A Theatre Replacement production. A High Performance Rodeo and Video In presentation. At Video In on Thursday, January 25 as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Continues until February 4

Theatre does intimacy better than any other medium; not even lap dancing gets as intimate as the six short performances that make up Bioboxes: Artifacting Human Experience.

A half-dozen actors perform separate seven-minute monologues for one audience member at a time. All of the shows take place in little theatres—built by Kofu Yamamoto—that fit over the heads of the artist and the playgoer. The actors conducted one-hour interviews with subjects of their choice and drew all of the text they use from those conversations. At the audience member’s bidding, the performers change from English to the second language they speak: Serbo-Croatian, Cantonese, German, Japanese, French, and Italian.

Is the intimacy intimidating? Yes. At first, with my face two feet from the performer’s, I worried about my breath. But it was easy to give myself over to participation; the form says so much about the theatrical experience, about unguarded listening, about the cooperative creation of a moment that will never exist again.

The shapes the different shows take are fantastically varied. Marco Soriano’s subject is Anna Terrana, the former Liberal MP and head of the Italian Cultural Centre. Soriano winds a paper scroll across the pro ­scenium of his tiny stage. Rectangles cut out of that scroll sometimes allow you to see his whole face. At other times you see just his eyes or his mouth, in framings that feel like close-ups. Objects also appear in the rectangles: a wedding ring, a tiny airplane.

Una Memisevic talked to a neurologist who found out she had a brain tumour. Memisevic’s piece is a complex collage that includes panic and reassurance, as well as the horrifically mundane: a seizure at Home Depot. Memisevic uses light effectively and her raw emotion is beautiful.

In one way or another, all of the pieces speak to cultural textures. Paul Ternes interviewed theatrical designer Andreas Kahre, who meditated on the nature of German identity. Production elements include Styrofoam, a hand drill, and a tiny video camera. Cindy Mochizuki’s Japanese story features incense and a small gift.

With these six exquisite pieces, Theatre Replacement proves once again that it is one of the most intelligent and generous players in Vancouver’s robust scene.