BLACK BOX _COLAB 2: RECORD
February 17 & 18, 2022 | 8:00 PM | Studio T – SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver | FREE | RSVP
"What many of us crave is the time for asking questions, going off on tangents, changing our minds and changing them back. We need to make work that falls on its face and staggers up again. We need time for ideas to percolate, time to mine and forage and research and discover and challenge and embody. We need time to wonder and wander and think and dream."
Leslie Hill + Hellen
You are invited to the exploration and open rehearsal of work under investigation from CA 353 Black Box / COLAB 2.
Continuing on the theme of Memory from Black Box / (COLAB 1) in the fall, students in Black Box (COLAB 2) were asked to create three performances to form a triptych. The first part of the triptych titled RECORD, the second work titled REWIND + REPLAY and the last work, an installation called RECALL. Each work aims to explore the act of recording, rewinding, replaying and recalling our memories both within the context of text, movement, sound and design. Inspired by our obsession to be remembered, to understand our own story and the world around us, we gathered ideas from the source material of the Golden Record, Janet Cardiff’s Opera for a Small Room, the work of Ant Farm’s time capsules, the memory of mankind project by Michael Kunz, the musings of James Baldwin on memory and the line in Macbeth “To the last syllable of recorded time.” We looked at artists who work with memory as a central theme to their work, as well as artists who incorporate film in their work to create a tightly choreographed live-cinema, who use the pressure of the camera on the actors body as a close-up to the ephemeral, the visceral nature of our shared human condition.
This show will contain strobe lighting and moments of intense audio.
Part one of the Triptych
RECORD is a re-staged series of moments or an event where a memory is exposed, uploaded or recorded. Using the theme of “record” and the language of a live feed performance in combination with pre-recorded footage, the students set out to make a 20 minute work in progress, guided by the list of ingredients /prompts as anchors to their work:
One to two extreme close-ups within the live recording.
Projection on a unlikely surface
Light coming from a unconventional source
6 moments of tableau
A section of a sound score using field recordings or found sound in contrast to what is happening on stage
Sound coming from a unconventional source
Use of a microphone
Use of narration either by an actor (s) or within the sound design
Visible artifice of the camera being used
- A short moment of recorded joy in the form of a dance or celebration
Teaching Assistants
Alexandra Caprara (she/her) is a designer, divisor and writer from Toronto (Tkaranto), Ontario whose work has been staged internationally. As a SCA MFA Candidate, her work centers around a design-led creation processes, interactivity between the body, technology and performance.
Andrea Rideout is a curator specializing in interdisciplinary performance whose work touches themes of grief, prayer and resilience. Her SCA MA research focuses on queer-feminist performance archiving practises including wikipedia and oral histories. She holds a diploma in Theatre Technology (Red Deer College), a BFA in Theatre & Deveopment (Concordia), and recently spent 2 summers at the Banff Centre for the Arts as Practicum Technical Director for Opera.
Collaborators + Ensemble
Hassan Babar
From Karachi, Pakistan, Hassan Babar is your fellow neighborhood coffee connoisseur, devourer of all things delicious, and a man out of time. As a Muslim and as an immigrant, he aims to provoke the deeply visceral by incorporating writing, directing, and performance into theatre as well as film. His quest is to challenge established colonial frameworks and examine the dominos that fall today as a direct result of Western imperialism. Though based in Vancouver, Canada, he is currently on an alien planet attaining mastery in his crafts.
Colleen Bayati
Colleen Bayati is a filmmaker and dramaturg, always looking to expand her artistic capabilities and be an active member in the Vancouver Arts Community.
Breanne Birk
Breanne Birk is a theatrical performer and artist, specializing in acting, vocalization, movement composition and performance. Based in Vancouver, Canada she currently studies at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, SCA. Breanne continues to develop her theatrical practice working alongside the SCA to generate / direct a series of divided works and performances: Shedding Light, Best Before, Stream of Consciousness, 2020. In 2021 she launched a home entertainment manual called BlackBox PizzaBox – “a homemade delivery comprised of a series of instructive and lively plans for play.”
Zoë Braithwaite
Zoë Braithwaite was born and raised on the unceded ancestral lands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, also known as Burnaby. She is known as somewhat of a garbage queen. With a smorgasbord of interdisciplinary focus, she likes weird shit. She strives to create like an alchemist; creating work that feels surreal, absurd, tactile, communal, and decomposing.
