Hive: The New Bees 2 theatre collaboration promises a honey of a show

Resounding Scream will be bringing several theatre companies under one roof for a series of site-specific performance shorts

Chapel Arts, an event space at the edge of Strathcona, is about to give honeycomb housing to a dozen different independent theatre companies from the Vancouver area. Resounding Scream Theatre company is hosting Hive: the New Bees 2, a smorgasbord of theatre, dance, and music, all packed into one former funeral home.

The premise for the show is 12 independent theatre companies coming together, each given a nook of the Chapel Arts venue and asked to create a 10-minute performance inspired by the space. The participating companies include Rice and Beans theatre, Escaping Goat Productions, Human Theatre Collective, and Workingclasstheatre, among others.

“The inspiration for the show comes from the Progress Lab Company, a professional theatre group in Vancouver who has done this kind of show three times before,” said Catherine Ballachey, referring to the team behind La Marea, one of the most popular productions showcased at PuSh Festival in 2011, which used the shops of Gastown as stages and shut down roads for the performances.

Ballachey is the co-artistic director of Resounding Scream Theatre, and an SFU alumnus. She has written and directed three original plays, and is currently acting as the senior front of house manager at the SFU Woodward’s cultural unit. After completing her undergrad, she formed Resounding Scream Theatre with fellow SFU theatre major Stephanie Henderson in 2009 to bring a unique and fresh theatre experience to Vancouver.

The name Hive: the New Bees 2 comes from the hive-like space the performers are given; each nook is like a honeycomb in a beehive, housing a few performers from each company. The place will be buzzing with emerging and young artists, hence the “New Bees.”

“There’s a musical, a dance company, a few different installations; my company’s piece is a performance where the audience can come and go throughout the night. It’s just kind of continuously going and very interactive that way. It’s the kind of environment that lends to some experimentation,” Ballachey said.

Each performance will occur simultaneously, and the audience members will be encouraged to move from one piece to another. One production involves two people in a Winnebago-style van, with just enough room for about six audience members.

“I know as a young artist and as an audience member, when I went to the professional version, I was so inspired by seeing all these artists share the same space and share their work and work together,” Ballachey said.

The event is a mosaic of art forms. Some groups have as many as eight performers using a larger area, while some use only one or two people working in a smaller space. Following the theatre performances, there will be an after-show each night, including performances by prog-rock band Criminal Caterpillar, the comedic styling of David MacLean and Jacob Samuel, and the Gal Pal DJs on the final night. The event is a coming-together of the Vancouver arts scene, which has become increasingly necessary following the provincial funding cuts.

“Everyone approaches art really differently. At SFU they instill a certain kind of mentality in you: you focus on working with each other and making those connections. With visual art it’s very competitive, so it can be hard; you worry sometimes that there’s an ulterior motive. But people are very genuine and just want to do their art, whatever it takes,” said Ballachey.

While networking of this nature has become almost a necessity in the arts industry, it also creates a colourful and thriving community that works together to create new things. Kind of like a colony of bees.

“It’s tricky to convince people who haven’t been out to the theatre to come out to the theatre. There is a movement in the arts of being more self-sustainable, of running more like a business,” Ballachey said. The Vancouver independent theatre scene is dependent upon those who are eager to collaborate and to partake in the arts being created. Spring and summer is the time for independent companies to put on performances, while the colder seasons are generally the period in which professional companies put on shows. The separation of seasonal theatre helps to keep competition at bay, and also means that the warm months are filled with unique performances by passionate young bees.

Hive: The New Bees 2 runs from May 24–26 at Chapel Arts.

Originally published in The Peak.

NaPoWriMo day eight: Westcoasting

So I slightly deviated from Maureen Thorson's prompt for today, mainly because the prompt was to go outside and it was midnight when I wrote this (and I was cozy in bed).  It still pertains to the outdoors and the weather, just not today's weather!

Westcoasting

us vancouverites, we are prepared with our miniature umbrellas

in our trouser pockets.  Eating sushi with sand between our toes and

chopsticks in our hair. Our poor cousins to the east,

lamenting the passing of august into the brutal jaw of winter,

we glide slowly, passively, into an endless grey month of

rain.

Plastic Acid is 'rock art' orchestra

Conductor-turned-gliding instructor-turned-cellist of anti-orchestra tells his story to The Peak

Dress Led Zeppelin up in a crisp white shirt and tie and you get Bryan Deans of Plastic Acid Orchestra. Sipping espresso in JJ Bean, Deans revealed the mechanics behind the 45-piece orchestra that blends Soundgarden with Shostakovich.

