New Societies

Create your ideal society in a mega-game of collaboration, competition, and potential Utopia.

What if we could create our ideal society? What would it look like? Is it even possible? How would thinkers, dreamers, realists, pessimists, optimists, children, activists, politicians, economists, answer? Would they recreate the same system we live within or dream of newer ones?

New Societies draws together the forms of a strategic game night and an advancing theatrical narrative, shaped by the audience’s choices. Players are placed in groups to compete against or collaborate with each other in order to build their ideal society. Guests are seated at tables up to 6 players and compete against or collaborate with each other in order to build their ideal society. As players socialize, and form community they choose to build their societies however they wish but each decision made will influence how all the other guests can play. They must be careful, because as their choices shape the direction of their society, there are seven other societies also creating an ever growing and responsive political landscape. Filled with humour and levity, New Societies is a playful challenge to reflect on how we operate as inheritors of our current social structures, while giving players the opportunity to be the catalysts in crafting a better one. 

“I was completely blown away by the experience.”

-Denis, audience member

Details

Players are situated in up to eight groups in the performance space. Each group is a newly formed society populated with up to six players and guided by a performer who facilitates the gameplay, interaction, and narrative. The whole room is observed by a single facilitator who provides updates to gameplay, informs all players about news in other parts of the world, and manages communication across groups. Players are guided through a narrative that’s co-created between the performers, gameplay, and the choices they themselves make. As they learn how to play, the rules are soon at the mercy of how players will follow, break, or change them. 

“The conceptualization and staging were brilliant … From joy to fear, anxiety and bonding. It was truly a remarkable and unique experience … I’ve never experienced that level of interaction in a performance before … I’ve never seen the audience being so intrinsically integral to the show in a seamless experiential level.”

-Alessandra Santos, PhD UBC Professor

Access
A limited number of wheelchair spaces may be booked in advance of the performance date, subject to availability. Due to the live, interactive and unpredictable nature of this production, it is unfortunately not possible to caption or audio described performances. If you have any access requirements or require specific information about the production, please contact the Box Office and we will endeavour to assist with your booking.

The running time is approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, without an intermission.
Recommended for ages 10+
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About the Artists

Re:Current Theatre is an award-winning company creating performance that reimagines gathering. We are a deeply human collective engaged in questions that spark connection between strangers. We create one of a kind experiences that redefine what we think of as theatre. At times our work will be on a stage, though it’ll just as often take place in unconventional settings, on gameboards, in studios and over dinner tables. We use a multiplicity of materials and methods that tease the senses to create an intimate space of unpredictable wonder.  Founded in 2014, Re:Current Theatre is a Vancouver/Toronto-based theatre company. We have adapted classical texts, reimagined scripted contemporary performance, written multi-media plays, created gamified interactive theatrical experiences and intimate encounters for one audience at a time, provided accessible development workshops, and continued to develop genre-bending work. We have presented our work at festivals locally and nationally. We presented the Canadian Premiere of ‘The Smile Off Your Face’ by Ontroerend Goed, which won the SummerWorks Award for Best Production, received outstanding production recognitions from local press, and was featured on several “Best of the Year” lists. Re:Current Theatre is a member of the HIVE Performance Collective, which supported the presentation of a dozen new contemporary micro-performances at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, and continues to work with the collective to support emerging performance practices on the west coast. We have been a company in residence at hub14, Impulse theatre, and are grateful for the development support of our projects from Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, The Theatre Centre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Suitcase in Point, and Cabaret Company.

 Director/Concept/Co-Creator

Brian Postalian (Բրայն Փոսթալյան) is an arts administrator, educator, and creator born and raised in Toronto/Tkaronto by way of Armenia, Ireland, Wales, and the Czech Republic. Brian is the founding Artistic Director of Re:Current Theatre, which is dedicated to creating work that reimagines gathering. Together with his company, he produced the sold-out SummerWorks hit The Smile Off Your Face and most recently the digital tour of New Societies from Upintheair Theatre’s eVolver Festival to Kingston’s Kick & Push Festival and into Crow’s Theatre’s main season programming. His work co-creating Access Me with the Boys in Chairs collective was recently published by Playwrights Canada Press as part of Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada in Spring 2022. Brian is a sessional instructor within the School of Performance at X University and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto and Simon Fraser University. He completed a Master of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Theatre Game Design and Interdisciplinary Performance Studies. In his spare time, he likes to visit used book stores, revisit childhood video games, ride his bicycle, play with his dog Amie, and is learning how to draw and play the Armenian duduk. Brian currently lives on the unceded Coast Salish territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations. www.brianpostalian.com