Raunuk Chand
Raunuk Chand never imagined himself pursuing acting and yet when he looks back he always remembers watching his favorite shows and movies and saying to himself “I wanna do that”. For now he has yet to do that, however he is optimistic.
Avery Chapman
“Spider Enthusiast, thank you.”
Blake Hobson-Dimas
Blake Hobson-Dimas is a Mexican-Canadian artist who strives to make his grandmother proud. As a multidisciplinary performer and visual artist, he hopes that his work inspires other artists to follow their impulses and test the boundaries of their creativity. Blake's ultimate goal is to be remembered as an artist who was not afraid of anything.
Eve Middleton-Meyer
Eve Middleton-Meyer (she/her) was born in Calgary, Alberta on the traditional territories of the Treaty 7 people. She currently lives, works and plays on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Eve is an interdisciplinary artist with training in performance, dance, music, visual art and writing.
Jenny Min
Jenny Min (she/her) She was born in South Korea and moved to Canada when she was 4. She is in her 2nd year majoring in Production and Design. She loves to dance and sing. She started dancing when she was 7 years-old and she can’t live without dancing. She was always interested in how all the sets are created by people. Therefore, she wants to learn in depth about Production as she moves forward.
Clare Noble
Clare Noble is a writer, actor and overall artist born and raised in so-called Vancouver. Clare has always had a love for performance and creating strange things for as long as she can remember and hopes to continue to expand on twisting realistic moments into unusual things. Her previous works have often concentrated on small details and shifting them into things they should not be.
Sonja Tan
Sonja Tan (she/her) was born and raised on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. She is still navigating her way through life as an artist but hopes to provide knowledge, inspiration and comfort through her art.
Olympia Tomasta
Olympia Tomasta is an actor and creator that takes a great deal of inspiration from her Czech and Slovak heritage as well as the natural world around her. She finds that the beauty and wonder of the local forests and ocean hold a particular charm. She embraces a great joy in making and discovering. Olympia has a thirst for adventure and a knack for the whimsical.
Sterling Weran
Sterling Weran (he/him) I learned to live and play on Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, Canada through improv and theatre. I learned to imagine and dream through the internet. I carry its false reality with me every day, and through theatre, I extract its colors, wonders, comfort and display into a tangible world. I believe theatre is a live painting that is capable of speaking words. I currently live on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
Viviane Wu
Viviane Wu is an actor, writer, and creator navigating her way through life in so-called Vancouver, BC. Focusing on her relationship to the world, herself, and others, Viviane's work is inspired by the heavy weight of identity. She is on a never-ending and impossible journey to explore the very definition of identity, and the construction of what makes someone who they are. Otherwise, Viviane is just trying to get through school, and finish knitting her darn scarf.
(Joy) Zhengyi Wu
(Joy) Zhengyi Wu was born and raised in HuNan which is a province in South of China. Majoring in Theatre Production and Design about three years. When she was seventeen years old, she chose to come to Vancouver for her studies. She loves the theatre and strives to make good plays.
Ningqi Xu (Lava)
Ningqi Xu (Lava) was born and raised in Zhejiang, China. She has participated in the School for Contemporary Arts “Ascension 2021”as a lighting operator and the “LIVE ACTS VOL.1” as a stage manager. As a person who loves the stage, Lava’s goal is to create the stage that the performer wants and the stage that the audience appreciates.
Sabrina Yu
Sabrina Yu was born and raised in Hong Kong; as a dog-lover, artist, power-napper, lasagna-enthusiast who inhales ice-cream (even though she’s lactose intolerant), this garbanzo bean is on a never-ending search for her role in the art world. With a passion for physical theatre forms, she is trying to find her identity through the shapes and spaces created by her body in relation to any setting. Ultimately, she’s just trying her best.
Jingyi Zhang (Chloe)
Jingyi Zhang (Chloe) was born and raised in Hubei, China. She is a dancer who has studied dance for over six years. Her major is theatre production & design in SFU. She is trying to experience a variety of different theater production directions like lighting design, stage manager and so on. She always wants to make the stage in her heart with passion. It is always her goal to make interesting, aesthetic and meaningful stages.