broadcast media green screen. It’s an original collision of DIY cinematography, action film, choreography, a gallery talk, and weather forecasting —all with the immediacy of live performance.

The amazing performers who took to the COVID-safe, green screen stage were Jonathon Young, Arggy Jenati, Aryo Khakpour, Omari Newton, and our Artistic Director Jiv Parasram.

This presentation was originally planned to be a hybrid event, with small in-person audience viewings of each performance, but they were cancelled last-minute in response to Provincial Health Orders regarding COVID-19. The team ably pivoted to offering a livestream production to our audiences.

“Pathetic Fallacy … seems to have found its perfect form in these live-streamed times.” – J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail

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100 YT GUYS IN AN HOUR
Rage Sweater Theatre Productions

100 YT GUYS IN AN HOUR is a high energy musical comedy that reclaims BIPOC history while deconstructing the colonial white supremacist system of thought. From Colonizer Columbus to the Jonas Brothers, Billy Ray Cyrus to yt Jesus, 100 YT GUYS uses sketch comedy, music, and projection and dissects yt history as we’ve been taught it. It is a celebration of BIPOC truth, stories, futures, and histories that will never be erased.

Creative team: KP Dennis (Creator/Performer), Monica Ogden (Creator/Performer), Tony Adams (Designer/Stage Manager).

Attachments
Dusty Foot Productions

This new play-in-development follows six queer characters as they navigate an intersectional polyamorous relationship. It opens on Frankie’s 30th birthday, at which she learns that her best friend is throwing her a surprise party – and inviting all of her lovers and her lovers’ lovers. In the calm before the chaos, the queer children have dinner with their parents. This new work simultaneously dissects how our first relationship with our parental figures bleeds into all of our future relationships, and explores the struggles and privileges between class, culture, gender and generation in queer polyamorous relationships.

Creative team: Patricia Trinh (Playwright, Director, Producer), Kate Boutilier (Stage Manager), Maddison Silva (Lighting Designer), Jennifer Tong (Performer), Johnny Wu (Performer), Katrina Teitz (Performer), María Escolán (Performer), Rosie Pidcock (Performer), Donia Kash (Performer).

Danceboy: First Dance
Danceboy company

Danceboy loves to party, but most of all he loves to Dance! This solo show written and performed by Munish Sharma is an eclectic mix of poetry, story, and dance. An earlier excerpt,  Danceboy: Shots Edition,  was presented in 2019 at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Spring FUSE.  Danceboy: First Dance is a presentation of the first thirty minutes of the evolving show. 

Creative team:  Gavan Cheema (Director), Priya Pranjivan (Choreography), Munish Sharma (Performer/Writer).

Low Grade Euphoria
The Public Swoon

Low Grade Euphoria is a series of short videos conjuring pleasure, care and companionship against a backdrop of COVID-isolation. With imagery inspired by visual ASMR and the aesthetics of femme self-care, the videos bring together intimately-scaled dance performance, new music composition, handcraft, text, and design. Collaborating entirely at a distance, the project’s co-creators explored a process that prioritized artists as whole people. Artistic creation was adapted to fit the realities and rhythms of each other’s lives, inside and outside of the project. Low Grade Euphoria offers delight, discomfort, humour and softness: a set of small gifts for the present moment.

Creative team:  Stéphanie Cyr (Co-Creator), Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (Co-Creator, music & sound), Kyla Gardiner (Co-Creator), Barbara Adler (Co-Creator).   

Origins: V
Immigrant Lessons

Origins: V is a dance theatre, visual media, immersive exploration into a past that leaves echoes in the present. Seven street dance artists dive into their unique stories, and journey through intersections of identity, to uncover the similarities, together, through the mediums of dance, theatre, voice, spoken word, visual media, and archives of the memories passed down.

They will examine the cycles of such topics as immigration, systemic/intersectional oppression, colonialism/imperialism, colourism, generational trauma, and the ripple of how they affect the ways we interact in the present. How do we sift away the debris of generations ago? How do we stand in the truths of how it has affected us in the present? How do we hold space for one another as we peel back the layers of traumas passed down? How do we coexist?

