DIALING UP PLAYS @HOME
Red Phone concept described as ‘part theatre and part social intervention’
Boca del Lupo’s Sherry Hoon and Jay Dodge are no strangers to producing theatre in unique settings. The world is operating under unique circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has wrought havoc upon live theatre.
The creative team behind such award-winning shows as DBLSPK (in partnership with rice and beans) and Coda 2.0, didn’t find that digital presentations were delivering the same immediacy and sought out creative ways to bring that “liveness” back into theatre in these socially distancing days.
Working with a template designed to keep audiences, actors, staff and crew safe, Hoon and Dodge decided to revisit one of their unique shows and create something brand new too.
The audience-to-audience “play in a phone booth” titled Red Phone is coming back with a host of new conversations penned by writers across Canada.
Plays2Perform@Home is a visually vibrant box set of new plays to be performed with those in your personal bubble, ranging in size from three to eight characters. The box set is delivered to your home directly.
Everything else is available by takeout, so why not theatre?
Postmedia chatted with the Boca del Lupo team about the new shows and what audiences can expect from them.
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How Red Phone works
Described as “part theatre and part social intervention,” Red Phone takes place inside two fully enclosed phone booths featuring a vintage red phone and an integrated teleprompter. Two audience members at a time enter the booths and conduct a five-minute-long conversation written by a writer from somewhere in Canada. Participants are encouraged to let loose as they are in an anonymous setting.
“This project started about five years ago with five or six local writers, and now we have representation from every province,” Jay Dodge said.
“Given that we will have completed the catalogue and the present situation under COVID -19, we felt it was a good time to mount it again as it can be done meeting all safety precautions and so forth.”
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Conversations are open-ended “What we are asking is for writers to connect and think about what they love about performance, but in a creative way where they can be free and not obliged to
reflect what is happening right now,” Sherry Hoon said. “There is so much now going on right now, that we will see artists being both reflective and relevant to now, but also to engage in work that can continue on past our global pandemic. What really resonated with us and the presenters and artists we have engaged is to give audiences a work that isn’t here to replace theatre, but is in essence what we love about live performance — the emotional ride, the intimacy, etc.”
3 Plays2Perform@Home
The “box set” includes three different plays designed to be performed
around the apartment, the park bench or wherever.
Each piece is a 10- to 20-minute-long play with three to eight characters that you and those in you bubble can choose to read out together. The first four plays — from Governor General’s Award winner Hiro Kanagawa, Jessie award-winning playwright Jovanni Sy, playwright/librettist/ actor Leana Brodie and her Dora award-winning collaborator Karen Hines — range from farce to drama.
“It was a chance to commission some playwrights and get some money out to them at a time when
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Remembering live performance
“We want to get people engaged in this conversation, because our theatres are shuttered and we don’t know when they will be open again,” Hoon said.
“So many of our experiences of that time when they were open are memories that may be hard to hold. These two projects give you something that keeps that immediate experience alive, a gift created by the artists inviting you into their world in your home to remember what you love most about live performance.”