The Greatest Cities in the World

(2010)

The state of Tennessee is home to the highest concentration of 'famous cities,' featuring the small towns of London, Paris, Rome, Athens, Bogata and Moscow among many others. London sits in the middle of the Cherokee National Forest on a dirt road. Rome is little more than a few houses on the road between Lebanon and Carthage. Paris, the biggest of the towns, is home to 9764 people. Built with a vast collection of interviews, photos and video collected by the company in these small towns, The Greatest Cities in the World rises as a cacophonous smash-up of voices, movement and media to construct an oddly familiar world.

The Greatest Cities in the World

Directed by James Long and Maiko Yamamoto. Created with and performed by Nneka Croal, Ruben Castelblanco, Susan Elliott, Young-Hee Kim, Andrew Laurenson, Michael Rinaldi and Tanya Podlozniuk, with lighting design by Jonathan Ryder, costume design by Allee Wells, set design by Jesse Garlick, music by Veda Hille and technical direction by Elia Kirby. The Greatest Cities in the World was the 2010 winner of the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award and commissioned by the Magnetic North Theatre Festival with support from Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. It premiered at The Cultch in Vancouver and toured to the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby, the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Kitchener-Waterloo and the Festival TransAmériques in Montréal.