Ionesco’s Cabaret

About the Cabaret

Come one, come all to Ionesco’s Cabaret! 

Society is collapsing. The crowd is losing its mind. Someone brought wine.

For 3 nights only, Progress Lab transforms into an absurdist cabaret featuring Eugène Ionesco’s Frenzy for Two, and The Leader, alongside the debut audio/visual novel installation Lost Hands by Tim Carlson. 

Part double-bill, part art party, Ionesco Cabaret’s is a playful encounter between friends and foes, entangling audience members in love-collisions, mass persuasion, and social unraveling.

Come for the theatre. Stay for the existential dread.

Starring

Nyiri Karakas | Khoa Mai | Sophia Radford | Christiaan Westerveld

The Leader (1953) directed by David Mesiha

The Leader is coming. The crowd cheers. Everyone loves him. No one knows why…

Sharp, chaotic, and unsettlingly familiar, this dark satire is a portrait of mass hysteria, adoration and blind devotion. Witness how easily power and persuasion takes hold—and how seductive it can feel as it happens. 

Frenzy for Two (1962) directed by Richard Wolfe

A tortoise and a snail. Different or the same? 

A high-stakes collision of love, ego, and survival. As the world fractures outside, a couple clings to conflict instead of connection, picking fights over nothing, while chaos creeps closer and closer to their door. A front-row seat to a relationship unravelling while everything else burns. 

Lost Hands (Photo Installation)

Lost Hands is an audio/visual novel by Tim Carlson/feral.i.d. Echoing themes in Frenzy for Two and The Leader, absurdly worrisome narratives play on multi-channel speakers while a slideshow of absurdly worrisome found objects provide evocative documentation of said worrisome absurdity. Created with literary/philosophical support from Richard Wolfe.

Cast

Nyiri Karakas [Performer] is a theatre artist from the North Shore. Nyiri pursued a Masters in Acting at East 15 Acting School, in London, UK, where she was part of a residency at Shakespeare’s Globe. Theatre credits: Dance Nation (The Search Party); Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Mitch & Murray Productions); Medicine (Pi Theatre); Gaslight (Western Canada Theatre/Chemainus Theatre Festival); Sense and Sensibility (Arts Club); Children of Fire (Nightwood Theatre/Aluna Theatre); The House of Bernarda Alba (Modern Times Stage Co./Aluna); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare Bash’d); The Penelopiad (Hart House Theatre). Film/TV: Tiny Pretty Things (Netflix).

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Khoa Mai started his acting journey in Vancouver Canada, after a decade working in the construction industry.  His trade gave him an intimate knowledge of people and the real world.  Then his real passion was ignited when he learnt and trained through film and plays at the Phillip Granger Conservatory. “I never thought about the theatre.  It was a foreign, strange and uncomfortable place.  Then, all of a sudden, something clicked and it was like I didn’t want to be anywhere else”.

Sophia Radford [Performer] is an actor and musician. She is thrilled to be involved in this project! Sophia holds a BFA in Theatre (Performance) from the University of Victoria, and has performed across Western Canada. Select credits include: Waiting for the Parade (Pivot Theatre), The Guardsman (Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre), and The Audition (Theatre Inconnu). You can catch her next in Blackbird at the Vancouver Fringe. 

Christiaan Westerveld [Performer] has appeared on stage in An Intervention (Mitch and Murray Productions), At Sea, Staring Up (JUTE Theatre), Polygraph (Pi Theate/Theatre Le Seiziéme) The Leisure Society (Peninsula Productions), Suburban Motel: Featuring Loretta (Punchback Theatre) and Don’t Forget Your Pants (Share Theatre). He has also written (Best Of Men, How Much Are Those Feelings In The Window?) and directed (A Steady Rain) plays at the now closed Havana Theatre on Commercial Drive. His film and television credits as an actor include The Flash, The Man In The High Castle, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, Van Helsing, DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow, Supernatural, Animal Control and Woody Woodpecker. He is a QUT graduate of the Bachelor Fine Arts Acting program.

