In the face of her play being postponed at the Contemporary Art Gallery, sculpture, installation, and performance artist Erica Stocking is asking audiences to dial in to an audio conference call.

Whereas other performers, from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to Dan Mangan, are opting for livestream, the artist is instead turning to the good, old-fashioned phone.

Stocking is an Emily Carr University of Art + Design grad and former Vancouverite who now lives in Toronto. She's calling the work The Artist’s Studio Is Her Bedroom: a choreographed statement of autobiographical art making, an open rehearsal that listeners can dial into from the comfort and safety of their own homes in this time of COVID-19 social-distancing.

The one hour multidisciplinary performance mixes dance, sculpture, theatre, and fashion and will take place at the time of the originally scheduled play, Tuesday (March 24) at 7 p.m.

You can visit this page for information on how to dial into the event, including local numbers for audiences from Halifax to Mississauga. A web link to references and images for the props and characters will be provided on the page prior to the performance.

Stocking's work had inspired the entire CAG group show called The Artist's Studio Is Her Bedroom. Within her installation there, visitors could don dazzle-patterned costumes and self-organize to rehearse the script. In the allegorical play, Stocking weaves meditations on her own experience, especially as both a mother and an artist, together with references to historic boundary-defying women artists.

In 2009 Stocking received Vancouver’s Mayor’s Art Award for Emerging Public Artist and is known for major permanent public-art commissions in Vancouver and Surrey (including the All My Favourite People Are Animals bronze relief at the new nəә́ca̓ ʔmat ct Strathcona Branch Library and Geyser, which she designed with artist Vanessa Kwan for Queen Elizabeth Park), as well as such site-specific installations as a storefront creation for Artspeak Gallery and an apartment set for the windows of the Richmond Art Gallery.