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Plantlife
virtual reality experience
Concept, Visual and Experience Design
A virtual reality game experience for Oculus Quest, Plantlife stems from a puppet design concept originally created for live performance where modular folded paper shapes can be assembled in various ways to form movable puppets. In a lush virtual universe, Plantlife takes these designs and turns them into a series of transformation puzzle games, inviting players to discover how to use these pieces to build creatures of their own imagination and animate them in this vibrant digital playground.
Production Partners - Augmundi Studio and Cinnamon Entertainment
System and Interactions Designer and Programmer - Glenn DeCook
3D Animator and Game Design - Fons Artois
Sound Design - Genesis Victoria
Producer - Sarah D'Hanens
Plantlife prototyping was generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts and Fonds Darstellende Künste
High Water
performance
Creator/Performer
One performer. One 50-gallon drum of water. One fish tank. One horizon of water rising towards the inevitable…
High Water follows a consistently changing landscape of everyday objects which are built and transformed by the water immersing each tiny world. Every moment is an experiment. High Water is an odd and curious inquiry into buoyancy - a series of tests, misfires, and marvels. It is an epic record of civilizations and historic events masquerading as a cheap party trick.
Created in collaboration with Elysse Cheadle
Sound design by Nancy Tam
Lighting by Jonathan Kim
Dramturgy by Kathleen Flaherty
Production and touring Stage Management by Areli Moran
Production Assistance and touring sound operation by Gilles Yann Smrkovsky
Performed at Push International Performing Arts Festival, Vancouver, Festival de Casteliers, Montreal, Schaubude, Berlin, and Theatre o.N. Schaufenster, Berlin.
This project was generously supported through development by The BC Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts, as well as through an artist residency at Presentation House Theatre.
photos 1 and 3 by Nadine Freisleben, 2 and 5 by Gilles Yann Smrkovsky, 4 by Joana Lucas
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Chickenthing
performance and object sculpture
Creator/Performer
A performer and a single audience member at a time share the experience of carefully undressing and redressing an intricate chicken puppet made of found plastic pieces. During the pandemic this ritualistic ‘hygiene performance’ created a rare intimate proximity and quiet space together to honour the sentient beings that are often considered expendable.
performed at Tempelhofer Feld for Performing Arts Festival, and at New Fears Gallery, Berlin
photo 2 by Dorothea Tuch
Alien Forms
performance/installation
Creator/Performer
A family of neon green forms are scattered across a field, clumped in an urban streetscape, or tucked in amongst a forest scene. They are familiar and strange at once. Two performers activate these ‘alien forms’ creating moving objectscapes within the landscape. We see limbs pop out. We see these forms waddle across the yard, flop on their sides and scuttle past. The work snuggles into, yet jumps out of its landscape. It playfully explores how we inhabit a space and is inspired by creatures that carry their homes with them.
created and performed with Isabelle Kirouac
Performed at Made in BC, Art Outside; 12 Minutes Max, The Dance Centre, Vancouver; SKAMpede Festival, Victoria; and Luna Festival, Revelstoke, BC
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Between Two Rocks
performance
Direction/Scenography
Between Two Rocks is a performance inspired by Norse folktale East of the Sun, West of the Moon. The work unravels an imagined horizon across harsh and humbling landscapes. On stage, large piles of wool are carded, spun, and woven by four performers. The encounter between traditional folk art and live performance, written story and oral telling, feminine and masculine, animal and human, merge in a sensory trip to the edge.
performers/creators: Elysse Cheadle, Elliot Vaughan, Linnea Gwiazda, Gordon Havelaar, Pascal Reiners
Dramaturgy: Julie Hammond
Text: Maria Tryti Vennerød
Lighting: Kyla Gardiner
Sound: Ben Wylie
Costumes: Lukas Engelhardt
Technical Direction: Paula Viitanen
Stage Management: Xin Xuan Song
Voice: Maria Tryti Vennerød
Towards Another Land composed by Elliot Vaughan, lyrics by Maria Tryti Vennerød
photography by Lukas Engelhardt
Performed at SFU Woodwards, Studio T, Vancouver; and World Stage Design, Taipei.
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Anthropocene
performance
Set Design
A devised work directed by Ker Wells and performed by students at the School for Contemporary Arts SFU with lighting design by Kyla Gardiner
Presented in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, SFU, Vancouver
Infidel
performance
Costume Design
A stage piece created and performed by Ker Wells
costume worn by
Isabelle Kirouac
built with Alice Mansell
Fragile
performance
Creator/Performer
Fragile is an experience in which we can be mesmerized by what is not said, allow time to slow down and dream a little bit - together.
Through detailed two and three-dimensional paper models and simple live animation, Fragile calls forth an intimate space that reimagines our relationship to scale. Fragile invites us to look carefully at the intricate mechanisms of the everyday. Characters from three generations face pivotal moments in their lives - growing up, growing older, and saying goodbye. The work is precise - assembled and disassembled before your very eyes.
sound design by Wilhelm Sundin
Performed at PushOFF, Theatre/Replacement, Vancouver; Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC; REACH Art Centre, Abbotsford BC; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; World Stage Design, Taipei; Rolling Puppet Theatre, Macau; and Schaubude, Berlin.
Photography by Lisa Wu (image 2, 3)
and Glen Chua (image 4 courtesy of Surrey Art Gallery)
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bearstory
performance
Creator/Performer
Performed at Merge Vancouver, What the Hand Heard, May 2015
Sound and Projection Design by Paul Parozzi
photos by Lisa Wu
Feast
performance
Creator/Performer
created and performed in collaboration with
Mirae Rosner
lighting design by Kyla Gardiner
Performed at Revolver Theatre Festival, Vancouver
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Safe/Guard
performance
Creator/Performer
Lighting design by Kyla Gardiner
Sound design by Elliot Vaughan
Performed at The Gam Gallery; BC Buds, Firehall Arts Centre; and rEvolver Theatre Festival, Vancouver
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