Creative Team

Tim Carlson [Lost Hands | Creator] is a theatre-maker, writer, musician and performing arts producer/consultant. He creates new work under the label feral.i.d. Tim co-founded Theatre Conspiracy (1995) with Richard Wolfe, and served as Artistic Director 2008-2022. He led the creation of Foreign Radical, which toured nationally in English and French, and the UK (Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2017; published in Canadian Theatre Review 2018). He has written over a dozen plays, including: Victim Impact (The Cultch, 2018); Extraction (The Cultch, 2013); and Omniscience (Vancouver, Berlin, Lisbon and Chicago; Talonbooks, 2007). He recently produced Offending the Audience for The Biting School. His fiction has been published in subTerrean and Prairie Fire. Lost Hands is his first audio/visual initiative since Holiday in Hell (1984), supported by a Saskatchewan Youth Initiatives grant. (@feral.i.d)

Brianna Bernard [Technical Director] is a theatre artist who takes an interest in both the creative and practical departments of art and live performance. With a background in technical direction and production management, Brianna has worked on productions such as My Little Tomato, Dead Drone, Tomboy and Faye’s Room. She holds a BFA in Theatre Production & Design from Simon Fraser University. Originally born and raised in Jamaica, Brianna is thankful to now work, create and reside on the stolen lands of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.

Emily Friesen [Costume Designer] is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and graduate of the University of Victoria theatre program. Select credits: The Fiancée (WCT) Ms Holmes and Ms Watson- Apt 2B (Gateway)  If You Could Read My Mind: The Songs of Gordon Lightfoot, Kindred (Belfry), Women of the Fur Trade (Firehall Arts Centre) We Are Boy Band, Metamorphoses (Studio 58), The Last Five Years, Ride The Cyclone, Salt Water Moon, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Blue Bridge Repertory), Great Works Festival (Puente/BBRT), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Allihipporhinocrocodilligator(Kaleidoscope), Snow White (Carousel), The Mixolydian (Green Thumb), Othello, The Children’s Hour (UVic Phoenix Theatre), and It’s Just Black Hair (Staging Equality). http://emilyfriesen-theatredesigner.com/

Claine “Gorgoth” Lamb [Sound Designer] is a Vancouver-based sound artist and videographer working at the intersection of extreme metal and avant-garde horror sound design. Their main projects: Misyrion, FL3SH ERR0R, and Gorfan, explore the visceral limits of sonic intensity and emotional expression. Alongside their artistic practice, Claine works as an audio technician at Lobe, a 4DSOUND spatial audio studio, where they develop immersive, multidimensional audiovisual environments. With over a decade in the underground music scene, Gorgoth channels chaos and catharsis through the transmutation of emotional expression into brutal sonic architecture.

Kayleigh Sandomirsky [Stage Manager] is a Vancouver-based production manager, Equity stage manager, producer, curator and performer, who works across both theatre and dance. She is also the Operations Coordinator for The Chop Theatre, has toured both large scale and independent performances across Canada and internationally, and is currently developing her skills in design and Tour Management.

Recent Stage/ Production Management credits: BOLT (PM – Jeanette Kotowich), Wolf Cull (SM – Cheyenne Scott), Everything Has Disappeared (SM – Mammalian Diving Reflex/ Unit Theatre), Women of the Fur Trade (PM – Touchstone Theatre), and Matriarchs Uprising Festival (PM – O.Dela Arts). 

Parjad Sharifi [Lighting Designer] is an Iranian-Canadian scenographer, performance maker, and associate professor of theatre at University of the Fraser Valley. Parjad has been nominated for and has won multiple Jessie Richardson Awards for his designs. His recent design work includes set and lighting design for Rice and Beans’ Lasa NG Imperyo (Taste of Empire), performed at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Other notable recent projects include set design for The Arts Club’s Teenage Dick and lighting design for The Arts Club’s Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol. At UFV, Parjad’s recent directing credits include productions of Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco, Art by Yasmina Reza, and Pariah (Outcast) by August Strindberg.