Taking Theatre Places It Has Never Been Before
January 24 - February 5, 2017
Upintheair Theatre and The Only Animal Present The City and The City
Adapted by Jason Patrick Rothery from the novel by China Miéville
Presented with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
What does it mean to “unsee” another person, an incident…an entire city?
Adapted from author China Miéville’s multi-award winning novel, The City and The City is a highly participatory theatrical experience; equal parts dystopic science fiction, film noir, and murder mystery. Using emergent audio technology, the audience receives clues for actions, text and characterization to bring the story to life in real time.
The City and The City unfurls across Ul Qoma and Besźel, two "split" cities which occupy the same geographical space, but operate as distinct social, cultural, and political entities. Conditioned from birth, the citizens in these overlapping cities must unsee one another, and transgressors are disappeared by an invisible police force known only as Breach.
When a young woman is murdered, Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad is plunged into a perilous investigation that risks kindling long-simmering tensions between the two cities, and provoking the panoptic agents that oversee their now corroding boundaries.
The City and The City demands a deep contemplation of the undergirding of communal reality. How do communities construct myths of belonging and exclusion? How do disparate cultures establish independence/interdependence? Who and what do we choose to see and unsee in our day to day lives, and how does that affect our conception of our world?
A new co-production from two Jessie award-winning companies, Upintheair Theatre (Inside the Seed, The North Plan) and The Only Animal (the makers of the living comic book, Nothing But Sky), The City and The City is an immersive, interactive theatrical experience. Like a matrushka doll, the mystery hides another mystery of who you really are, and the city in which you live.
Directed by Kendra Fanconi
Core Creative Team Daniel Martin, Dave Mott, Jason Patrick Rothery & Kendra Fanconi
Movement Direction by Nita Bowerman
Stage Management by Stephanie Elgersma
Sound Design by Nancy Tam
Lighting Design by Jonathan Kim
Costume and Props Design by Natalie Purschwitz
Production Management by Colin Cooper
Technical Direction by Pedro Chamale
Volunteer Coordination by Lisa Goebel
Performed by – YOU THE AUDIENCE
Featuring:
David Mott..............................................Borlu
Conor Wylie............................................Dhatt
Daniel Martin.........................................Gadlem
Darren Boquist......................................Ashil
Lisa Goebel.............................................Yolanda
Heidi Taylor............................................Nancy/Ashelle
Tricia Collins...........................................Corwi
Stephen Atkins......................................Bowden
Photography by Natalie Purschwitz and Jonathan Kim.
Inspired by the conceptual seed of Darren Boquist’s How to Love
Additional design contributors Florence Barrett, Emma Hendrix, and Jerguš Opršal
Developed with creative and dramaturgical support by Brian Quirt in the role of Director of the Banff Playwrights Colony and with the support of Playwrights Colony at Banff Centre for the Arts
Supported by City of Vancouver, BC Arts Council, BC Direct Access Gaming, Canada Council for the Arts, The Hamber Foundation, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation