The Suicide
Winner of the Alcan Performing Arts Award: Theatre 2004
PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY
THE INVITATION:
In October 2002, Boca del Lupo was invited to the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato as part of a delegation of Canadian theatre artists sent down to represent Canada for the thirtieth anniversary of Mexico’s premiere international arts festival.
THE CERVANTINO FESTIVAL:
Upon our arrival to this world class festival we found a country and people very similar to our own; a country bordering the other side of the world’s singular superpower, rich in resources and culture yet struggling to find a voice in the shadow of The United States. These similarities transformed from simple curiosities into profound excitement and further to extraordinary possibilities during a meeting with a group of local theatre artists: San Banquito Teatro.
San Banquito Teatro:
A physical theatre company that developed a creation process remarkably similar to our own. Even with language barriers we discovered that we were not only kin in our artistry but that our aesthetic, ideals and ethics were also aligned.
THE COMMITMENT:
Over a period of two weeks at the Festival, we had a brilliant exchange of ideas both practical and fantastical. The result was a firm resolve to enter into a co-production. A project that would explore the common ground between our two nations and celebrate our differences, similarities and diversity.
THE SEED:
It was a challenge to find something that was popular enough to have been translated into both Spanish and English yet obscure enough for us to adapt into a new piece of physical theatre. After a long search, Boca del Lupo director, Sherry J Yoon dug up a piece she had her sights on for some time: Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide. A piece filled with surprising characters, bizarre reversals and a full gypsy band framed within a story of an unemployed ‘little guy’ trying to find his place and his voice within the overbearing bureaucracies of class and power.
THE REALIZATION:
In March 2003, Boca del Lupo won the Alcan Award for the Performing Arts: Theatre 2004. The award is the largest of its kind in Canada providing us the resource we needed to create this international co-production and present it at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre along with the Cervantino Festival itself in 2004.
Boca del Lupo teamed up with Mexico’s San Banquito Teatro to present an international, multi-dimensional, almost original adaptation of The Suicide, a highly physical, viscerally engaging production based on a controversial and comical play by Soviet playwright Nikolai Erdman.
“Boca del Lupo is one of the most important creative forces in this city”
– Georgia Straight
Creative Team
Sherry J Yoon
As a theatre maker, director and currently co Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo in Vancouver BC I’ve been creating intimate immersive installations, made work inside theatres, and created large scale site activations for over 20 years.
My productions have toured across Canada, Latin America and Europe, with commissions and premiers at theatres and at festivals.
In addition to more traditional venues, my work has brought artists and audiences to old growth forests with performers rigged up 40 to 75 feet in the tree tops, to darken shipping containers experiencing the auditory journey of crossing the Pacific, under the ocean waters where we follow an archeologist 150 years into the future. I’ve worked on an interactive installation about climate change and our relationship to the guilt and isolation that people carry, involving the audience charging a battery on a stationary bicycle, a giant puppet piece that brings audiences into the imagined life of these creatures on land, ocean and sky.
As theatre maker my passion for creating new performance with Boca del Lupo and through collaborative pursuits has instigated international co productions with Mexico, Argentina, Ireland and South Korea.
As a director, workshop facilitator and teacher I’ve freelanced for companies and schools in Vancouver and across Canada. During my tenure Boca del Lupo has received numerous awards including the Alcan Performing Arts Award, Jessie Richardson awards, and the Critics Choice Award for Innovation and I have been nominated for the national Siminovitch Prize for directing.
Past committee work includes: the Studio 58 Arts Advisory, Canada Council’s REAC committee, the Arts Advisory for Theatre Section and the BC Arts Council Advisory. I’ve launched the 3.7% local and National Leadership Initiatives – and advocacy group to support emerging and established BIPOC women and non binary artists in leadership, and since the pandemic, Stop Asian Hate, an initiative that has galvanized Asian Canadian Leadership in the performing arts across Canada to help stop the spread of anti- Asian sentiments through connection and support within our communities.
Jay Dodge
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.
Carey Dodge
Technology Director of Boca Del Lupo
Carey is a board member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Carey is a multidisciplinary artist and technologist whose work focuses on sonic arts, interactivity, installations, sound design and performance. He studied Electroacoustics at Concordia University and received a Masters at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. He has collaborated with hundreds of artists in the creation of works mostly in Vancouver but also Montreal, Toronto, the USA, UK, Ireland & France.
Through his work with Boca del Lupo in the unique role as a full-time technology director for a theatre company he as worked with the core creative team to continually expand, challenge and grow what is possible and what are impactful uses of technology for expressing artistic vision and connection with each other.
Performers Camille Gingras, Marco Soriano*, Diana Karenina, Moises Ledesma, Lucas Myers* and Carmen Aguirre*. Video Design Candelario Andrade Technical Director Liz Baca Costume Design Mima Preston, Lighting Design John MacFarlane Stage Manager Andrea Hughes
*Appearing courtesy of Canadian Actors’ Equity
The English version of The Suicide is translated and adapted by Eileen Thalenberg and Alan Richardson and published by Mosaic Press. Photo artist: Bill Thomas.