Hold Your Head Tight

part two of a doppelgänger trilogy

...there are things in every man's past that he will admit only to his closest friends. There are other things that he won't admit even to his friends but only to himself - and only in the strictest confidence. But there are things too, that a man won't admit even to himself and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things. In fact, the more decent the man he is, the greater the accumulation he is bound to have.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground

With Hold You Head Tight, Boca del Lupo entered into its second collaborative descent into the strangest, scariest, and most surprising parts of ourselves. A show that is best described by the slow building tension of winding a jack in the box and the inevitable but always alarming “pop goes the weasel” that follows.

Last Office: part one of a doppelgänger trilogy
The Beginners: the final part of a doppelgänger trilogy

Creative Team

Sherry J. Yoon, Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo, is a theatre creator and director with a passion for creating new performances through collaborative pursuits. With Boca del Lupo, Sherry has co-created more than 35 productions, including: Fall Away Home, an intergenerational site-specific production in the forest of Stanley Park; Photog, a large-scale show that toured across Canada and was created with interviews from prominent conflict photographers; and You Are It, as part of the Silver commissions from the Arts Club Theatre that investigates the complex dynamics between female friendships. During Sherry’s tenure, the company has received numerous awards, including the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, and Jessie Awards for Outstanding Production, Design, Actor, Ensemble, as well as the Critic’s Choice Innovation Award. Her productions have toured festivals and venues across Canada, Europe and Mexico.  She co-created an online exhibition of Expedition, an iterative collaboration between Boca del Lupo and the Performance Corporation, and working on Net Zero, an interactive theatre installation about climate change that involves the audience charging a battery with a stationary bicycle. She is also a freelance director who has worked at the Richmond Gateway Theatre, Bard on the Beach, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Canada.

Sherry J Yoon
Director

Jay Dodge

Performer/Creator

An inventor, creator and entrepreneur, Jay’s imagination for the what, how and why of theatre defies conventional boundaries . During his tenure, the company has won the peer-assessed Alcan Performing Arts Award, and several Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards including seven nominations for the Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation and the Patrick O’Neill Award for best anthology with Plays2Perform@Home. Jay is a passionate set and video designer with Jessie Richardson Awards in both of those categories as well as a published playwright including a contribution to Boca del Lupo’s Red Phone project. His artistry is one of innovation and daring and his one man show, PHOTOG. featured interactive video, stunt rigging and verbatim text, touring to World Stage, Prismatic, Festival Trans Amerique and PuSh. Having served as President on the national board of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Jay also has special interest in creative space making including as co-founder of celebrated colocation space PL1422, co-founder of the Granville Island Theatre District. Happiest when he is tinkering in his studio with collaborators from a diverse range of disciplines and backgrounds, the impact of Jay’s influence is quiet yet profound.

Jay Dodge
Performer/Creator

Hiro Kanagawa

Major Contributing Writer

Hiro Kanagawa is a Vancouver-based actor and writer perhaps best-known for his 200-plus film and television roles ranging from Best in Show and art house shorts to hit shows like Smallville, Altered Carbon and Star Trek: Discovery. Behind the camera he was story editor on several critically-acclaimed Canadian television series: Da Vinci’s Inquest, Da Vinci’s City Hall, Intelligence and Blackstone. As a playwright, he received the 2017 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama for his play, Indian Arm. His latest play, an adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s best-selling memoir, Forgiveness, premiered in January, 2023 in an Arts Club Theatre / Theatre Calgary co-production directed by renowned director Stafford Arima. A long-time collaborator with Boca del Lupo, Hiro’s other works with the company include plays2perform@home, the Micro Performance piece Azano and co-writing the full-length play Hold Your Head Tight.

Hiro Kanagawa
Major Contributing Writer

Performers/Creators James Long, and Maiko Bae Yamamoto
Major Contributing Writer Tanya Marquardt

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