     “It’s rock-art fusion. A full symphony sound but with an edge,” said Deans as he described Plastic Acid, accurately named after the collaborative, wacky mixture of elements the group employs. The orchestra is an evolving amoeba of sound, and will soon be fused with the folksy artistry of Maria in the Shower.

     Deans began conducting for the graduate students of the University of Victoria’s music program after he was asked if he could switch up his style to accompany some new songs that were weirder than their usual repertoire. “I was like, what does it require, a chainsaw and a little bit of rock and a weird thing here, a weird thing there? So I said yeah, what the hell.” After conducting for three years with UVic, Deans was able to meet tons of student musicians and eventually figured he could do his own show. This spawned the beginnings of Plastic Acid, and the upcoming collaboration with Maria in the Shower.

     Martin Reisle, frontman of Maria in the Shower, came to Deans with the idea of collaborating in an unusual place.

     “I’m actually a glider pilot. I teach gliding in the Columbia Valley. I was flying gliders up there and this guy came out, this really skinny, little human comes out and said he heard that I played the cello,” Deans relayed. Reisle was looking for someone who was innovative with the cello. After singing the song he had in mind out loud to Deans (one can only imagine this scene occurring on the edge of a cliff somewhere, gliders in the background, two quirky musician cartoon characters humming to each other), Deans agreed.  The song, “Train of Pounding Hours” is now done with the full symphony, tying up the end of the show.

     Plastic Acid has gone on to play in various bars and clubs in Vancouver, including Caprice. A video online shows the smoky, cramped club filled with music stands and Deans, standing in a corner swinging his conducting baton as the crowd shouts along to “Black Hole Sun”.

     “I wanted to change it up so people can see it in a bar environment. Really trying to stay away from standard big time. We have a different setup overall, different genres.” The unique experience of Plastic Acid is meant to be as the name implies: semi-akin to doing acid. The aggressive, brassy pieces are not meant to be absorbed passively in a plush theatre seat, with arms crossed and eyelids drooping; but to be rocked out to and engaged with. This time though, they are moving back into the theatre, taking the stage of the Vogue. “We really want people to yell out and scream and participate,” Deans says.  Plastic Acid, infused with Maria in the Shower’s cabaret folk, is anything but your standard, classical orchestra.  It’s the rejuvenation of a tuxedo -filled theatre, but in this scenario, audience members are more likely to be donning faded Pink Floyd T-shirts.

     Now that the group has come full circle, acquiring a large enough fan base for the Vogue, the anti-orchestra has reached out to be a service group for the Junos. “The organizers want to see interest in the group, as well as a concert series lined up before they do anything.”  It’s immediately clear that if Plastic Acid is going to make as large an impact as they should, it’s going to be up to the audience’s participation and adoption of the genre-defying symphony.

     “Let’s say Plastic Acid has a few pieces, our own songs.  Or we play for other artists.  I’d pick Arcade Fire, or Mother Mother, and we arrange some pieces together, so when you’re nominated, we can back you up.  Or even go with Maria in the Shower.  A bit of a Canadian play.”

     Plastic Acid belongs in the group of innovative Canadian artists, slowly making their mark on the international market. Arcade Fire is one such colourful mix of musical geniuses, utilizing every instrument under the sun.  The beauty of Plastic Acid is its ability to transform; it’s a moveable creature, adopting sounds and genres and vaudeville along the way. “Already, people are coming up to me with ideas, asking how we can arrange it.  A heavy metal band approached me for the year after.  It’s already developing and we haven’t even gotten to this show yet.”

Plastic Acid Orchestra plays the Vogue Theatre with Maria in the Shower February 25.

Originally published in The Peak, February 20, 2012

Review of the 125 Vancouver Poetry Cabaret

The Revue Theatre on Granville Island fills with eager lovers and writers of poetry.  Tonight is the Vancouver 125 Poetry Cabaret Evening One, part of the 24^th Annual Writers and Readers Festival.  The evening was held by Brad Cran, Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, essayist and photographer.  His collection of poetry The Good Life, has been hailed in the Vancouver Sun as a must read. The host of the evening, Poetry Is Dead Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Zomparelli (bow-tie and suspender clad!) was consistently adorable and charming, nearly stealing the show with his not-so-subtle flirtations with the performers. He begins the evening by quoting the Globe and Mail, that “hopefully more than 15 people come to this thing…that is if there is not the competition of paint-drying the same night.” Despite this, wine glasses and red velvet seats are filled, and the first performer takes the stage.

