Bioboxes

Maiko Bae Yamamoto + James Long

Slip into a cramped space. Pull the curtain behind you. Sit down, and then gradually fall under the spell of a nano-narrative recounted by an actor whose head emerges from a box right in front of you, so close that your knees are almost touching.

Details

Repeat the experience. Six times. Revisiting the concept of chamber theatre in exquisite fashion and reducing it to its most minuscule expression, Bioboxes, presented by the imaginative Vancouver company Theatre Replacement, plunges the spectator into a “cabinet of curiosities” full of diverse objects and strange anecdotes. Shifting from the comic to the bittersweet, this journey through variable geometry, these tales for one actor and one spectator, are based on interviews of first-generation Canadian immigrants. Evoking dislocation but also resilience and the quest for happiness, these short fables are recounted in English but, if the spectator so desires, also in French, Japanese, Cantonese, Italian, Serbo-Croatian or German. A playful one-on-one intimate theatre experience and an enveloping optical experience, Bioboxes bewitches the spectator who, as a consenting captive, yields to the charms of the infinitely small.

Credits

Production & Direction : Maiko Bae Yamamoto, James Long

Creation & performance : Anita Rochon, Marco Soriano, Paul Ternes, Cindy Mochizuki, Donna Soares, Una Memisevic, Ruthie Sumiko Tabata

Box Construction : Kofu Yamamoto

Video design : Candelario Andrade

Dramaturgy : Kris Nelson

Produced by Theatre Replacement (Vancouver)

Bioboxes was originally produced with the assistance of One Yellow Rabbitt’s High Performance Rodeo

In association with Espace GO

Text: Catherine Cyr

English Translation: Neil Kroetsch

Photos: Shannon Mendes