Performers/Co-creators

Amanda Sum is a performer and creator dancing between music and theatre. Amanda is Theatre Replacement’s current COLLIDER Artist in Residence, developing her “pop-up book performance”, New Age Attitudes: Live in Concert. A full production of this piece will be presented at PushOFF 2023. Recent theatre projects include Double Happiness: Detour This Way (Nancy Tam & Robyn Jacob), do you want what i have got? a craigslist cantata (The Cultch), 3 seasons of the East Van Panto (Theatre Replacement), and Chicken Girl (rice&beans). Amanda’s jazz influenced indie-pop music has been played on CBC Radio, and last year, she played at the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival with her Asian girl band. She wrote and arranged her debut full-length album, which will be released later this year. Amanda’s music has brought her to be featured in the Vancouver Sun, booooooom.com, Fluevog and Vancouver Magazine. Amanda directed and choreographed a dance short film, Wide Stance Dance, for the Festival of Recorded Movement, and has lent a choreographic eye to her debut music video, Groupthink (2020, directed by Mayumi Yoshida), as well as the first music video off her album, Different Than Before. www.amandasum.com

Montserrat Videla (b. Mexico City) immigrated with her Colombian family to Canada in 2005. As an actor and creator, she works across a wide variety of performance forms, including text-based theatre, dance/physical theatre, performance art, devised creation, television, and film. Her collaborations have taken place in both English and Spanish. Nationally, she has participated in several film and performance festivals across Canada, including Why Not Theatre’s RISER Project, SummerWorks, Kick & Push, rEvolver, In the Soil, and PuSh. Internationally, she has been an artist in residence at GlogauAIR Berlin, is collaborating on a new work with animators and designers based in Colombia, and coming up, she’s working with GbA on a new multimedia performance at the Centre for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale University. She is a graduate from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts and is currently living on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people/Vancouver. montserratvidela.com

Howard Dai is a Taiwanese actor and theatre artist whose work has been seen across Canada. Howard makes works that engage the audience as active participants through technology, curiosity, and play. His performances and creations have existed in theatre, films, public spaces, Zoom screens, Google Sheets, automated phone calls, interactive websites, and virtual reality. He was the 2022 digital-artist-in-residence with PuSh Festival (Vancouver, Canada) and Royal Court Theatre (London, UK), working on his new play 菠蘿麵包Pineapple Bun that explores nostalgia and diasporic guilt, supported by rice & beans theatre. Recent co-creation/performance credits include: Passenger Seat (Library Performance Co.); 蝦仔 Little Shrimp (Carousel Theatre); Collider (Single Thread Theatre); and New Societies (re:current theatre). Howard is being mentored by Charles Douglas in movement and performance capture throughout 2022 with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Howard works on the unceded land belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Nations. He is currently an Associate Artist with rice & beans theatre, and is a graduate of SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts.  www.howarddai.com

Meagan Woods is a choreographer, performer, writer, and costume designer who is passionate about collaborative, interdisciplinary work. Originally from the states, Meagan has presented a wide range of original dance/theatre works in venues across the North East, including Ailey Citgroup Theater, Dixon Place, NJPAC, and the Historic Loew’s Theatre. Meagan co-founded the largest annual modern dance festival in New Jersey, Your Move, for which she was granted the Dance NJ Jeté Award (and featured on an episode of Cake Boss). She is a designer for Co.ERASGA Dance, a teaching artist with Girl Be Heard, and a collaborator with Nancy Cohen for an installation/performance about coral reefs. Meagan holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University, a BFA in Dance from Rutgers University, and has guest lectured at both universities and at the New School. She recently spoke on the TEDx stage about reimagining forms of progress through the reversal processes of sewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnaWLnwoiWo&t=13s

Oscillating between joy and grief, comfort and pain, familiarity and foreignness is Pascal Reiners. Pascal exists – creates, works, rents, struggles, plays – on the unceded and occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Pascal’s multidisciplinary practice builds its foundation from imagination, collaboration, and the experimentation of a variety of performance and theatrical forms. He holds a BFA in Theatre Performance and a Minor in Political Science from Simon Fraser University.

Alexa Fraser is a theatre performer, director and designer who creates and lives on the unceded and occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations colonially known as “Vancouver, British Columbia”. They are co-founder of theatrecorps, a design based contemporary theatre company with Matthew Winter. Alexa is a self-identified plus sized and queer performer and proud member, performer and producer within Vancouver’s burlesque and cabaret scenes. They are a graduate of Simon Fraser’s SCA, holding a BFA in Theatre Performance and Directing. They are artistic director and founder of Juicy Jems, an all fat and plus sized cabaret. Recent performance work includes: Capitalism Works For Me (PuSh Festival 2022), Are You Watching? (Eve Middleton- Meyer, 2021), New Societies (e-Volver and Kick & Push Festivals, 2020, SFU SCA 2019), Richmond Maritime Festival (2020), The Democratic Set (Back to Back Theatre, PuSh Festival 2020), Lilli Marlene, a solo performance (Judith Fair Festival and Ignite Youth Festival, both 2019) Devil’s 3Some (PuSh Youth Assembly, 2018), Objects of Desire (Too Queer, A Bi-Cabaret, 2017) These Violent Delights (Cole Lewis, SummerWorks Festival, 2017).

Alexa’s other interests reside in “Vancouver” cabaret and sex work history and sitting by the Salish Sea/Fraser River in their former neighborhood in “Richmond, B.C”.