            Catriona Strang, Vancouver-based poet, read a piece from Proust and memory, accompanied by Francois Houle on the clarinet.  The words of Spill Kit rose and fell with both Proustian abstraction and lofty expressions, but it was matched well by Houle’s haunting and distant melodies (at one point, he was playing two flutes at once!).  Strang’s elusive poetry didn’t so much as grab the listener with what was being said, so much as how.  It demonstrated how language can be just as impervious as a complicated math equation.

            The next performer, Jordan Scott, discloses his performance with “This is the paint drying version of the evening.”  This was certainly grossly inaccurate though.  Scott is a stutterer, so every word was a battle, every line needing to be combated, and appropriately his poetry was woven with themes of body versus speech and the procedures of interrogation.  He wonders, “What words are you putting in my mouth?”

            Our third performer of the evening, Wayde Compton, read from all new works, entitled Loxodromic.  His travel narrative was actually written on the plane, on the way to Taiwan, exploring such themes as the riots in Paris and Hogan’s Alley (the old black neighborhood in Vancouver).  His treatment of race, “race is a verb.  It takes place,” is incredibly reminiscent of a Harlem Renaissance era Langston Hughes.  I was impressed with the infusion of jazz-like qualities in Compton’s poetry.

            Next up was Kevin McNeilly, accompanied by trumpet player Taylor Bo Hynum.  McNeilly’s piece, entitled Embouchere, dealt with impersonations and the varying careers of jazz musicians.  Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk gamble themselves broke, perfectly paired to Hynum’s incredibly impressive trumpet improvisation.  Hynum goes red in the face and sputters his final notes, just as McNeilly does.

            Mugbait, an ambient noise duo from Alberta, picks up right after the intermission.  Sitting cross-legged on an Arabian carpet, the duo used various tools and electronics to create the slightly abrasive, high-decibel volume that filled the theatre.  Copper sheets were scraped together and a guitar was manipulated.  Sandra and Ben Doller walk up to two microphones on stage and begin their performance-based spoken word.  Repitition of “shirt” and “baby” serve to confuse the audience as to where the focal point of the performance is, and yet there is a comedic element to the confusion of language, as words collide and meanings are altered.  The performance ends with Ben Doller, dryly punctuating with “applause,” a mere suggestion.

            One of my favourite performers of the evening, Matthea Harvey, warns us that her poetry deals with “mermaids, terror, and aliens.”  The petite brunette begins with a tale (catch that pun there?!) of Frankenmermaid, a mythical creature doomed with being in love with her creator.  The two of them identify the resemblance of two fries with ketchup to her two severed legs.  Yes, there were gasp/laughs in the audience abound.  Her poems about aliens were inspired by a headline in the newspaper, claiming that “Using a Hoola Hoop Can Get You Abducted By Aliens!”  Harvey reasons that “they want the creative ones, those that dream of another place.”  If this is true, everyone in this room is at risk of being swept off to Saturn.

            The final performance of the night was super charged with energy from Christian Bök’s reading of Xenotext.  The Giffin Prize Winner explained the piece as an allegory about the nightmarishness of poetry, and this creature-of-word certainly defied the ordinary daydreaminess of Wordsworth’s poetry.  Bök is actually, literally, trying to find a way to encode the verses into an extremely resilient form of bacteria (extremophile bacterial DNA called Deinococcus radiodurans), so then art imitates life imitates art.  He explosively describes this indestructible being out of one side of his mouth, his face flushing with intensity.  This bacterium will not perish if submerged in the Antarctic Lake Vostok and it can withstand 392 degrees Calvin.  Basically, it will survive billions of years after humans are gone.  And thus so will Xenotext.  This guy is nuts (brilliant!).

            This was just a taste of the International Vancouver Writers and Readers Festival, and if this eclectic collection of Canadian writers is any indication of what else Vancouver has got to offer, sign me up!

- October 2011

Vancouver from then to Now: A Reflection on the History of the Downtown Eastside

     Too often we walk past buildings in our own city that have histories we don’t know about. We walk past that gated-off plot of rubble and think nothing but, “What a mess,” forgetting that it used to be the landmark of the Pantages Theatre. We forget that when this theatre was built in 1907, the anti-Asiatic riots had just begun. We have no idea that one of the bricks from the construction of this historical building was used to break the first window, beginning a racial riot that lasted three days.  We see these buildings all the time, as we walk to our classes at Harbour Centre, as we grab a coffee from our local coffee shop, as we forget about the lush history that exists in our own city, but every now and then we are reminded of our past and how it plays an integral role in our present, and in our future.

