Do you mind if I sit here?
(2022)
Do you mind if I sit Here? Photo by Matt Reznek.
Theatre Replacement has kept a small studio space in Vancouver’s Russian Hall since 2011. Some years ago, in a neighbouring closet, we came across close to 20 hours of 16mm films sent from the USSR between the 1950s and 80s. These slowly decomposing artifacts, many of them fragments, cover everything from heavy industry to demonstrations of folk dances. Drawing on this discovery as both a conceptual and aesthetic spark, Do you mind if I sit here? brings together an ensemble of artists to develop an immersive performance that combines speculative fiction and a shared meal.
We begin this process at a moment of significant global uncertainty and, hopefully, equally unbound imagination. In 2022, after two years of development, Do you mind if I sit here? will offer audiences a place and a moment wherein we might collectively imagine a future we could have never guessed would exist.
Three social planners visit Vancouver’s Russian Hall roughly 30 years from now; they intend to repurpose it for common use, but they soon discover a squatter who has been living there through decades of environmental catastrophe... Eclectic in style and shrewdly metaphorical in its narrative, this is a multimedia extravaganza that dares us to imagine the future in terms of our most important hopes, fears, and beliefs.
Written and directed James Long, with video by Candelario Andrade, sound design and composition by Mauricio Pauly, movement by Justine Chambers, costumes by Barbara Clayden and Alaia Hamer, lighting by Sophie Tang, dramaturgy and text by Marcus Youssef, audio engineering by Brad Danyluk, assistant direction by Arthi Chandra, technical direction by Matt Oviatt and performed by Kayvon Khoshkam, Pippa Mackie, Gina Stockdale and Conor Wylie.
Development generously supported by the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund and produced with the support of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Do you mind if I sit here? premiered in January 2022 at the PuSh Festival.
Photos by Matt Reznek and Emily Cooper.