Creative team: Kevin Fraser (Creative Direction & Videography), Sophia Gamboa (Interpreter/Cast & Videography), Sevrin Emnacen-Boyd (Interpreter/Cast), Simran Sachar (Interpreter/Cast), Tegvaran Singh (Interpreter/Cast), Hayden Pereira (Interpreter/Cast), Joshua Cameron (Interpreter/Cast), Sharon Lee (Interpreter/Cast), Tonye Aganaba (Mentor), Jillian Christmas (Mentor), Omari Newton (Mentor), Vanessa Yuen (Videography), Amine Bouzaher (Music), Jordan Lemoine (Music).

the fire that runs through
Joshua Ongcol

This project reflects on the resiliency of growing up as an immigrant through the body of Joshua Ongcol who identifies as a queer filipinx immigrant. Inside the immigrant body are the opposing stories of revolution and appeasement. This project provides a dynamic navigation through colonization and Joshua’s ancient lineage. There are ways of being, there are shapes and there are movements one needs to move through in order to interact and survive the colonial story both here and now as well as in the past. This piece chariots resiliency even within the confines of secrecy and the barrage of the model minority.

Creative team: Joshua Ongcol (Creator/Performer), David Smith (Mentor),  Su-Feh Lee (Mentor), Eddy van Wyk (Dramaturge), Emme Asuncion (Cloth Design).

The time it takes me to get to you
Subjects of History

Live performances can lead to shared emotional and somatic experiences. What are the implications if politics is understood as a form of public performance? At what point do our bodies make decisions on our behalf, bypassing what we think we believe, revealing more suppressed values? And if live performance can connect us in such fundamental ways, can it also nurture our capacity to respond creatively to political extremism? The time it takes me to get to you is an immersive, transdisciplinary work being developed in VR. It is our response to the marked rise in Fascism.

Creative team:  Laura June Albert (Co-Creator), mia  susan  amir (Co-Creator & Sound Designer), Alexa Solveig Mardon (Co-Creator), Veronique West (Co-Creator), Jivesh Parasram (Dramaturg), Ruby Singh (Projection Designer & Sound Editor)), Carmen Papalia (Artistic Accessibility Consultant), Mimi Abrahams (Scenography & Lighting Design), Sean Ronan (Technical Director), Hammer & Tong (Technical Design & Production).

Underground Absolute Fiction: A Video ‘Zine
Anais West
In association with the frank theatre company

Queers in Communist Poland used self-published magazines to organize, get laid, and forge a sense of identity. In the wake of the arrest of Polish trans activist Margot, a Polish-Canadian settler uses a fractured, video narrative to seek answers. Through letters, social media posts, and the music videos of a queer punk band, Underground Absolute Fiction complicates notions of “queer.” Created by Anais West, co-writer of Jessie Award-nominated musical Poly Queer Love Ballad, the show questions whether queerness can connect us across cultural rifts, or if it is just another site of Western Imperialism.

Creative team:  Anais West (Writer, Lyricist & Producer), Fay Nass (Director), Christian Yves Jones (Videographer), khattieQ (Music Director), Veronique West (Dramaturg), Julia Siedlanowska (Cultural Consultant), Claire Love Wilson (Performer), Sara Vickruck (Performer/Music Adaptation & Transcription), Eric Biskupski (Audio Engineer), Kimberly Ho (Stylist).

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Rumble Theatre was pleased to present the Vancouver-based, online production of Good Things to Do as part of our Spring 2020 Digital Season.

Blending live and recorded sound, a dreamy, solitary physical environment, and an unexpected use of technology, Good Things to Do invites participants to place themselves within a dreamscape in which they possess extraordinary powers. This wondrously immersive experience is a meditation on goodness, generosity, and the struggle to stay tender in a world that asks us to be hard.

Originally conceived as an installation-style performance piece, Good Things To Do was re-tailored for an at-home experience as a direct response to isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The work was scheduled to be developed but not performed during this season. But the creators, galvanized by the possibility of offering participants some respite from the current surge of intensity and uncertainty, found the work to be well-suited to digital transmission. The moment dictated the medium—and emboldened the project with new urgency.

Good Things to Do was conceived by Siminovitch Protegee Prize recipient Christine Quintana, in collaboration with Jessie Award-winning collaborative artist and violinist Molly MacKinnon, with sound and recorded music by Jessie Award winning composer Mishelle Cuttler and an original digital interface created by digital artist Sam MacKinnon. The piece appeared in workshop form at the inaugural foldA in Kingston, and at the rEvolver Festival in Vancouver.

