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‘Illicit’ tells powerful stories of the overdose crisis through community theatre
A group of harm reduction workers and frontline responders from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) has come together to create a striking piece of performance art, expressing the realities of our current overdose crisis, and the hope to work through it.
Through spoken word, song, and shadow puppetry, Illicit presents a series of vignettes based on the lived-experiences of its cast, complete with an original musical score.
Following presentations at the Outsider Arts Festival and the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival last year, the group will mount their first full production of the piece next week at the Orpheum Annex on July 3 and 4. The run will consist of two 7pm shows and a community ‘pay what you can’ performance on July 3 at 1pm.
The show will be followed by an open dialogue around the work’s themes of harm reduction, drug policy, and the stigma faced by people who use illicit drugs and alcohol.
SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement spoke to some of the members of the team behind Illicit about their upcoming performance.
The creators of Illicit were originally connected through their work with the Drug Users Resource Centre (DURC). It has been over two years since Vancouver Coastal Health announced it was reallocating funds, forcing DURC’s closure. Formerly operated by the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), the centre was a community hub for harm reduction in the DTES. Its closure came during the worst overdose crisis this neighbourhood has seen to date, which is ongoing.
“It was really interesting to see these people who were talking through these socks about stories they normally wouldn’t tell.” — David Mendes
Former DURC staffer Kelty McKerracher was awarded the initial funding for the project from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2016 — just before the closure — that enabled her to form the group that would begin the research and development of a community performance inspired by the centre.
“There was a sense that this could become like a legacy project for DURC,” McKerracher shared, “And then it became clear that it was also a way for us as a community to continue to stay together and work towards responding in some way to this closure.”
Shadow designer/director and community liaison for Illicit, David Mendes, was running a political art group, called “Arts in Action,” out of DURC at the time. They were creating art to engage people in the neighbourhood around the closure, when they started experimenting with sock puppets.
“It was really interesting to see these people who were talking through these socks about stories they normally wouldn’t tell,” said Mendes. The first shadow puppet shows they put on were in a DTES alley on a dark winter evening, using an old overhead projector.
With the addition of that artistic exploration into puppetry, Illicit was formed by members of the DURC community. Out of that initial research phase, they “started to develop towards more artistic expressions, getting the lines out there about which issues were current — and hitting the points about peer work,” explained Nicolas Leech-Crier, a performing member of the Illicit team.
Most of the cast was new to the stage, and they were aided by theatre professionals and musicians who came aboard to help with the music and dramaturgy. Renae Morriseau joined as a director and dramaturge and Devon Martin composed all of the music for the piece, serving as the musical director. The group has also been workshopping the performance with David Diamond of Theatre for Living.
“We’re representing a lot of people here — all those people that passed away. We’re honouring their voice.” – Nicolas Leech-Crier
All the while they were developing this piece, the members of Illicit were continuing to work as frontline responders to overdoses in the neighbourhood. “We were living the experience as we were going along,” said Crier. “The content for the play was sort of unfolding as we were meeting. Every month we would meet and something new had happened. More people had died.”
Since their festival appearances and more informal workshop performances, the group has received more support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Community Action Initiative, and the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at UVic to further develop the work. The additional funding resulted in their upcoming shows at the Annex, as well as invitations to perform in Victoria and Kamloops.
While Illicit is resonating more broadly with people who have been touched by overdose deaths, its roots are in the DTES. “We’re still trying to honour DURC,” Crier shared. “DURC was a real special place, important to people.
“[The closure] displaced people — it may have cost multiple lives — that judgement call about switching the funding.” He stressed that the project was undertaken to raise up the experiences of drug users and people living in the margins: “We’re representing a lot of people here — all those people that passed away. We’re honouring their voice.”
For Mendes, it is not only about changing minds, it is about effecting policy change. Despite significant changes to the public conversation over the past two years, Mendes says that drug users are still treated like second-class citizens.
He spoke to the capacity for art to open people up to emotion and understanding, and said that Illicit has been well-received by audiences. “They might have come in, not with a closed mind, but maybe just an unknown mind. After they see the show, they’re very receptive to what we have to say about policy change and stigma.”
Tickets to see Illicit at the Orpheum Annex on July 3 and 4 are available online. Visit their website or watch this short video to learn more about the project.
