Hive

Created and produced by Boca del Lupo, Electric Company, Felix Culpa, Leaky Heaven Circus, neworldtheatre, the Only Animal, Radix, Rumble Productions, Theatre Replacement, Theatre SKAM, and Western Theatre Conspiracy. At 304 Dunlevy Avenue on Friday, November 10. No remaining performances

Hive blew my mind. It’s one of the most exciting artistic events I’ve ever experienced.

In an old funeral parlour across from Oppenheimer Park, 11 local companies perform 11 separate pieces in continuous rotation.

The Electric Company’s installation, At Home With Dick and Jane, is so intense I still haven’t recovered. Audience members see this show one at a time. You start off watching “documentary” film footage of Jonathon Young and Kim Collier, who play pretentious artists; he’s a playwright and she’s a filmmaker, and both of them have created projects about Dick and Jane.

Then comes the best part. You sit down in a chair, put your face up to a box that’s like a camera, and somebody pushes that chair around on a track, showing you scenes from Dick and Jane’s life. I can’t tell you how intimate, how intense the glimpses seen through the slit in that box are. Dick pursues Jane with scissors. It’s scary. Then he cuts off a lock of her hair, which he uses to make a doll of her. He puts that doll on a tiny stage. On the back wall of that stage, Jane’s film about Dick is running. This piece is so sensual and so full of ideas about the nature and interactivity of media that I felt like my brains were all over the room by the time it was over.

I also love the show 2 Truths + 1 Lie = Proof, by a small company called the Chop, which Rumble Productions presented. Anita Rochon and her dad, Paul Rochon, perform a scene from David Auburn’s play Proof. Through headsets, we also get to hear confessions and secrets from the real-life father and daughter. Two out of every three of these are true. The third is false. This piece is a fantastic meditation on the tension between authenticity and artifice both in theatre and within families.

Boca del Lupo’s show in a Dumpster-like container in the alley is a knockout. Felix Culpa’s telling of the Trojan War—using dolls—is unforgettable. Neworldtheatre’s trip to the embalming room is a stunner. Radix’s conversation with a dead guy is a beauty.

I relished everything I saw. This evening will be the stuff of legend. Here’s hoping they bring it back—or give us another installment.

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