What people had to say about Good Things to Do:

“…a beautiful blend of text and sound that created a serene and healing environment.” – Madeleine Chan, The Peak

“Good Things to Do is an excellent example of a local theatre company adapting to available media…[it] offers a welcome asylum of tenderness.” – Colin Thomas, colinthomas.ca

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‘We used to kill kings. We used to kill millionaires. And now all we do is make threats on the Internet. That’s why I’m offering you the chance to start at war.’

Alejandra and Marcela are planting bombs in the middle of the night. They don’t want violence. They just want to be heard. Prison’s not much of a threat when most of your friends are inside. But José Miguel is from another generation, and he’s committed to change by any means possible.

A darkly comic dive into the absurdity of reality, B examines cross-generational tension in the mobilization of resistance and interrogates the role of violence in revolution. What does it mean to want to take up the struggle, when the struggle has silenced itself to you?

Originally scheduled to run at the Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced a change in plans and we pivoted to creating an online production. We had to adopt new technology, train up on new software, and rehearse via video conferencing apps. We had to figure out how to light and design a show happening in different spaces—including the actors’ kitchens—and create costumes and props that translate on-screen. And we’ve had to do all of this while managing home lives that have been transformed by isolation.

What People Had to Say About B:

“Just watched from here in London. Thank you and congratulations for this production. When plays I’ve worked on are later produced outside of UK I don’t usually get a chance to see the outcome and it was great to be able to share in this production. I admired the staging solutions you created and really appreciated the insights from the company at the beginning. A new production of an existing text always brings new meanings and understandings and this was no exception. Thanks and bravo to all involved.” – William Gregory, Translator (via Facebook)

“In a moment where the Covid-19 epidemic is instigating unprecedented challenges for theatre-makers across the world, a moment where our experience and the operation of our cultural events is undergoing a paradigmatic change, it is refreshing to see a work of art emerge so powerfully and with so much emotional force in a medium not exactly known by its warmth. Congratulations to [the] team!” – Elton U.

This project was supported by the City of Vancouver Cultural Services, the Georgia Straight, and the Electric Company Theatre.

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Entitled “Directing from the Inside > Out”, the Lab focused on adapting autobiographical material and found texts into performance. The masterclass explored the integration of narrative and counter narrative and the adaptive cohesion of dramaturgical form in the creation of new works, and included discussions with guest artists around dramaturgy, design, and defining one’s audience. We were also fortunate to have Registered Clinical Counsellor (and former theatre artist) Tanya Podlozniuk join us for the week to assist participants with the process of working with difficult material. 

The guiding questions for this year’s masterclass were: 

1) Building Content: How do you build performance from autobiographical / biographical material and/or lived experience? 

2) Finding Form: How does this content become structured into compelling performance and navigate larger concepts and broader questions? 

3) Entering Dialogue: How do form and content come together through direction, with considerations of design and production elements, and become a full performance with a consciousness of intended audience? 

About Our Masterclass Leader: Maiko Yamamoto

Since 2003, Maiko has been an Artistic Director of Theatre Replacement, a company she formed with fellow artist James Long. The company’s work has focused on building new, experimental and intercultural performances that react to contemporary existence through a highly evolved and extended process of collaboration, and explores unique and challenging ways of using content and staging material. In addition to her work with T/R, Maiko directs, writes, teaches, mentors and creates contemporary performance for and with a diverse range of companies and institutions, including the National Theatre School, Company 605, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the MAKE Artists Residency in Ireland, among others. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a MAA in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. theatrereplacement.org 

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We had the pleasure of bringing Sound of the Beast from Toronto (via Theatre Passe Muraille) and sharing it with our local community. Audiences were treated to an intimate and powerful performance by writer/performer Donna-Michelle St. Bernard (aka emcee Belladonna the Blest). Through the course of the show, DM shares 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. Part concert/part theatre the show blends the personal and the political, with a bold and brutally honest take about policing in Black communities.

What Audiences had to Say About Sound of the Beast

“Sound of the Beast just blew my heart/mind. … Go as a protest. Go for excellent theatre. Go for the raps. It’s an honour to watch the shine.” – @emeliasf via Instagram

“LOVED Sound of the Beast. Loved it.” – Michelle K.

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