Hannah Meyers (b.1998) is a performer, director, creator and pandemic graduate (SFU BFA Hon. Theatre Performance 2020) Born and raised on treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, AB and currently living on the unceded Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Nations. She is the General Manager of Tara Cheyenne Performance and co-founder of Lo-fi Spectacle Club; a nascent performing arts collective as idealistic as they come. With LFS Club, Hannah is currently developing The Pippa Bacca Parable (working title) and medicine cabinet, a book of photos, prose, the profane and the profound. Recent work includes Ordinary Orchestra, NTS Art Apart, Passenger Seat, The Library Performance Co, The Albertine Workout, Simon Fraser University, New Societies (online), Re:Current Theatre.

Sena Yurika Çağla is an actor, deviser, writer and a theatre maker currently residing on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of Squamish (Skxwú7mesh), Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm), and Tsleil-Waututh (səli̓ lwətaɁɬ) Nations. She graduated from Simon Fraser University with a BA in Theatre Performance. As a Japanese-Turkish artist, her work focuses on creating connections between cultures while embracing differences. Currently Sena is focused on exploring the effects of cultural differences between romantic relationships and how oppression takes part in it with Tarragon Theatre’s Young Playwrights Unit-Extended Cohort 2021. Past performances on these themes include: ‘Heart of the Scarecrow’ inspired by Corazón del espantapájaros (Audain Gallery) and her one woman performance ‘I Oppress’ in 9 Lives/(Le) Chat in a Box. 

Evan Medd is a dramaturg, producer, performer, climate activist, and puppeteer based in Calgary, Vancouver, and Prince Edward Island. His practice primarily focuses on dramaturgical strategizing of process design, community engaged art that intersects with environmental dialogues, and collaborative new play development and production with the Alberta-based Major Matt Mason Collective, for whom he is both Co-Artistic Producer and Resident Dramaturg. Evan spends his summers working in PEI on a piece called The River Clyde Pageant, a community integrated outdoor spectacle that celebrates a social ecology while drawing attention to the impact of climate change on PEI’s waterways and ecosystems. Evan has spearheaded a new initiative called Dreaming Climate Consciousness, a collaborative process where participants work together to imagine eco-conscious futures through the lens of speculative/science fiction. He has also been performing in and developing a piece called DOT, most recently presented as a work-in-progress during Calgary’s Festival of Animated Objects. A graduate of SFU’s Theatre Performance program, Evan is passionate about utilizing creative practice as a means to stimulate imaginations while interrogating and examining the tensions that define our world. 

 Sound Designer/Co-Creator

Stefan Andrei Nazarevich (b. 1996) is an artist based in Vancouver, Canada: the unceded, traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His compositions, performances, and installations utilize meticulous, architectural music production. Stefan’s work turns the emergent artifacts of failing technology into aesthetic sonic objects, inspired by retro sci-fi, anime, and the glitches in the Matrix.

Under the alias SAN, Stefan released his debut EP Haven, in July 2019. Along with Shion Skye Carter, he is one half of the duo olive theory, whose debut work reach-close (2019) features an interactive, sculptural, amplified piano wire installation, performed with plucking, violin bows, and the scraping of shaved heads. His work has been presented at events such as Vancouver International Dance Festival (2019), Vines Art Festival (2020), and the Darmstadt International Summer Course (2018, Germany). 

A frequent interdisciplinary collaborator, Stefan has been commissioned to compose for numerous dance artists, including Noam Gagnon (Vision Impure), Josh Beamish (MOVE The Company), Wen Wei Wang, Ralph Escamillan (FakeKnot), and Anya Saugstad.

Stage Manager/Co-Creator

Nico Dicecco is a stage manager, videographer and technical director based in Vancouver, BC on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. He has SM’d for The Sea (Slamming Door Collective), Dissection of a Mixed Heritage Woman (Nyla Carpentier), The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Dancing Lessons (Naked Goddess Productions). Nico is also the co-founder of Booklight Media, a videography company whose recent work includes the upcoming feature-length film In Camera, a digital adaptation of Sartre’s No Exit. Upcoming projects include stage managing Benovelence with Ruby Slippers and doing video design for Greenthumb’s Derwent is Different.

Scenographer/Co-Creator

Christian Ching is an emerging producer, lighting designer, and scenographer with an interest in design and biological systems. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University (2021) with a double degree in Theatre Production and Design and in the Biological Sciences. Originally from the Philippines, he is currently based in the unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations (also known as Vancouver) and works in theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary work. His practice aims to revolve around collaboration and the consideration of ecological aspects of design. In his free time, he likes to run RPGs, draw, and make music.

Recent projects include producing Palimpsest (Stone’s Throw Productions), production management for Nowheresville:A Staged Reading (Pacific Theatre) scenography for New Societies (Re:Current Theatre), assistant technical direction for the HIVE Performance Collective, set design for Clue (UBCMedPlay) and lighting design for Mary’s Wedding (Stone’s Throw Productions).