Play takes gig economy to frightening conclusion
What happens when you have to live where you work?
In the dystopian Vancouver of No Home Land, people don’t get out much.
“Everything has gotten so expensive that people live where they work,” says writer Sabrina Auclair.
Her play, which premieres in a staged reading at this year’s Movin’ On Up showcase, is about three employees of a bagel restaurant who live in that restaurant, and their struggles to survive.
“Initially, I thought it was going to be a funny play,” she said. “But it’s not, really.
“I found I took this matter really seriously. It’s much more dramatic than I expected it to be.”
Now in its fourth year, Movin’ On Up — presented by local company Staircase Theatre — is dedicated to new work by emerging playwrights. Along with No Home Land, Movin’ On Up will feature the premiere of a new work by Brahm Taylor. The What For is described as “a gender-flipped reimagining of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.”
Mika Laulainen is directing both works, which draw on the talents of local actors Tina Teeninga, Veenu Sandhu, Lara Amelie Abadir, Nicola Whitney-Griffiths, Corina Akeson and Xander Williams. Along with the readings, Movin’ On Up features a silent auction, snacks, a bar and, following the readings, music.
Both Taylor and Auclair are known primarily for their acting work — Taylor has worked with Radix Theatre, and Auclair with Théâtre la Seizième, among others. For Auclair, this edition of Movin’ On Up marks the first reading by actors of one of her plays. She answered a request for submissions the company posted on Facebook earlier this year.
“I had an idea and 10 pages written,” she said. “It aligned with their theme this year so I decided to send it out.”
This year’s theme, according to staircasetheatre.com: “an artistic investigation into the intersection and interaction of Vancouver’s privileged and underprivileged citizens.”
The housing discrepancies Auclair sees between her home province of Quebec and Vancouver inspired No Home Land, she says.
“The situation here with the housing market is super weird for me,” said Auclair, who is originally from Quebec City and moved here from Montreal to attend Langara four years ago.
“Seeing how expensive it is to live here, and how it’s getting more and more expensive every year — I feel like people complain about it a lot but don’t do anything to make it better — was very, very surprising for me.”
Auclair’s own service experience does not include working at a bagel restaurant, though she does allow that she drew on at least one of her previous places of employment. (She now works at CBC/Radio-Canada as an associate producer.)
For No Home Land, she created characters who could “explore different perspectives on the housing crisis, and how it’s affecting people in different ways. One of the characters is French-Canadian, but I wouldn’t say that this character is me. She’s much more — I mean, I’m pretty abrasive, but she’s much more abrasive than I am. (Laughs). I thought it would be interesting to have one character who isn’t from Vancouver.”
Another character is a struggling artist. Auclair is concerned about what will happen to the city when most of the artists are forced out.
“All my friends are artists. It breaks my heart that all of Vancouver’s artists are going to have to leave at some point, because they won’t be able to afford to live here."
But this theme is only touched on in the play. Mostly, Auclair said, “I wanted to explore how far this could go, how bad the situation can get. It was an experiment to see how far I could go with it.”