     Last week I had the privilege of being guided around the more historical parts of the city by Vancouver-based writer Michael Barnholden. Our tour began at Victory Square off West Hastings Street, a hop and a skip from SFU’s Harbour Center.

“You see that corner over there?” he asks our group as he points over to the corner of Hamilton and Hastings. “That’s where our city began.”

Victory Square, that often-gloomy park with the Vancouver War memorial looming over the street corner, stands as the intersection of old Granville Town (now Gastown) and the CPR townsite. This corner stands as the very tip of the original CPR legacy, and is essentially the birthplace of Vancouver.

People roam around the park in the background as Barnholden tells us the story of the incorporation of Vancouver in 1886. These people are carrying bags of bottles and glancing furtively at us, curious as to why we are standing here in the dark, where people are more often found sleeping on benches. One man is wearing sunglasses — though the sun went down an hour ago — and is carrying a milk crate, and I can’t help but think that this corner is greatly representative of much of modern-day Vancouver. A war memorial stands tall, yet in its shadow people are sleeping in the cold.

     We saunter further up Hamilton Street and stop in front of a narrow, four-story building with the words “Unlimited Growth Increases the Divide” printed across the top of the first floor. The text was part of an art project, aimed at addressing the problems associated with the old being disregarded and replaced for the means of market value. The Del Mar Hotel, built around the turn of the century, stands defiant against those who control the free-market economy and neglect the interests of the community. The current owner, George Riste, has had numerous offers to buy the building, namely from B.C. Hydro, whose mammoth enterprise now stands directly behind the Del Mar. He has turned every single offer down, choosing rather to keep the building as a haven for low-income housing. Standing there, looking at the tiny building with the brace on its side, you can see B.C. Hydro directly behind it, heavily indicative of the new devouring the old.

Our walk continued down to the threshold of Chinatown and onto Abbott Street, which is actually built on fill; the water used to come up this far into the city. “If you’re looking to buy property, don’t buy it here. If we ever get hit by a big one this place is just going to float right out to sea.”

     We continue into Chinatown and our group clusters around the corner of Shanghai Alley and Pender Street, where, according to Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, the thinnest building in the world stands.

     The storefronts have been updated, but the date “1913” is still printed on the upper scaffolding of the building. Supposedly, the original owner, Chang Toy, was only allowed two metres of building space as an expansion of Pender Street. Toy met the challenge, and the building still stands at 8 West Pender Street. Articles proclaiming the building’s fame are plastered all over the windows of the tiny stores.

Supposedly, the original owner, Chang Toy, was only allowed two metres of building space as an expansion of Pender Street.

     As we walk back into the heart of Gastown, I am struck by the changes that our city has undergone since its conception.  Areas which once stood as flourishing public domains are now filled with ruin, with sad, bearded men mumbling to themselves, as if they have been quarantined here. An overwhelming feeling of melancholy rushes in.

     Barnholden leads us down Blood Alley, a block of dilapidated apartments which receive the most police calls out of anywhere else in the city. The alley gets its name from the butcher houses that used to line the street, resulting in blood running through the streets. Rumour has it that it also used to be the location for public executions, though this is likely a draw for tourists more than anything else. The lamp posts here are also rumoured to be equipped with vein light technology, making shooting up nearly impossible.

Directly across the alley from all of this though is Judas Goat Taberna, a Spanish-inspired tapas bar with hip art on the walls and a long wooden bar outside. You can sip your glass of merlot as you admire the historical low-income housing across the way (cue the irony). The juxtaposition here is a prime example of the gentrification in much of the eastside, and a striking example of the stark contrasts between the old and the new.

You can sip your glass of merlot as you admire the historical low-income housing across the way (cue the irony).

      Our tour ends at the old Woodward’s building. What used to be a flourishing department store in the early 20th century now holds SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Most of the original building has since been demolished, but the iconic ‘W’ atop the building still stands as a compass for those needing a reminder of where the heart of the city began.

     Greeting us above the Woodward’s atrium is a photo installation of the 1971 Gastown riot, when police in full riot gear broke up a peaceful ‘smoke-in’ protest. The 50-by-30 foot picture is an image of young hippies, struggling out of police officer’s arms, running through the streets with long hair and bell-bottoms alike. The peaceful protest, also known as the Battle of Maple Tree Square, represents the disunity of government officials with the public’s desire for space in the Downtown Eastside. This giant photograph seemed a poignant end to our tour, a reminder of the past, and a stirring manifestation of current conditions.

Originally published in The Peak, issue 9, volume 139 

Painting by David Wilson, via Ian Tan Gallery